Carmelite Monastery Heidelberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carmelite Church Heidelberg, 1747

The Carmelite Monastery Heidelberg was a convent of the Carmelites , with a church and monastery building, in Heidelberg . The church, which is no longer preserved, served, among other things, as the burial place of the Wittelsbach rulers .

history

The monastery was located in the area of ​​today's Friesenberg Street, at the eastern end of the city. There are still some overbuilt remains of the monastery building in the Friesenberg 1a property, including the refectory .

Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz intended to settle the shoed Carmelites from Weinheim in the city as part of his policy of re-Catholicization . His sister, Eleonore Magdalene von Pfalz-Neuburg , preferred to have the Discalced Carmelites from Vienna , whom she valued, in Heidelberg . The elector finally agreed to this wish. In 1701 the order received the ruins of the Jakobskirche on Friesenberg. It was founded in the Middle Ages by Elector Ruprecht I ; Rebuilt in 1688, but burned down again by the French in 1693.

Carmelite Monastery Heidelberg, with rear view of the church, 1747

In March 1702 the first Discalceates arrived in Heidelberg. They came from the Augsburg monastery and had the church rebuilt by 1713. The consecration was made in 1724 by the auxiliary bishop of Worms, Johann Baptist Gegg . In November 1718 the foundation stone for the monastery buildings was laid. This was built by Br. Dominicus a S. Euphrosina (family name Schorn), who had built the monastery of the Discalced Carmelite Sisters at the Trinity Church in Munich between 1711 and 1714 . The convent building was changed or expanded around 1730 and again around 1760. The church received a St. High altar consecrated to Joseph , and in 1753 also an altar of Mary.

Since 1721 there was a brotherhood of Joseph at the monastery, whose members included the two electors Karl Philipp (1661–1742) and Karl Theodor (1724–1799) as well as many personalities of the Palatinate court and respected citizens of Heidelberg. This brotherhood survived the Heidelberg monastery for more than a hundred years. The special devotion to St. Joseph belongs to the order's own spirituality of the Discalced Carmelites. His appointment as patron saint of the Electoral Palatinate in 1753 goes back to the influence of the Heidelberg Carmelites and their Joseph Brotherhood.

Within the Carmelite Province of Cologne, the Heidelberg branch was the study convention from 1755 to 1787. Here the next generation of the order was trained in theology, philosophy and foreign languages. The spiritual elite of the Order Province was therefore sent to Heidelberg as teachers. The Carmelites also held the chairs for exegesis and oriental languages at the University of Heidelberg .

The monastery began to slowly decline from around 1780. The disdain for monastic life by the ideas of the Enlightenment led to problems with the offspring and to growing conflicts within the Heidelberg community. The Carmelite Thaddäus Anton Dereser , one of the leading figures of this trend , also gained influence there . At the end of the 1780s, the convent no longer accepted any novices . In the coalition wars there were serious disruptions in religious life, as the Austrians and their allies used the Heidelberg monastery as a supply store. Around 1800, recruits from the Palatinate were quartered. On March 31, 1803, Elector Max IV Joseph abolished the Heidelberg Convention. At that time there were still six brothers living there. One of them, Father Gregor Hertwig, wrote a chronicle of the monastery and also dealt critically with the circumstances of the dissolution.

The church, monastery and garden were auctioned for 11,000 guilders. The church was demolished in 1806/07, as was part of the convent building. From the latter, an angular building was preserved, which still exists today, redesigned. The demolition of the church tower was designed in 1809 as a public entertainment. The regional historian Johann Franz Capellini von Wickenburg (1677–1752) recorded views of the church and monastery as well as several grave inscriptions in the compilation Thesaurus Palatinus .

In 1724, the Electorate of the Palatinate and Heidelberg Oberamtmann Johann Wilhelm von Efferen donated an estate in Freinsheim to the convent near St. Maria in the Kupfergasse in order to found another convent of the Discalced Carmelites in Heidelberg; this project was later canceled due to government refusal. The Efferen couple bequeathed part of the proceeds from that Freinsheim estate to the Carmelite monastery in Heidelberg, whose fathers oversee the planned Carmelite monastery and where later spiritual masses were to be celebrated for them.

Burial place

Sarcophagus of Princess Elisabeth Auguste Sofie von der Pfalz († 1728), today St. Michaelskirche Munich, originally the crypt of the Carmelite Church in Heidelberg
Sarcophagus of Field Marshal Friedrich Michael von Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld († 1767), today St. Michael, Munich, originally the Carmelite Church in Heidelberg

The monastery church gained special importance as the burial place of the Wittelsbach family, and thus also of the nobles of the region and people from their environment. The Wittelsbach crypt was built under the church in 1735 and consecrated by Worms Bishop Franz Georg von Schönborn . A total of ten family members found their final resting place here, including Electress Elisabeth Auguste von Pfalz-Sulzbach († 1794), Field Marshal Friedrich Michael von Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld (1724–1767), and Princess Elisabeth Auguste Sofie von der Pfalz († 1728) and her husband Joseph Karl von Pfalz-Sulzbach († 1729). The latter founded the Loreto pilgrimage in Oggersheim and the former had the magnificent pilgrimage church of the Assumption built there. Other family members buried here included Princess Theresia Emanuela (1723–1743), the daughter of Prince Ferdinand Maria Innozenz of Bavaria and Theresia Benedicte of Bavaria (1725–1743), a daughter of Emperor Karl VII. After the abolition of the Heidelberg monastery, they were convicted all Wittelsbachers buried here in 1805 in St. Michael's Church in Munich .

The von Wiser and von Freudenberg families also had their own tombs under the nave of the church . Among other things, Imperial Count Franz Joseph von Wiser († 1755) and his wife Anna Lucia von Alten († 1726), as well as their son Carl Joseph von Wiser († 1770), who was married to the Protestant Countess Elisabeth Dorothea von Degenfeld through his romantic love affair , rested there -Schomberg became known. When the church was demolished, their grave monuments were moved to the grounds of Wiser Castle in Leutershausen on Bergstrasse , where they are still located today. In the general grave vault under the church, the dead had to be stacked in coffins due to lack of space. When the church was demolished in 1806 at least 200 corpses from the crypt were buried undignified in the monastery garden. For the Carmelites, the choice of burial site was also associated with the task of remembering the dead. On the one hand, this brought income in the form of fair grants , but also had a great influence on the fruitful pastoral work through personal bereavement support.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Hius: study guide , South West German publishing house, 1953, p 145; (Detail scan of the Jakobskirche)
  2. ^ Gabriele Dischinger: The former Carmelite monastery in Munich and its builder , in: Yearbook of the Association for Christian Art , Volume 10, 1978, pp. 19–32
  3. ^ Johann Friedrich Hautz: History of the University of Heidelberg , Heidelberg, 1862, p. 276; (Digital scan)
  4. ↑ Hans-Helmut Görtz: The builder of the Lambsheimer Jagdschloss , in: Heimat-Jahrbuch des Rheinpfalz-Kreis, Volume 30, (2014), pp. 110–118, ISBN 978-3-00-042960-6
  5. ^ Felix Joseph Lipowsky: Karl Theodor, Churfurst von Pfalz-Bayern , Sulzbach, 1828, p. 16, footnote 1; (Digital scan)
  6. ↑ Digital scan from the Thesaurus Palatinus, Volume 1
  7. ↑ Digital scan from the Thesaurus Palatinus, Volume 1
  8. ↑ Die Kunstdenkmäler Baden , Volume 10, 3, 1967, p. 277; (Detail scan) .

Coordinates: 49 ° 24 ′ 45.8 "  N , 8 ° 42 ′ 57.5"  E