Carmelite Monastery Spangenberg

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Spangenberg, in the Topographia Hassiae by Matthäus Merian 1655; In the upper picture the former Carmelite monastery is on the far left; In the lower picture the roof turret of the Carmelite Church can be seen in the middle of the picture on the left of the high church tower of the town church

The Carmelite Monastery Spangenberg was a monastery of the Carmelite Order in the town of Spangenberg in the north Hessian Schwalm-Eder district . It was a set up in the 1350s Hospicium out, was in 1454 when the new monastery to Spangenberg called and was in 1527, after completed the year before the introduction of the Reformation in the land county Hessen lifted.

Founding history

In 1350 Hermann Cremer and his wife Aylhedis donated a house to the Carmelite monastery in Kassel in the southwest of the town of Spangenberg, which fell to the Landgraviate of Hesse that year, as a permanent hospice. By 1357 a sufficient number of friars were already permanently resident there, so that the Spangenberg monastery is assumed to have been founded in this year. However, the nuwe closter was only mentioned in 1454 . In the 15th century, the monastery was built piece by piece, including the 1486 completed church . The convent was able to enjoy a number of donations, including one from Henne von Bischofferode , who in 1470 gave him the so-called "Junkerhaus", a former castle man's seat , in Untergasse (today Untergasse 2), which is adjacent to the monastery property in the southeast , in which the monks then probably set up the first Spangenberg school. Special patrons of the monastery were Landgravine Anna († 1462) , who was later buried in the town church of St. John, and her son, Landgrave Ludwig II. In November 1470, appeals for donations for the construction of the monastery church were issued by the Prior General of the Order , Johannes Soreth († 1471), as well as from the landgrave chancellery of Ludwig II.

The attachment

The monastery was on the south side of today's Klosterstrasse, behind the former inn "Zur Stadt Frankfurt", which was operated until 1970. This building, now used as a residential building, stands on the site of the former monastery church, a Gothic hall church with only one aisle in the north along the street. The church was accessible to the community from this side.

Based on the description and reconstruction drawings published by Ernst Wenzel in 1932, a fairly accurate representation of the facility is possible. The monastery, which was laid out on an irregularly square floor plan , consisted of the church on the north side, two monastery buildings adjoining both ends in the west and east, parts of which are still preserved, and a wing that closes off the inner courtyard to the south, only through the attachment sites can be guessed at the other two wings.

The east wing, with a barrel vault under it, was divided on the ground floor by a long central wall into a long room and the non-vaulted cloister with four late Gothic, two-part tracery windows along the inner courtyard side. On the upper floor there were monk cells with much smaller rectangular windows. In the south wall was a very large, Gothic window with three lancets and above it fish bladders - and four-pass tracery , which probably belonged to a hall. The west wing, built parallel to the city wall, was already without a roof in 1932 and its four cloister windows had already been partially destroyed.

The main nave of the church had four bays , twice as wide as it was long, the choir, closed off by a choir apse at the five- eighth end in the east, had two slightly shorter bays. The aisle along the north side had four bays with a square floor plan. Typically for mendicant orders , the church did not have a tower , but only a roof turret .

Dissolution and end

Only 40 years after the completion of the church came the end of the monastery. When Landgrave Philip I introduced the Reformation in Hesse as a result of the Homberg Synod of 1526 , the Hessian monasteries were dissolved in 1527. The 40 monks living in the Spangenberg monastery at that time were compensated partly by monetary payments and partly by lifelong provision of natural produce after they had signed letters of renunciation in which they had to announce their conversion and admit their contempt for the monastic status.

The monastery buildings were taken over by the landgrave administration. The east wing initially served as a prison, the former monk cells were provided with heavy wooden doors and a hatch that could only be opened from the outside and were converted into prison cells . The church and the other wings of the monastery were used by the landgrave rent office opposite as granaries and barns , some of which were also rented to other users.

It remained so until October 8, 1888, when the church and the west wing, full of dry grain , burned down completely after arson and large parts of the rest of the complex were also destroyed. Only the east wing and the barn in the north of the west wing survived the disaster reasonably intact.

The former monastery barn on Klosterstrasse; to the left of the former inn "Zur Stadt Frankfurt" built on the foundations of the monastery church

The remaining buildings or building remnants and the entire property were transferred to private buyers in the following years, who gradually created the current house front on Klosterstraße through new buildings and extensions. The former east wing (Klosterstrasse 9) became a machine hall and workshop and has been in the same family without interruption since the beginning of the 20th century. The other part was bought by the local poet Adam Siebert in 1898, who had a stately half-timbered house (Klosterstrasse 13) built on the foundations of the destroyed monastery church and opened the restaurant "Zur Stadt Frankfurt" in it. His brother Heinrich Siebert later bought the property and ran the inn with its guest rooms until 1920. The house with the neighboring barn, which adjoins the former west wing of the monastery to the north and is still set back today, on Klosterstrasse, was bought in March In 1918 in the possession of Eckhardt Weisel, who ran the inn and hotel from 1920. His daughter Else and son-in-law Dieter Schaefer ran the business until 1970. The terrace garden behind the house is still framed by the high wall remains of the former side wings of the monastery with their Gothic tracery windows. In 2010 these walls were renovated with financial help from the State of Hesse.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Appeals for donations in November 1470 for the construction of the monastery, from Prior General Johannes Soreth and from the landgrave's office
  2. ↑ a b Andrea Brückmann, Judith Strecker: Ran to crumbling joints. In: Hessische / Niedersächsische Allgemeine . August 26, 2010, accessed August 18, 2020 .

literature

  • Ernst Wenzel: The Carmelite monastery at Spangenberg . In: Handbuch des Kreis Melsungen , Melsungen , 1932
  • Rolf Gießler: The Carmelite Monastery in Spangenberg . Spangenberg, 1981

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 6 ′ 59.2 "  N , 9 ° 39 ′ 53.3"  E