Capuchin monastery Laufenburg

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Capuchin monastery Laufenburg
Capuchin monastery Laufenburg 1680.JPG
Capuchin monastery Laufenburg around 1680Template: Infobox / maintenance / picture

medal Capuchin
founding year 1654
Cancellation / year 1810
Patronage St. Fridolin
location
country Switzerland
region Aargau
place Laufenburg
Geographical location 47 ° 34 '  N , 8 ° 4'  E Coordinates: 47 ° 33 '43.5 "  N , 8 ° 3' 51"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred forty-seven thousand and seventy-seven  /  268,116
Capuchin monastery Laufenburg (Switzerland)
Red pog.svg
Situation in Switzerland

The Laufenburg Capuchin Monastery is an abandoned monastery of the Capuchin Order in the city of Laufenburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland . The foundation stone was laid in 1654. The monastery was closed in 1810. The monastery complex, which was rebuilt and partially demolished several times, was used as a district hospital until it was rebuilt in 1982. The old people's center Klostermatte is located on the former site.

history

founding

The comprehensive establishment of Capuchin monasteries in Upper Austria was an act of the Counter Reformation that began after Leopold V took office . The French War from 1633 to 1648 and the subsequent French occupation of the forest towns until October 18, 1650 interrupted the program, which was resumed under Leopold's son Ferdinand Karl . The Habsburg corridor, which is largely surrounded by Protestant areas, was to be denominationally consolidated under the maxim “Faith and Loyalty”. In 1633 the garrisons of the forest towns had largely defected to the Swedes .

As early as 1619, the Laufenburg City Council asked the Small Council to build a Capuchin monastery. On March 8, 1627, a building commission was appointed to which the city pastors Fridolin Ranck and Jakob Zoller belonged. The military events after the city was handed over to the Swedes in 1633 and the Swedish-French occupation from 1638 to October 1650 delayed the project.

construction

Under the supervision of the Basel prince-bishop Johann Franz von Schönau , the Swiss Capuchin Province took over the planning, construction and occupation of the three founding monasteries in Rheinfelden , Laufenburg and Waldshut . The Franciscan Sisters were already represented in Säckingen . A pious competition between the cities of Laufenburg and Waldshut for the speed of construction is a fama. For organizational reasons, priority was given to the Rheinfelden monastery, which was therefore completed in 1657. A handwritten codex from the Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen , the Codex Donaueschingen 879, documents the Swiss-Austrian joint project until around 1664 .

The work is attributed to the master builder Probus Heine from Pfullendorf . As the architect of the order, he was also responsible for the construction of the Laufenburg monastery complex, as evidenced by the crack he signed in the Laufenburg city archive. The local master Johann Bentz carried out the masonry work. City councilor Thomas Stocker donated the land. For the new monastery in Laufenburg, 4,206 guilders were estimated, which were raised by other foundations.

After the arrival of the first Capuchins, a stone cross was erected on the planned building site in November 1650 (time taken from Romuald). According to the files of the city archives, however, the Capuchins were not received until 1651. The start of construction was delayed because the construction of the monastery had to be coordinated with the military administration in Innsbruck in the field of fire of the fortress batteries .

On July 12, 1654 the foundation stone was laid by the parish priest Franz Schaidt. According to Romuald von Stockach, the consecration of the convent church was carried out on April 4, 1660 by the titular bishop Thomas Heinrich von Chrysopolis , suffragan of the Principality of Basel. The presbytery was under the patronage of St. Fridolin and the lay church under the patronage of St. John the Baptist .

17th century

In 1664, the cities of Rheinfelden, Laufenburg and Waldshut submitted a joint request to Archduke Sigismund Franz to connect their Capuchin monasteries to their own Order Province in front of Austria, as they did not want to be comforted and spiritually provided by the "disaffected Swiss". In 1668 the 27 Upper Austrian monasteries split off on April 16 at the Provincial Chapter of the Swiss Capuchin Province in Wil and founded the Upper Austrian Capuchin Province .

Tasks and activities of the monastery

Johann Murbach: Capuchins accepting confession, gouache 1767

The Capuchin priests temporarily helped out within the Laufenburg deanery. From 1670 onwards, after the compulsory parish was abolished, confession was accepted. As a result, the Upper Austrian Capuchin monasteries reported that up to 800,000 confessions were taken each year. The Laufenburg Capuchin monastery provided the confessor for the Säckingen women's monastery . The pastoral care of the sick and dying was, according to the custom of the time, almost exclusively entrusted to the Capuchins. Capuchins took care of prisoners and prisoners and accompanied those sentenced to death on their last walk.

Another focus was the mission, which extended deep into the reformed cantons of the Confederation. This led to repeated negotiations with the federal assembly . Between 1658 and 1670, an average of 20 Zwinglians were returned to the Catholic faith each year . Laufenburg Capuchins who had become conspicuous in the Confederation were repeatedly transferred to more distant Capuchin monasteries in Upper Austria. The Capuchin Order made great contributions to the care of those suffering from the plague in the epidemics of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Pastoral care and nursing merged into one another. In 1690 a deadly epidemic also raged in the Fricktal . The PP died in the pastoral care and care of the sick. Renatus von Laufenburg and Johannes von Konstanz.

Development of the monastic community

According to the Architectura Capucinorum , the monastery offered space for 26 brothers. However, it soon became apparent that the monastery buildings were too narrow. The actual occupancy should not have exceeded twenty convent members including the lay brothers up to the 1780s. After the ban on accepting novices in 1781, expansion of the convent was only possible by converting. Theoretically, the ban on accepting novices expired under the Helvetic Republic . During this time, the ancestral monasteries of the Swiss Capuchin Province were in financial and personal hardship and were unable to help the monasteries in Rheinfelden and Laufenburg that they had taken over.

18th century

In 1750 the altar of the newly built Fidelis Chapel was consecrated. In 1772, with the court decree of March 20 , Empress Maria Theresa only admitted born Austrians to leadership positions in the order. In 1781, the last Definitor of the Upper Austrian Capuchin Province, RP Reinhard von Waldshut, carried out the separation of the Fürstenberg Capuchin monasteries from Vienna on March 24th. On February 1, 1788, collecting alms and selling amulets and tufts of herbs was prohibited. The Fathers were supported by the Religious Fund.

During the War of the Austrian Succession and the Wars of the Revolution , the brothers were expelled and the monastery served as barracks for the troops who passed through. During the retreat of the French under General Tarreaux on October 19, 1796, the French billeted in the monastery were violently attacked by Austrian associations under General Wolf. After the attackers were repulsed, the monastery was looted.

19th century

Secularization and repeal

Capuchin grave on the south wall of Klostermatte Laufenburg.

The long process of secularization of the monastery was initiated on June 8, 1781 by a court edict in Vienna, according to which novices were not allowed to be admitted. The early end followed the Peace of Lunéville on February 9, 1801. Due to the efforts of the former Waldshut physicist Sebastian Fahrländer , Laufenburg and the Fricktal were added to the Helvetic Republic by France on August 13, 1802 and subsequently reached the Helvetic Republic on February 19, 1803 to the newly formed canton of Aargau . For its part, the Viennese government recalled all Capuchins from the separated areas to the Reich in November 1803.

The last Guardian of the Laufenburg Capuchin Monastery Laufenburg failed with his efforts to join the monastery to the Swiss Capuchin Province, although the Grand Council of the Canton of Aargau had decided to keep it on May 18, 1804. The Guardian went to the Waldshut Capuchin Monastery , where he died in 1809. On August 22nd, 1805, the monastery was closed and given to the municipality of Laufenburg. The two remaining Fathers Gerhard Zepf and Quarinus Sulzer, who came from Laufenburg, received 500 francs a year from the canton of Aargau. The former Provincial P. Azarias from Säckingen moved into the Capuchin monastery in Waldshut. The Capuchin Crypt under the Fidelis Chapel has also been removed. The remains of the 33 Capuchins buried there were transferred to a communal grave on the south wall of the monastery area. The cast-iron cross from the grave complex, which was removed for an exhibition project in 2010, was re-erected in June 2014.

Later use

After the abolition in 1805, the municipality of Laufenburg initially took over the building complex in order to sell it to the Brentano brothers in 1812. After temporary private use and an intermezzo as a boys' boarding school “International Institute” from 1879 to 1883, the monastery complex was set up as a district hospital in 1905 after the lay church was rebuilt and demolished. With the construction of the district hospital, the former monastery complex was torn down in 1985 with the approval of the cantonal monument preservation authorities. On the Gewann Klostermatte at Spitalstrasse 8 stands the old people's center Klostermatte today. The only reminder of the former Capuchin monastery is the name of the place and the Capuchin grave on the south wall, which has been overgrown for a long time.

The monastery library

Johann Nikolaus Weislinger : Anti-reformatory illustration from Friss Vogel or dies , 1726

According to Romuald von Stockach, the episcopal court master Sebastian Sartorius from Neustadt in Austria and the Hochsaler pastor Fridolin Senn are said to have built the monastery library.

After the monastery was dissolved, the books ended up in the Aargau canton library . The library catalog has been preserved in the Aargau State Archives . The holdings taken over from the Capuchin monasteries of Laufenburg and Rheinfelden were still classified as little or not significant in 1857, as they consisted primarily of ascetic writings, editions of the church fathers and classics. An edition of the sermones "Dormi secure" de tempore by Johannes de Werdana before 1485 with an ownership note of the monastery in the catalog of the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe (INKA 11000952) refers to an inventory of incunabula in the monastery library .

buildings

location

The monastery grounds were in front of the market gate and the bear tower at some distance from the fortifications.

Map of the first floor, around 1656
Map of the middle floor, around 1656

Lay church, choir and presbytery

The type of church follows the Venetian-Tyrolean scheme of the contemporary Capuchin churches. Based on the plans for the Waldshut monastery in the Architectura Capucinorum, the rectangular lay church (1) stood in the northeast of the complex. In the small rectangular wing of the building with two cross vaults attached to the south, the presbytery (2) separated by the choir grille under the transverse arch and the psalier choir (3) to the south. The choir of the Psalms and the presbytery were connected by two windows that were closed during the activities and a doorway. The two windows made confession and communion possible. The means of wine, water and bread needed for liturgical reasons were exchanged through the trullet. On the convent side, an overhead window enabled a view of the lay church. The pulpit of the lay church was reached via the library (24) on the upper floor of the convent wing. To the east, a small sacristy (4) and a corridor with a wall basin (5) were added to the choir and the presbytery . On the west side of the presbytery was the oratory (10).

The high altar showed the patron John the Baptist and Saint Fridolin von Säckingen . The side altars were dedicated to Mary and Joseph, as well as Saint Anthony of Padua and Francis of Assisi . A crucifixion group made by Heinrich and Melchior Fischer between 1610 and 1620 was attached above the choir screen under the transverse arch. The figure of Maria has been preserved from the ensemble.

Fidelis Chapel

In 1729 the Feldkircher Guardian Fidelis von Sigmaringen , a martyr of the Capuchin order, was beatified and canonized on June 29, 1746 by Pope Benedict XIV. Together with Camillus von Lellis . To commemorate martyrdom in Switzerland, the Fidelis Chapel (6), first mentioned in 1754, was attached to the east wall of the lay church at a right angle. The consecration of the altar of the Fidelis Chapel was carried out on September 8, 1750 by the Prince-Bishop of Basel, Josef Wilhelm Rinck von Baldenstein . The Fidelis Chapel was initially retained and was used as a hospital chapel until the end of the 1970s.

One can only speculate about the equipment of the Fidelis Chapel. One could imagine an altar sheet with an apotheosis of St. Fidelis. A central sculpture would also be possible. As in the Capuchin monastery in Rheinfelden and in the Capuchin monastery in Waldshut, a communal crypt was created under the Fidelis Chapel . Usually, such capuchin tombs were created as shallow barrel vaulted halls with lateral columbaria in three or four zones. These offered space for up to 60 burials.

Convention wing

The four-wing convent wing, the Quadrum, west of the church was accessed through the entrance corridor (7). The narrowed east wing (9) contained the oratorio (10) with a window to the psallier choir. A half-open gallery (9) was laid out on the side of the cloister courtyard (8). A door to the enclosure led to the closed gallery (11) of the south wing, which opened up the staircase (12), the heated refectory of the convent 13) and the monastery kitchen (14). In the west wing, again outside the cloister, was another closed gallery (15), which led to the washroom (17) and the Loca secreta (18) behind it. The pantry in front, accessible via the kitchen, was connected to the fruit chute and the cellar via a second staircase (16). In the north transverse wing, which in turn was accessed through a half-open gallery (19) outside the cloister , to the west were the pilgrims' room (20) with an oven, the dining room for the poor and needy (21), a visitor or confession room (22) and the consulting room (23).

On the upper floor of the quadrum was the library (24) with access to the pulpit of the lay church, a small room as a passage to the infimeria (25), the foresteria (visitor room) (26,27,28) for guests and for the visitors, the domitorium with 22 individual cells, which only reveal the garden and inner courtyard (29), the laundry room (30), the tailor's shop (31) and the infirmary with sick (32) and death room (33), from which viewing slits provide a line of sight to the Altar made possible.

The interior was already badly damaged in the fighting between the Austrians and the French on October 19, 1796. In addition to the floor plan in the Architectura Capuzinorum, a floor plan signed by Probus Heine from 1654 has been preserved in the local archives of Laufenburg. In comparison, the quadrum on this crack in the church axis is narrowed.

literature

  • Romualdus Stockacensis: Conventus Lauffenburgensis . In: Historia provinciae anterioris Austriae fratrum minorum capucinorum . Andreas Stadler, Kempten 1747, p. 121–125 ( full text in Google Book Search).
  • Vigilius Greiderer: Conventus Laufenburgense . In: Chronica ref. provinciae S. Leopoldi Tyrolensis ex opere Germania Franciscana . Liber I. Typis Joannis Thomae nobilis de Trattnern, Vienna 1781, p. 403 ( archive.org ).
  • Johannes Baptista Baur: Contributions to the Chronicle of the Upper Austrian Capuchin Province . In: Freiburg Diöcesan Archive . tape 17 . Herder'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Vienna 1885, p. 245–289 ( freidok.uni-freiburg.de [PDF]).
  • Johannes Baptista Baur: Contributions to the Chronicle of the Upper Austrian Capuchin Province . In: Freiburg Diöcesan Archive . tape 18 . Herder'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Vienna 1886, p. 153 ( freidok.uni-freiburg.de [PDF]).
  • Fritz Wernli: Building blocks for a story of the Laufenburg Capuchin Monastery . In: Aargauer historisches Taschenbuch Pocket book of the historical society of the canton Aargau for the year 1910 . Sauerländer, Aarau 1910, p. 171-203 .
  • Lexicon Capuccinum: promptuarium historico-bibliographicum Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Capuccinorum; (1525-1950) . Bibl. Collegii Internat. S. Laurentii Brundusini, Rome 1951, p. XLVII S., 1868 Sp .: Ill .
  • Beda Mayer OFMCap .: Kapuzinerkloster Laufenburg, In: The Capuchin monasteries in front of Austria . In: Helvetia Franciscana . 12, 8th issue. St. Fidelis-Buchdruckerei, Lucerne 1977, p. 247-252 .

Web links

Commons : Kapuzinerkloster Laufenburg  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Architectura Capucinorum Cod. Don. 879  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathaeus Merian: Theatrum europaeum , Volume 3. Frankfurt am Main 1670, pp. 97ff.
  2. ↑ Communications from the Historical Association of the Canton of Schwyz , Volume 70. Einsiedler Anzeiger, 1978, p. 47.
  3. ↑ Romualdus Stockacensis: Monasterium Laufenburgense. In: Historia provinciae anterioris Austriae fratrum minorum capucinorum. Andreas Stadler, Kempten 1747, p. 122.
  4. ↑ Stadtarchiv Laufenburg: Nos. 68 and 69, according to footnote 8 in Beda Mayer
  5. ↑ Romualdus Stockacensis: Monasterium Laufenburgense. In: Historia provinciae anterioris Austriae fratrum minorum capucinorum. Andreas Stadler, Kempten 1747, p. 125.
  6. ↑ cf. Ernst Adolf Birkenmayer: The former Capuchin monastery. Freiburg Diöcesan Archive, vol. 21. Herder'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Freiburg 1890, p. 217
  7. ↑ Cf. Vigilius Greiderer: Conventus Waldishutanus in: Chronica ref. provinciae S. Leopoldi Tyrolensis ex opere Germania Franciscana. 1788, typis Joannis Thomae nobilis de Trattnern, 1781, Vienna, p. 241.
  8. ↑ See Peter Blickle: Das Alte Europa: from the high Middle Ages to the modern age. CH Beck, Munich, 2008, p. 116
  9. ↑ Benda Mayer: Helvetia Franciscana , Volume 12, Issue 6, 1977, p. 149.
  10. ↑ Heinrich von Kleist processed this task in the 20th anecdote (from the Capuchin) in the 53rd Abendblatt, dated November 30, 1810.
  11. ^ Johann Müller: The Aargau: Its political, legal, cultural and moral history. Volume 2. F. Schulthess, Rupperswyl 1871, p. 210.
  12. ^ Beda Mayer: Kapuzinerkloster Laufenburg AG, in: Helvetia Franciscana , Volume 12, Issue 8, p. 249.
  13. ^ Beda Mayer: Kapuzinerkloster Laufenburg AG, in: Helvetia Franciscana , Volume 12, Issue 8, p. 251.
  14. ↑ Paperback Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau, Aarau, 1908, p. 200.
  15. ↑ Marc Fischer: Grave reminds of the Capuchins - and should not be forgotten, Aargauer Zeitung of June 6, 2014 [1]
  16. ↑ Cf. Dominik Senn: The Laufenburg Capuchin Monastery, which has been converted into a hospital, is being torn down, and a piece of monastic culture in Aargau is disappearing. In: Aargauer Tagblatt , August 20, 1985, p. 3.
  17. ↑ Romualdus Stockacensis: Monasterium Laufenburgense. In: Historia provinciae anterioris Austriae fratrum minorum capucinorum. Andreas Stadler, Kempten 1747, p. 125.
  18. ↑ Paul Schwenke: Zent.bl. Bibl.wes, Volume 27, p. 209.
  19. ↑ See catalog of the Aargau Cantonal Library: First Part: Alphabetical Catalog, Volume 1, Aarau, 1857, p. XXXIV
  20. ^ Grunder, Karl: Zisterzienserbauten in der Schweiz: new research results on archeology and art history, Volume 1, Verlag der Fachvereine, 1990, p. 253
  21. ↑ Martin Blümcke: Almost 150 Years of the Capuchin Monastery in Laufenburg, catalog of the exhibition "Built Faith", Laufenburg May 16, 2010 - April 25, 2011, p. 7.
  22. ^ Peter Felder: Baroque sculpture of Switzerland, contributions to the history of art in Switzerland, Volume 6, Wiese Verlag, Basel and Stuttgart, 1988, p. 230, fig. P. 231. ISBN 3-909158-06-4
  23. ^ Beda Mayer: Kapuzinerkloster Laufenburg AG, in: Helvetia Franciscana, Volume 12, Issue 8, p. 252.
  24. ↑ See Walther Hümmerich: Kapuzinerarchitektur in den Rhenish Order Provinces, self-published by the Society for Middle Rhine Church History, Mainz 1967, p. 116
  25. ↑ True reporting by a Laufenburg Capuchin , printed in: JM Geissmann: Der Fricktaler , 1884, No. 59–60.