Graefenthal Monastery

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Graefenthal Monastery

The Graefenthal Monastery (now called Gut Graefenthal and Klooster Gravendaal in Dutch ) was a Cistercian abbey , the remains of which stand between Kessel and Asperden near the Niers in today's Kleve district . The former monastery church served as a burial place for counts, nobles and nuns. By 1376, 10 counts, countesses and dukes of Geldern found their final resting place there.

history

Drawing of the monastery by Jan de Beijer , 1758

The name Graefenthal, derived from the Latin term "vallis comitis" (Valley of the Count), goes back to the will of the founder. The “e” in the name is a common stretching vowel in the Lower Rhine . At the place of the monastery stood the castle Rott of the knight Stefan von Pleeze , which was probably already dilapidated .

Graefenthal Monastery was founded in 1248 by Count Otto II von Geldern at the persuasion of his first wife, Magarete von Kleve († September 10, 1251) as the Cistercian Order of Virgins. The monastery church, in whose choir Margarete von Kleve was buried as early as 1251, was the first to be built. The remaining monastery buildings followed by 1258. Thanks to the support of the rulers of the duchies of Geldern and Kleve, the monastery flourished quickly. Because his nuns were often unmarried aristocrats, the abbey served as a kind of supply point for unmarried women of the nobility. Around 1280 there were already 50 lay sisters and nuns living there. The first nuns came from the Munster Abbey in Roermond and moved into the new branch in 1250. The abbot of the Kamp monastery became their visitor .

In addition to a large number of foundations and legacies, through which the monastery received courtyards, mills, arable land, pasture and heathland as well as logging, fisheries, pensions and tithes , it also had the right of patronage in the churches of Kessel, Asperden from 1280 to 1320 , Hommersum and Hassum . As a result, the abbey had a great influence on the development of settlements in its area. Most of the monastery's possessions were in Asperden, Bimmen an der Vorst, Boeckelt, Gaesdonck , Hassum, Viller and Kessel. But parts of the right Maas and the left Rhine plains near Nijmegen were also his property. The cities of Kleve and Goch also granted Graefenthal road allowance and tax exemptions.

Otto II von Geldern intended the monastery to be the burial place of the Gelders ruling house, which it fulfilled until 1376, when Abbess Isabella von Geldern died and with Duke Rainald III. the Geldrisch-Wassenberg line was extinct.

Due to the turmoil of the Cologne-Burgundy War in 1474 and numerous fires, the structure of the monastery buildings suffered badly, so that parts of the complex had to be completely rebuilt.

After more than 550 years, the monastery was forcibly secularized by the French in 1802 . With 6300 acres of land and 36 farms, Graefenthal was  even richer than the monastery in Xanten at that time . The precious archive of the monastery is now kept in the monastery library of the Collegium Augustinianum Gaesdonck . In 1804 the district administrator and former diplomat Michael Franz Severin Sinsteden (1756–1849), father of Wilhelm Josef Sinsteden , became the new owner.

After the Dutchman Ijsbrand Rovers bought the estate, he made the facility accessible to the public again for a while, by moving a hotel and a restaurant there. In addition, the former monastery was used as a place of education and cultural events. After the bankruptcy of the local restaurateur, the gates of the monastery were closed to the public again. Rovers sold the monastery in 2017 to the ADG Management Group, which markets it as an event location. There are also plans to set up a museum on the history of Gelderland there.

From everyday life in the monastery

The nuns lived in the monastery according to the monastic ideal of voluntary poverty. They had to take a vow of silence and were not allowed to leave the monastery. Violations of these and other provisions were by the abbess in a lower court under the court Linde treated, the remains of which can still be seen on the bifurcation of the private road from the Meuse road.

The Cistercian women wore a robe made of white wool and a black scapular over it , which was held with a black belt. As an outward sign of high dignity, choir sisters also wore a veil , while lay sisters were dressed in a simple, brown robe.

The women's monastery did not have to provide for its own maintenance, but covered it from income from church patrons and from the leased property. The nuns only acted as administrators of the monastic properties. Their tenants supplied the necessary food and utensils or sometimes paid the monastery tithes in “hard cash”.

The buildings

The Jungfrauenkonvent is older than Moyland Castle and was built at the same time as Cologne Cathedral . The Gothic architectural style was only just emerging and replaced the strict sacred art of the Romanesque . The Cistercian women built their buildings in this "modern" style.

All construction periods can still be read from the preserved structures. Gothic elements from the 13th to 15th centuries can be found as well as baroque and classicist components from the 18th century. However, due to the agricultural use of the facility in the last few decades, major damage to the historically valuable building fabric has occurred. Nevertheless, the structure of the convent remained largely intact, including parts of the cloister of brick , the men and the gatehouse , and the pigeon tower , a garden shed and the long monastery wall.

To build the parish church in Pfalzdorf , the former monastery church was demolished in 1808 and its material was reused. The high grave of Otto II von Geldern was now in the open air, so that his life-size grave figure was lost in 1870. After the remains of the grave complex - a bluestone slab held by six lions  - were protected for many years with a simple wooden roof, they are now covered by an artistically modeled Gothic vault made of steel and glass. The lost reclining figure was also reconstructed based on old drawings.

In the course of an archaeological investigation of the preserved parts of the monastery building in 2004/2007, it was found that the current south facade of the east wing originally formed the northern inner wall of the choir of the monastery church, consecrated in 1252. The remains of the shield arches of the choir vault contained in the wall were made visible.

  • Entrance with gatehouse

  • Gatehouse from 1771

  • Former nunnery and north wing with cloister

  • The preserved cloister in the north wing

  • Vault remains of the choir of the monastery church in the facade of the east wing

  • Chapter house with Gothic pointed arches

  • Tomb of Otto II von Geldern in spring 2019

  • The reclining figure, which disappeared in 1870, was replaced according to old drawings

  • Pigeon tower

literature

  • Peter Burggraaff, Astrid Schuhmann, Theo Voss: cultural landscape on the Niers. The former Cistercian monastery Graefenthal . In: Calendar for the Klever Land to the year 1992 (HKLE) . Boss, Kleve 1993, ISSN  0174-0520 , pp. 189-195.
  • Elke Dißelbeck-Tewes: Women in the Church. The life of women in the medieval Cistercian monasteries of Fürstenberg, Graefenthal and Schledenhorst . Dissertation at the University of Bochum, Bochum 1989, ISBN 3-412-17089-5 .
  • Kristin Dohmen (Red.): Graefenthal. A Cistercian monastery on the Lower Rhine. Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft , Worms 2008, ISBN 978-3-88462-274-2 ( workbook of the Rhenish monument preservation . Volume 72).
  • Kristin Dohmen: Church and monastery of the Frauenzisterze Graefenthal - architecture in the field of tension between the enclosure and the public. In: INSITU. Zeitschrift für Architekturgeschichte 2 (2/2009), pp. 149–160.
  • Graefenthal - A monastery through the ages . Exhibition catalog of the Museum for Art and Cultural History of the City of Goch. Goch 1992.
  • Hans-Peter Hilger: Graefenthal or Neukloster near Goch - Former Cistercian abbey and burial site of the Geldern family . In: Bijdragen en mededelingen Gelre . No. 62, 1967. Vereniging Gelre, Arnhem, 1967, pp. 1-59.
  • Karl-Heinz Hohmann: The former Cistercian Abbey Neukloster zu Graefenthal (City of Goch) . Neusser Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Neuss 1997, ISBN 3-88094-821-6 ( Rheinische Kunststätten . Issue 427).
  • Jens Lieven: Goch-Asperden - Graefenthal . In: Nordrheinisches Klosterbuch . Volume 2. Franz Schmitt, Siegburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-87710-449-1 , pp. 396-404.
  • Robert Scholten : The Cistercian monastery Grafenthal or Vallis comitis to Asperden in the Kleve district, 1899 . Unchanged reprint of the edition published in 1899. Publishing house of the historical association for Geldern and the surrounding area, Geldern 1984, ISBN 3-921760-12-7 .

Web links

Commons : Kloster Graefenthal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Aart Noordzij: Gelre. Dynasty, land en identiteit in de late Middeleeuwen. Uitgegeven door GELRE Vereniging dead beoefening van Geldersche divorced, oudheidkunde en right. No. 59. Hilversum 2009, p. 109.
  2. ↑ H. Tummers: De begraafplaatsen en grafmonmenten van de graven en hertogen van Gelre. In: J. Stinner, KH Tekath (ed.): Gelre, Geldern, Gelderland. Geschiedenis en cultuur van het hertogdom Gelre. Geldern 2001, pp. 59–61.
  3. ↑ Stefanie Männchen: Insolvency: Graefenthal closes . In: The West . Edition October 16, 2011, accessed November 13, 2011 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Anja Settnik: Ijsbrandt Roovers sells Graefenthal . In: Rheinische Post . Edition of March 15, 2017 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Niklas Preuten: Detailed plans for a museum on Kloster Graefenthal. In: Neue Rheinische Zeitung . Edition of April 7, 2018 ( online ).
  6. ↑ K. Dohmen: Graefenthal. 2008, pp. 154-157.

Coordinates: 51 ° 42 ′ 21 ″  N , 6 ° 6 ′ 22 ″  E