Carmelite Monastery Bamberg
The monastery of St. Mary and St. Theodore on Kaulberg was an abbey of Cistercian nuns to 1553; from 1589 to 1802 it was and is again from 1902 the Carmelite monastery in Bamberg in Bavaria in the diocese of Bamberg .
history
According to tradition, Bamberg's first bishop Eberhard I of Bamberg is said to have founded a hospital for the sick and the poor on the hill opposite Bamberg Cathedral in 1030 and consecrated it to St. Theodor . In 1157 , Bishop Eberhard II von Bamberg, with the help of Count Palatine Gertrud, widow of Count Palatine Hermann von Höchstadt-Stahleck and sister of King Konrad III. to build the women's monastery of St. Maria and St. Theodor. When the monastery was founded, Bishop Eberhard II was primarily motivated by the fact that “our city, which is surrounded on all sides by bulwarks of canons and monks, also has consecrated virgins in its vicinity, the service of God in it and the Care for the poor and strangers leave nothing to be desired ”.
The reason for the foundation of the monastery was the conviction of Count Palatine Hermann von Höchstadt-Stahleck in 1156 to punish him for publicly carrying dogs for breach of the peace . This dishonor brought about a change of heart in the Count Palatine. He entered the Cistercian monastery in Ebrach , and at the same time his wife entered the Wechterswinkel monastery in Lower Franconia. After her husband's death in 1157, Gertrud determined her husband's possessions to build the St. Theodor monastery in Bamberg and moved to Bamberg with the noble nuns from Wechterswinkel. The nuns of St. Theodor, the so-called Theodoruses, initially lived according to the constitutions of the Cistercian Sisters , later according to those of the Benedictine Sisters .
The women's monastery was looted during the Peasants' War in 1525 and dissolved after the Second Margrave War in 1554. In 1589 the Carmelites who had previously resided in the monastery in the Au moved in . The convent was famous for its library, for which a separate library building was necessary in 1593. In 1675 it was redesigned. Between 1692 and 1702 Leonhard Dientzenhofer redesigned the monastery church in Baroque style . The west wing was rebuilt from 1737 and the convent buildings were rebuilt. In 1797 the spiers were renewed. The ceiling painting in Johann Anwander's library was created around 1755.
The Carmelite monastery was dissolved in 1803 in the course of secularization . The Bavarian military administration had all the pillars of the west wing torn out and replaced by a wall with windows. The real estates were auctioned, and church furnishings were sold to other churches. The buildings were used, among other things, as a hospital , schoolhouse and barracks . In 1902, shod Carmelites from Straubing acquired the monastery complex. From September 1, 1918 to 1989, the Carmelites supervised the Marianum boys' seminar. Since 1946 the Carmelites have supported the Theresianum (Bamberg) late professions with a humanistic grammar school, college and seminar.
The Church of St. Maria and St. Theodor
Romanesque parts of the old church have been preserved in the underground of this church. The only visible remnant is the so-called lion portal on the west side of the current church. It was planned with two towers, but only the one that exists today was fully built, the second remained as a tower stump until 1808.
The Bamberg bishop Hermann II (officiated from 1170 to 1177) found his final resting place in this church .
When Leonhard Dientzenhofer changed the baroque style from 1692 to 1702 , the church was fundamentally changed: the high altar that had previously stood in the east was placed in the west of the church. The lion portal lost its function as the main entrance and was walled up.
The east facade, now the entrance side of the church, received its artistic decoration from Leonhard Gollwitzer (also Goldwitzer). The sculpture Maria with child and the scapular is located above the main entrance , based on the picture Maria Hilf by Lucas Cranach. Carmelite saints are in the niches of the facade. The prophet Elias, the model of the order from the Old Testament, was chosen as the gable end.
After the monastery was abolished as a result of the secularization and the church was robbed of its furnishings, 100 years later the Order of the Carmelites of Straubing was able to repurchase the convent building including the church. The church was given a neo-baroque interior by the monastery's own cabinet-maker, Frater Alois Ehrlich . The interior of the church dates back to the period after 1902, except for the altar of the Holy Family and the pulpit. Altar and pulpit, both from the original inventory of this church, could be repurchased and reinstalled.
In 1808, the Bavarian master builder Ferdinand Freiherr von Hohenhausen had the unfinished tower of the church installed and the rubble used to fill Altenburger Strasse (today the square in front of the Zur Matern restaurant).
Around 1990, according to a plan from the beginning of the second bloom of the Carmelite monastery, a separate burial place was created in the rooms under the church. The tombs in the Bamberg cemetery were abandoned and the remains of those buried there were transferred to a collective grave in this crypt.
crypt
From the first southern side chapel one enters an underground, hall-like Gothic room. From here you can take steps to the tombs of the Carmelites. The following brothers rest in the middle room in sliding graves :
- Frater (Fr.) Erasmus Ring (* May 9, 1932 - August 25, 1989)
- Fr. Cornelius Hofmann (born November 15, 1929 - † November 10, 1990)
- Father (P.) Richard Schmidt (born February 9, 1951 - † December 17, 1992)
- P. Maria Reiner Hörl (April 1, 1933 - April 14, 1996)
- P. Wunibald Schönmann (born June 4, 1931 - † July 28, 1999)
- P. Maximilian Wagner (born June 2, 1929 - † May 16, 2000)
- P. Raimund Krempel (born June 24, 1912 - † December 27, 2000)
- P. Joseph Kotschner (born April 5, 1924 - † March 27, 2001)
- Father Benedikt Zweier (born January 15, 1910 - † August 13, 2001)
- Ms. Heinrich Denzler (born October 9, 1930 - † February 9, 2004)
- Ms. Ulrich Steinmüller (born February 6, 1962 - † April 26, 2004)
- P. Matthäus Hösler (* October 8, 1937; † April 23, 2009)
Further unoccupied graves are built in the back room. One of these sliding graves received the remains of the Carmelite members who had been buried in the Bamberg cemetery until this internal burial place was established.
Cloister
The cloister was built in the 14th century during the reign of Bamberg Bishop Lamprecht von Brunn , who as Chancellor Emperor Charles IV had close ties to the imperial court in Prague .
The cloister has a size of 25 by 35 meters and is characterized by its Romanesque arcade arches made of golden-brown iron sandstone , its column bases with corner spurs, the Romanesque capitals in chalice block form and the capital sculptures in the style between Romanesque and Gothic. At that time, the Romanesque architectural style was deliberately used to give the cloister a venerable appearance. The complex is one of the best preserved cloisters from the late Romanesque or early Gothic period.
Probably the lack of space made it necessary that around 1466 the east wing of the cloister was vaulted in order to create monastery living space there - more cheaply than with a new building. These and the later vaults were the first major intervention in the existing row of arcades. The statics for the upper floors had to be secured by walling in columns.
After the dissolution of the monastery and the conversion of the buildings into barracks, the western wing was stripped of its arcades and walled up with large blind arches.
Parts of these original columns and capitals were used in the construction of a romantic garden ruin in the garden of the banker Keilholz, while others ended up in private ownership and in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich.
The first enrichment by repatriation of capitals happened in 1917, when chaplain Dr. Georg Hofmann was able to identify the relics in the Keilholzschen Garten - embedded in an artificial ruin - as those from the cloister of the Carmelite monastery. The monastery bought these capitals back to enrich the cloister.
Around 1980, new fire regulations made it necessary to convert the monastery. The remaining blind arches were removed and new columns with raw and unworked capital stones were added, thus restoring the closed unity of the cloister. It was enriched by a number of sculptured old capitals that were issued on permanent loan by the Bavarian National Museum .
Plant, animal and human symbols are used in the sculptures. Depicted are Adam and Eve after the Fall , Abraham's sacrifice, the torment of Christ and the symbols of the four evangelists . Most of all, however, the allusion is to man's struggle between virtue and vice .
photos
Eagle and pig
Big-eared dog
cat
Aries
literature
- Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments: Inventory volumes on Bamberg
- Bruno Müller: The Bamberg Carmelite cloister . Photos by Ingeborg Limmer. 3rd, revised edition Königstein i. Ts. 1988 (= Langewiesche Bücherei), ISBN 3-7845-0182-6
Web links
- Carmelite Monastery Bamberg , basic data and history: St. Theodor in Bamberg - The monastery on Kaulberg in the database Monasteries in Bavaria in the House of Bavarian History
- The monastery today
- Foracheim: Carmelite Monastery Bamberg
- Photos from the cloister
- The organ of the St. Theodor monastery church in the organ database Organ index
Coordinates: 49 ° 53 ′ 18 ″ N , 10 ° 52 ′ 52 ″ E