Franciscan monastery Aachen

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St. Nicholas around 1900

A Franciscan monastery existed in Aachen from 1234 until secularization in 1802 at the St. Nicholas Church and then again from 1860 to 1967 in Monheimsallee.

The monastery at St. Nicholas

Floor plan of the Franciscan monastery in 1737

Foundation and development

In the 11th century, Emperor Heinrich II donated a chapel to the Free Imperial City of Aachen. It stood approx. 200 m in front of the Kölntor on the edge of the trade route leading from the market square towards Cologne (today at the crossing point Großkölnstraße - Minoritenstraße) and belonged to a canons 'monastery in Großkölnstraße with neighboring canons' apartments.

In the year 1234, possibly a little earlier, brothers of the Franciscan order founded in 1210 ( Ordo Fratrum minorum , Friars Minor or Minorites), which spread in Germany from 1222, took over the chapel. Over the next few decades, they built a new monastery on the church in the immediate vicinity of the Barbarossa Wall , the inner city ​​wall of Aachen , which belonged to the Cologne Franciscan Province of Colonia . The Franciscans were first reliably mentioned in Aachen in 1246. Since the chapel had become too small for the needs of the order, a first church in the Gothic style of a mendicant church with five altars was built in its place . On December 6, 1324, Hermann from Cologne, Auxiliary Bishop of Lüttich and Bishop zu Heinen, consecrated the choir and the main altar to the namesake of the day, Nikolaus von Myra , and the next day the four other altars.

Only six years later, in 1333, the St. Nicholas Church was severely damaged by a first fire, but it was quickly restored. The Franciscans took care of merchants and travelers and were popular because of their pastoral care close to the people. As a result, their community grew, and in the following decades further expansion of both the monastery complex and the monastery church was necessary, and their choir room was enlarged in 1390 with a third vaulted yoke to the east. The monastery was attached to the church to the north. The cloister rooms , the refectory and the kitchen were arranged around a square inner courtyard, connected by a cloister ; the brothers' bedrooms were on the upper floor.

In 1502, the Aachen Franciscans, motivated by brothers from the Observant Monastery in Maastricht , joined the Stricter Observance ( Fratres Minores de Observantia ) and then the reform branch of the recollects . In 1537, 1626 and 1643 the provincial chapter of the Cologne Order Province met in the Aachen convent . The Reformation had no effect on the monastery.

In 1628, on the initiative of the Guardian Heinrich Isendorn zu Blois and supported by the Canon of the Aachen Cathedral , Bruno von Bisterfeld, the dilapidated monastery buildings were demolished. On Monday, April 22nd, 1630 the foundation stone was laid for a new building. On this occasion a certain Freiherr von Pallandt donated the choir of the church and a three-story high altar. Further altars were donated by Canon von Bisterfeld and Freiherr von Schnetter, Herr zu Kottenbach. You were u. a. consecrated to the Mother of God , St. Francis of Assisi and St. Rochus of Montpellier . In the west wing of the monastery there was now a chapel for the brotherhoods that existed at the monastery . There was a group of the Franciscan Third Order (Tertiary) at the monastery . Spiritual and secular honoraria from the city also belonged to the Rochus Brotherhood. In 1646 Guardian Heinrich Isendorn promoted the founding of the Aachen Annuntiatenkloster .

In the devastating city ​​fire of Aachen in 1656, the roof and the turret of the church were destroyed, the earthquake on September 18, 1692 split the west gable and affected the vault. Laurenz Mefferdatis directed the restoration of the vault in 1706. In 1786 the tombs were removed from the church and a funeral cellar was set up for the monastery brothers and benefactors of the church.

The Franciscans were active as preachers, they held services in the hall of the city council and, after the abolition of the Jesuit order in 1773, took over teaching philosophy and theology at the grammar school.

resolution

Rededicated monastery building, here before 1902

With the beginning of the French occupation from 1794, the Aachen monasteries were gradually dissolved by decree of Napoléon Bonaparte in the course of secularization , as was the Franciscan monastery in 1802. One of the fathers , Father Eugenius Mürkens, became pastor at St. Foillan , where he revived the Franciscan tertiary community, which first met in the Salvatorkirche and, at the instigation of Father Eugenius, in the small Elisabethkirche belonging to St. Foillan.

The monastery church became the parish church of St. Nicholas. The French put their wounded soldiers in the refectory , and the cloister became a stable for horses. In the meantime, the remaining monastery buildings had been rededicated as the new city prison, as the previous prison in the grass house was hopelessly overcrowded. After the French had left, the newly established Aachen Regional Court was also quartered in the former monastery from 1820 . From 1874 the complex served the city of Aachen as an administration building and registry office before it was converted into a school building in 1902. Initially the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium was temporarily located there from 1902 to 1906 , before the teacher training institute and, after the First World War, the commercial schools, the commercial school, the higher commercial school and the commercial vocational school were housed there. During the Second World War, the former monastery buildings were destroyed in July 1943 and not rebuilt. Today there is a municipal parking lot on this site.

Start-up

Franciscan monastery and church Monheimsallee (around 1900)

From the middle of the 19th century, the remaining monasteries in Prussia were allowed to accept new members again. The Cologne Franciscan Province had expired after secularization, the Saxon Franciscan Province of Saxonia continued to exist with a few monasteries. It expanded rapidly and began with the establishment or re-establishment of monasteries. In 1860 Saxonia built a Franciscan monastery again in Aachen, now in the area of ​​Monheimsallee. It existed until 1967. In June 1863 the brothers first moved into a building complex in the neighboring Heinzenstrasse.

In the Prussian Kulturkampf , the monastery law ordered the closure of the monasteries; In addition to Aachen, 16 other Saxonia monasteries were affected. The Aachen Franciscan residence was closed on September 15, 1875. The brothers moved to Moresnet , Belgium , where they founded a monastery and took care of the pilgrimage site .

After the end of the Kulturkampf, the Franciscans returned to their monastery in Aachen in 1887. Oberer was from 1888 to 1891, as already from 1872 until the relocation to Moresnet, Father Othmar Maas man who from 1861 to 1864 repeatedly provincial minister of the province of the order Saxonia was. Between 1891 and 1893, on his initiative at Monheimsallee 51 by the Franciscan brother Paschalis Gratze, a new convent building with an attached monastery church Herz Jesu was built in neo-Gothic style. The monastery was a popular confessional in Aachen , and the friars acted as confessors for the brothers in the poor of St. Francis and seven sister monasteries , where she also held regular spiritual conferences for the sisters; In 1913 the brothers heard 112,000 confessions and 130,000 communions were donated. When the Cologne Franciscan Province was revived by the Three Kings in 1929 , the convent in Aachen joined it with the other monasteries in the Saxon province in the Rhineland. The Cologne province made the Aachen monastery their novitiate house .

During the Second World War , the brothers were expelled by the National Socialists from 1941 to 1945 . On their return they found the building badly damaged and had them restored in 1948 by the architect Arnold Königs . In 1967 the Order sold the buildings, which were demolished a few months later; some of the brothers stayed in an apartment in Aachen for a while. Today a memorial plaque in the Nikolauskirche used as the city church commemorates the last Franciscans in Aachen. This hangs in the entrance area of ​​St. Nikolaus together with a life-size cross that was donated to the Franciscans by the Spanish riding team on the occasion of the Aachen horse show in 1957.

literature

  • Christian Quix : Franciscan monastery and church. In: Contributions to the history of the city of Aachen and its surroundings. Mayer, Aachen 1838 pp. 136–144 ( digitized )
  • Gisela Fleckenstein: The Franciscan monastery in the city of Aachen (1860-1967) . In History Association for the Diocese of Aachen: History in the Diocese of Aachen, Volume 1, einhard / butzon & bercker, Aachen 1992, ISBN 3-920284-66-6

Web links

Commons : Franziskanerkloster Aachen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Faymonville et al. a .: The art monuments of the city of Aachen. II. The churches of the city of Aachen. Schwann, Düsseldorf, 1922, (KD II) pp. 157/429.
  2. ↑ Dieter Berg : Traces of Franciscan History . Werl 1999, p. 33.45.
  3. ^ Christian Quix: Franciscan monastery and church. In: Contributions to the history of the city of Aachen and its surroundings. Aachen 1838, pp. 136–144, here p. 137 ( digitized )
  4. ^ Christian Quix: Franciscan monastery and church. In: Contributions to the history of the city of Aachen and its surroundings. Aachen 1838, pp. 136–144, here p. 141 ( digitized )
  5. ↑ Entry in the inscription catalog, DI 32 City of Aachen No. 161+ (Helga Giersiepen)
  6. ^ Christian Quix: Franciscan monastery and church. In: Contributions to the history of the city of Aachen and its surroundings. Aachen 1838, pp. 136–144, here pp. 142–144 ( digitalized )
  7. ↑ His Architectura shows on page 108 the drawing of the arched scaffolding. KD II, pp. 162/434.
  8. ^ Christian Quix: Franciscan monastery and church. In: Contributions to the history of the city of Aachen and its surroundings. Aachen 1838, pp. 136–144, here p. 143 ( digitized )
  9. ↑ Hans-Georg Aschoff : From the Kulturkampf to the First World War. In: Joachim Schmiedl (Ed.): From Kulturkampf to the beginning of the 21st century. Paderborn 2010, pp. 23–287, here p. 266.
  10. ↑ Dieter Berg: Traces of Franciscan History . Werl 1999, p. 483.495.
  11. ↑ Dieter Berg: Traces of Franciscan History . Werl 1999, p. 503.
  12. ↑ Hans-Georg Aschoff: From the Kulturkampf to the First World War. In: Joachim Schmiedl (Ed.): From Kulturkampf to the beginning of the 21st century. Paderborn 2010, pp. 23–287, here pp. 57.221f.
  13. ↑ On the history of the Cologne Franciscan Province ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Anniversary exhibition in the Diocesan Library Cologne 2004 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dombibliothek-koeln.de

Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 39 ″  N , 6 ° 5 ′ 10 ″  E