Franciscan monastery Cottbus
The Franciscan Monastery was a monastery of the Franciscan Order in Cottbus in Niederlausitz , which existed from the 13th to the 16th century. The monastery church is still preserved today.
history
Foundation and development in the Middle Ages
The exact year the monastery was founded is not known. It was probably founded around 1290/1300, possibly by Fredehelm von Cottbus († 1307) and his wife Adelheid († 1309). The still preserved grave slab of the two in the monastery church indicates a possible foundation by them. A certificate by Reinhard von Cottbus from 1470 mentions that his ancestors were the founders of the monastery.
There is hardly any information about the early days of the monastery. The monastery was located in the northwest corner of the city of Cottbus, the monastery buildings were attached to the church to the north and probably reached as far as the city wall, as was often the case with Franciscan monasteries in northern Germany at that time. The Franciscans had income in the villages around Cottbus. In Forst (mentioned in 1431) and Luckau (1524) there were appointments as bases for collecting alms. The convent belonged to the Meissen custody of the extensive Saxon order province ( Saxonia ). In 1489 he joined the observance movement in the order, which aimed at a stricter adherence to the vows of poverty . In 1503 the provincial chapter of Saxonia met in the monastery and is believed to have been attended by 700 religious. This meeting required extensive construction. In 1516/17 the University of Frankfurt may also have used it when it moved from Frankfurt to Cottbus because of the plague. (?)
History since the Reformation
The theologian Johann Briesmann (1488–1549) came from the Cottbus convent . He had joined Luther in Wittenberg and preached evangelical in Cottbus as early as 1522, after which he had to leave the city again in the same year.
In 1537 the Reformation was introduced in Cottbus by Margrave Johann von Küstrin . As a result, the brothers left the monastery and it was closed. Johannes Lüdicke was the first evangelical clergyman here on Luther's recommendation since 1537. While the council acquired the right to fill the positions, the right of patronage officially remained with the sovereign.
The former monastery church has since been the parish church for the Wendish (Sorbian) population, in whose language the services were held. The parish district included the villages of Sandow , Brunschwig , Ostrow , Schmellwitz and Döbbrick (half), and from the beginning of the 17th century also Branitz , Dissenchen , Merzdorf , Lakoma , Willmersdorf , all of Döbbrick, Maiberg , Skadow , Saspow , Zahsow and Ströbitz . Until the beginning of the 20th century, Wendish preaching and singing were used here.
Today it is the parish church of the Protestant monastery parish in the Cottbus parish of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia . It includes the villages of Schmellwitz, Willmersdorf, Saspow, Skadow, Döbbrick, Maiberg, Ströbitz and Zahsow.
Building description
The church from the former monastery is still preserved today. This is a 55.22 meter long rectangular brick building. The exterior of the church is kept simple as a mendicant order church and consists of an elongated and vaulted main nave with a continuous gable roof and a narrow asymmetrical aisle with a parallel gable roof attached in the middle of the south side. In the southeast corner there is a slender tower on a square substructure and the sacristy in the eastern north side. In the church there were also altars from Cottbus trades; an altar of the brewers is mentioned in 1526, which indicates that memorial foundations of the guilds also existed at the Cottbus monastery .
Little is known about the details of the monastery buildings. They were located on the north side of the church and were connected by a cloister . However, the last visible traces of the church have disappeared through plastering or new veneering. The last remnant of the east wing of the enclosure , which adjoined the choir of the church, is the sacristy in the far east of the north side of the church. It originally protruded a little over the east wall and was only shortened in 1832. The bathing rooms of the monastery were mentioned in 1443 and the rented cloister vault in 1577. Parts of the cemetery wall existed in the area of the current monastery square until 1729. The last part of the monastery building and the cloister is said to have been removed only in 1852.
literature
- Cottbus. Franciscans . In: Klaus Neitmann, Heinz-Dieter Heimann, Winfried Schich (ed.): Brandenburg monastery book. Handbook of the monasteries, pens and commander by the mid-16th century. Volume 1. be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2007. ISBN 9783937233260 . Pp. 360-369
- Marcus Cante: The Franciscan Monastery in Cottbus. , In: Annegret Gehrmann (ed.): The mendicant orders in the two Lausitzes. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2017. pp. 195–215. To architecture
Web links
- The lords of Cottbus and their monastery Lausitzer Rundschau from December 28, 2007
Coordinates: 51 ° 45 ′ 41.7 " N , 14 ° 20 ′ 0.4" E