Capuchin Monastery Essen
The Capuchin monastery in Essen was built at the beginning of the 17th century at the instigation of the abbess in a begining convent which was closed for this purpose and which was founded in the 13th century. The Capuchin monastery was closed in 1834. Nine years later, the Sisters of Mercy of St. Elisabeth opened their convent in the monastery building to care for sick people there until 1893. This made it the oldest hospital in Essen, which is now operated elsewhere as the Elisabeth Hospital .
history
Since the end of the 13th century there was a Beguine Convent in the area between today's Kapuzinergasse and Lindenallee in Essen city center , then a Capuchin convent from the beginning of the 17th century and finally in the 19th century a convent of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Elisabeth .
13th to 17th centuries: Beguine convent
North of the Kettwig city gate , the Essen canon Heinrich von Ketwich owned a property that he donated to a women's community in 1288 in order to enable them to lead a pious life there. This resulted in the oldest of six convents in the city of Essen: the Beginenkonvent Im Kettwig . The celibate sisters resident here did not have to follow any religious rule, dedicated themselves to prayer, nursing the sick and spinning, and could have left their community at any time.
In 1460, the convent, formed by around ten or twelve people, had a first chapel built.
17th century to 1834: Capuchin monastery
Around 1615, when the number of sisters in the convent declined, the Capuchin Order was appointed to Essen by Abbess Maria Clara von Spaur and generously donated her property to the monastery. In 1616 and 1624, it issued restrictive religious orders for the Essen Abbey with the aim of restoring the Catholic faith after Pastor Heinrich Barenbroch , the reformer of Essen, delivered the first evangelical sermon on April 28, 1563 and an entire citizenry had converted to Protestantism . The appointment of the Capuchin Order was part of the Abbess's counter-Reformation efforts.
The construction of the Capuchin monastery took place between 1618 and 1620. In the 1740s, the dilapidated church from 1460 was rebuilt. This single-nave church was covered by a barrel vault and had four windows on each long side. The high altar, the two side altars and some other relics from the monastery church are in what is now the church of the Elisabeth Hospital . On August 5, 1746, the monastery church and monastery were inaugurated by Abbot Franziska Christine von Pfalz-Sulzbach with a big festival for the monastery and the city. The Order Guardian of the Capuchins came from Münster and thanked the abbess and the citizens of the Imperial Free City of Essen in his festive sermon . In this formulation, the abbess saw the unfortunate dispute with the city rekindled, which prompted her not only to cancel all subsidies for the Capuchins, but also the princely hospitality and billeting of the superiors of the order during the annual audition at Borbeck Castle . Thereupon the Capuchins withdrew the word from the Imperial Free Imperial City of Essen in the Capuchin Church on Sundays , so that they were now admitted, which in turn led to a conflict with the city council.
The Capuchin monastery closed its doors in 1834.
1843–1893: Convention of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Elisabeth
On August 18, 1843, Sister Clara Kopp , who was elected superior by the conventuals in 1840, received permission from the church and state authorities to found a religious community and run a hospital. After extensive renovation of the already half-ruined monastery building, the Sisters of Charity of St. Elisabeth founded the first Essen hospital in it in 1843. On January 23, 1844, Clara Kopp and her initially six co-sisters started operating the hospital.
In the middle of the 19th century, the industrialization of the Ruhr area began to increase sharply. Workers for the mining industry and the rapidly expanding Krupp cast steel factory immigrated, which led to an enormous increase in population. At the same time, the need for medical care increased, after which the old monastery building was added to as early as 1849. The hospital was given a first operating theater and a dressing room, which were spatially separated.
Towards the end of the 19th century the population literally exploded, so that the hospital received a new building with 280 beds on Lindenstrasse in 1893. Until then, sick people had been cared for and treated in the old monastery building. But the new hospital soon stood in the way of the continued rapid growth of the city of Essen, whereupon today's Elisabeth Hospital was built outside of the former city, in what is now the Essen-Huttrop district .
Situation today
In 1912/1913 the former monastery and the Capuchin Church were demolished. They gave their name to today's Kapuzinergasse, where only a plaque commemorates the monastery.
In 1909 the Sisters of Mercy of St. Elisabeth sold the hospital building to the city of Essen for 1.5 million marks and in the same year acquired land from the former Brünglinghaushof in Huttrop. Between 1910 and 1913, not only was a large, modern hospital built here, which is now the oldest hospital in Essen, but also a new, baroque-style hospital church. Its baroque high altar, which was consecrated to the immaculate received , the Immaculata , which was originally shown in the altarpiece, but was replaced by an Immaculata statue for the consecration in 1764, as well as the two side altars come from the old Capuchin Church in Essen, as do the six on the side galleries attached statues and the memorial stone of the Benedictine abbot Hugo Protaeus from Werden from 1619.
In 1913 the upscale Hotel Kaiserhof was built on the site of the former Capuchin monastery . In 1931, for example, the industrialist Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach met Adolf Hitler here . The imperial court was demolished in 1974 after the inventory was auctioned. Subsequently, the Bank für Gemeinwirtschaft built an office building here in 1975, today's Lindencenter, which has housed the SEB Bank since 2004 .
literature
- Paul Clemen : The art monuments of the city and the district of Essen (= The art monuments of the Rhine province, Vol. 2, 3). Schwann, Düsseldorf 1893, p. 58 ( digitized version ).
- Helmut Müller: The arrival of the Capuchins in Essen and the laying of the foundation stone for the Capuchin monastery. In: The Minster on Hellweg. 22, 1, 1969, ZDB -ID 400327-5 , pp. 1-6.
- Hermann Schröter: What is still reminiscent of the Capuchin monastery and its church in Essen today? In: The Minster on Hellweg. 29, 3, 1976, ZDB -ID 400327-5 , pp. 31-47.
Footnotes
- ↑ Ute Küppers-Braun, women of the high nobility in the imperial-free worldly women's monastery Essen p. 264, Aschendorff-Verlag, 1997
- ↑ Paul Clemen : The art monuments of the city and the district of Essen (= The art monuments of the Rhine province, Vol. 2, 3). Schwann, Düsseldorf 1893, p. 58 ( digitized version ).
- ↑ Tony Kellen: The industrial city of Essen in words and pictures. History and description of the city of Essen. At the same time a guide through Essen and the surrounding area. Essen Ruhr 1902, printed and published by Fredebeul & Koenen, p. 96 ( online )
- ↑ On the 300th birthday of the founder. (PDF; 3.7 MB) (No longer available online.) Fürstin-Franziska-Christine-Stiftung, May 16, 1996, archived from the original on April 1, 2013 ; Retrieved December 6, 2012 . 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.
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 12.1 ″ N , 7 ° 0 ′ 40.7 ″ E