Wildungen coming from Johanniter

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Bad Wildungen - Excerpt from the Topographia Hassiae by Matthäus Merian 1655; the Johanniter branch is located below the Schlossberg, on the left bank of the Wilde

The Johanniter Coming Wildungen in the north Hessian town of Bad Wildungen was a hospital from 1358 to 1702, was from 1402 to 1478 and again from 1518 Coming , and was in 1532 secularized . Practically nothing of the church or the other buildings of the hospital and the commander has survived today.

Established as a hospital

On July 8, 1358, Count Otto II von Waldeck († 1369), still under the influence of the severe plague epidemic of 1349, commissioned members of the Order of St. John from Wiesenfeld , as the St. Johns were considered specialists in nursing, to set up a hospital in Niederwildungen . For this purpose he donated the site of an old mill yard on the Wilde at the river crossing between the two cities Niederwildungen and Altwildungen, outside the walls of the two cities on the territory of the Counts of Waldeck. The small hospital looked after by the Johanniter brother Adolf from the Kommende Wiesenfeld was built between 1358 and 1369. There was room for six patients - although only those who had a prospect of recovery were to be admitted. The foundation, with the little church also built in the 1360s, was dedicated to Mother Mary , St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Theobald of Provins . The hospital was exempt from all duties, services and tithes , and donations were called for in the county of Waldeck to equip it. However, it remained rather insignificant and poor, dependent on endowments and letters of indulgence , as Count Otto soon lost his interest.

Handover to the Johanniter

The circumstances only improved when Count Heinrich VI. († 1397), son and successor of Otto II., With his wife Elisabeth, handed over the hospital to Johanniterkommende Wiesenfeld in 1372 and the order now had a branch in the county of Waldeck. Several donations from neighboring property and rights owners rounded off the area, made the hospital viable and also made it possible to build a small church. The Wiesenfelder Komtur Johann Gogrebe (1370-1381) took over the administration and set up a small priest coming with four monks in Wildungen. In 1381 he had the dilapidated hospital building replaced by a new infirmary with eight beds. To secure the hospital's economic security, he signed a contract with the mayor and the council of Niederwildungen, according to which the hospital had to accept eight sick people at any time and the city was given the right to occupy them. The administration was now the responsibility of a Johanniter and a representative of the city, and half of the house's income from the donations was used for the sick and half for the members of the order.

Elevation to the Coming

The hospital and the religious establishment, which had existed since 1378 but was still dependent, received additional rights over the course of time. The transfer, on May 17, 1402, of the patronage rights to the mother church in the village of Wildungen (Altwildungen) and to the subsidiary church in Niederwildungen by Count Adolf III was particularly important . († 1431) von Waldeck zu Landau and Heinrich VII. († 1444) von Waldeck zu Waldeck to the five named “clergymen and brothers of the house between the two towns of Wildungen and all their successors”. In the same year the church patronage in Odershausen , Braunau and Reinhardshausen was transferred by the Lords of Löwenstein-Westerburg . This provided the basis for an independent existence, and the branch was raised to a commandery that Wiesenfeld had dissolved. In November 1403, Pope Boniface IX confirmed . (1389–1404) the transfer "to the Commander and the brothers of the St. Marien and Johannis Hospital near Wildungen". Ecclesiastically, the commander belonged to the diocese of Mainz . The first commander was probably Johann Widichenheim. The main pastor and pleban ( folk priest ) at the town church in Niederwildungen, mentioned in 1403 , Konrad Stolle, certainly also belonged to the order; In 1419 he was Komtur in Wildungen. Ludwig Ludike presumably followed Stolle.

Probably on the occasion of the assumption of patronage, the order donated the famous Wildunger Altar in the town church, created by Conrad von Soest in 1403 or 1404 . The hospital flourished and more buildings were built. As early as 1437, the hospital church from the 1360s was replaced by a new building.

Visit from 1494

The Kommende Wildungen remained independent until 1478, when it was reunited with the Kommende Wiesenfeld under Commander Johannes Roesener. In this status both appear in the general visitation of the order of 1494/95 ordered by Grand Master Pierre d'Aubusson in the Grand Priory of Germany .

The statement of accounts presented by the chaplain Johannes Dolde in Cologne on July 4th, 1494 shows that there were two chaplains and two friars as well as a cook and a servant in Wildungen at that time . The small church, consecrated to the patron saint of St. John , right next to the comming building, was in good structural condition and was nicely decorated, but the inventory was not very valuable. It consisted of 5 silver, gold-plated goblets with paten , 1 small silver cross, 1 "agnus dei pro pace", 6 missals , 1 gradual and 14 candlesticks . Most of the 15 vestments were in poor condition. The city ​​of Wildungen awarded three of the seven altars with their benefices to secular priests, the other four were looked after by the two religious, who read one daily and three further masses a week . The parish church in Niederwildungen was assigned to a secular clergyman by the order, and he received part of the church income to cover his maintenance. One of the friars officiated as a pleban in the incorporated parish church in Odershausen. The inventory of the religious house included u. a. 16 beds, 24 copper pots, 2 sinks, 10 towels, 4 tablecloths, six kettles, a large kettle for brewing beer, 10 plates, as well as 16 jugs, 30 plates and 4 candlesticks. The hospital was not mentioned in the report; whether this means that it was no longer in the possession of the order is not clear.

Her income (around 180 hectoliters of rye, 180 hectoliters of oats and 75 guilders) came from Wildungen itself, from St. Valentine's Chapel in Bredelar and from Gut Thilmannshausen, where ten horses, forty cows and three hundred pigs were located. After deducting expenses, there was a net profit of almost 60 guilders. Nothing is known about the annual contributions to the general order (“responsions”); they were probably taken over by Wiesenfeld, at least during this period. In Thilmannshausen there was also a chapel in which a chaplain from Wildung held services if necessary.

Wildungen also included, as a so-called “membrum” (member), the small religious settlement established in 1471/82 in the pilgrimage site of Pfannstiel near Weilburg .

Reformation and dissolution

In November 1518, Commander Roesener divided the Kommende Wiesenfeld again. Hermann Mehlen became Commander in Wildungen. Eight years later, in 1526, Count Philipp IV (1493–1574) von Waldeck-Wildungen introduced the Reformation in his county. In October 1527 he forbade the Johannites to hold Catholic services in the Johanniterkirche, in the Niederwildunger Stadtkirche and in the village patronage churches in the area. Five years later, the Wildung monastery, which was sometimes referred to as the “Kloster an der Wilde”, was secularized . The command building became the property of the sovereign. The two-story hospital came under city administration and was not closed until 1702. Count Christian Ludwig (1635–1706) had the remaining sick transferred to the hospital in Flechtdorf . Part of the income from the hospital went to the town church, whose patronage passed to the sovereign. The Johanniter Chapel was used by the Reitzenhagen parish until it was demolished and the Evangelical Church of Alt-Wildungen, today's Nikolai Church, was inaugurated in 1732 ; The Altwildung pastor, court preacher and prince tutor Philipp Nicolai (1556–1608), the poet of “ Wachet, calls us the voice ” and other hymns, also preached in it .

Coordinates: 51 ° 7 '24 "  N , 9 ° 12' 44"  E

Remarks

  1. ↑ The success of the Johanniter Nursing was based less on medical ability than on good physical and hygienic care and the greatest possible emotional support for the sick.
  2. ^ Johann Adolph Theodor Ludwig Varnhagen: Basis of the Waldeckische Landes- und Regentengeschichte. Göttingen, 1825 (p. 387)
  3. ↑ The Riesendamm street, which connects these two districts of Bad Wildungen, runs over this property today.
  4. ↑ The altars were dedicated to St. John the Baptist, Maria, Erasmus the Martyr , Bartholomäus the Apostle , Antonius, the Three Kings and St. Nicholas .
  5. ↑ Hermann Mehlen was probably born in 1473 and had two illegitimate children. He converted to the Protestant faith in 1545 and married in 1548. Together with his second wife, he died of the plague in 1566 as a rich man at the age of 93.
  6. ↑ The Coming Wildungen was one of the 28 religious houses that the German Grand Priory lost to the Reformation.

literature

  • Heinrich Hochgrebe: Die Wildunger Johanniter-Kommende , in: Geschichtsblätter für Waldeck and Pyrmont 74, 1986, p. 7 ff.

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