Franciscan monastery Annaberg
The Franciscan Monastery Annaberg was a Franciscan monastery in today's Annaberg-Buchholz in the Ore Mountains in the Free State of Saxony .
history
The monastery belonged to the Saxon Franciscan Province of the Holy Cross ( Saxonia ) and only existed for a few years. It was set up in 1502 largely at the instigation and with the support of the then Albertine - Saxon sovereign Georg the Bearded , the founder of the town of Annaberg, which was established a few years earlier, and a staunch opponent of Lutheran teachings . However, the construction of the monastery was delayed and was not finished in 1509. In August 1512, however, the provincial chapter of Saxonia took place in Annaberg, which requires sufficiently large buildings. Among the religious in the monastery was the later reformer Friedrich Myconius , who entered the convent in 1510 . After the Reformation was introduced in Saxony , Duke Heinrich von Sachsen , the brother of the founder, closed the monastery in 1539 and the remaining nine Franciscans left the city.
In 1557, Elector August moved the Annaberg mint to the monastery before it was merged with the Dresden Mint in 1558 . The liturgical furnishings were given to other churches or melted down. The monastery church was still used for Evangelical Lutheran services. In 1604 the building burned down and fell into disrepair in the decades that followed. The site was only rebuilt in the 19th century, and the cellars and remains of the wall were included in the new development. The “Röhlingschen Fabrik”, a classicist building with up to five storeys, is now the district court and the Annaberg tax office is in the former mining depot. Some remains of the wall from the choir of the monastery church are reminiscent of the former Franciscan monastery.
architecture
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The monastery is located on the northern edge of Annaberg's old town, directly on the steep slope to the Sehmatal and thus on the city wall, which could be crossed here by the so-called monastery gate. It consisted of four wings grouped around an almost square, closed inner courtyard with a cloister . The complex was started in 1502 and was believed to have been completed in 1512.
In the south of the square was the large monastery church, around 62 meters long. The building was probably with a single nave and ended with a flat, flat ceiling. Presumably, the building should be kept deliberately simple as a mendicant church in keeping with the character of the order . In the otherwise simple city side of the monastery church, which is only divided by Gothic pointed arched windows, the so-called “beautiful door” , a splendid outlet gate designed by Hans Witten , was the decisive design element.
With three storeys, the monastery buildings on the west, north and east sides of the complex were unusually high for such monastery buildings in the region and looked more like a palace. This is explained, among other things, by the fact that George the Bearded used the building as a regional residence. The building construction and some architectural elements are based on, for example, the residential palace in Torgau.
Opposite the monastery church - on the site of today's post office - the abbot's house was also built in 1518, which, however, was not used by the Franciscans but by Benedictines from the monastery in Chemnitz , with whom there were close ties.
meaning
The "beautiful door" was moved to St. Anne's Church in Annaberg in 1577 .
Other art objects from the monastery can also be found in various churches in the Ore Mountains. The main altar of the monastery church has been in the Katharinenkirche in Buchholz since 1594 , a protective mantle Madonna and a crucifix in the St. Anne's Church in Annaberg-Buchholz.
The library of the Franciscan monastery in Annaberg received lasting importance. It was handed over to the Annaberg City Council in 1539, who left it to the St. Anne's Church a year later and from there in 1558 made it available to the city's Latin School. After the Second World War, the library was returned to the parish and today makes up about a fifth of the library holdings in St. Anne's Church.
literature
- Bachmann, Walter: The free mountain town of St. Annaberg. In: Sächsische Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler, Dresden, 1933.
- Heinrich Magirius (ed.): The beautiful door in the St. Anne's Church in Annaberg. Munich, 2003.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Chronological outline of the history of the Saxon Franciscan provinces from their beginnings to the present. Werl 1999, p. 225.239.
- ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Chronological outline of the history of the Saxon Franciscan provinces from their beginnings to the present. Werl 1999, p. 285.
Coordinates: 50 ° 34 '54.8 " N , 13 ° 0' 7.6" E