Church of Our Lady (Adlersberg)
The Church of Our Lady in Adlersberg is a branch church of the Catholic parish Pettendorf . The church has its origins in a former Dominican convent , which existed on the Adlersberg near Regensburg for around 300 years from around 1274 . The church is dedicated to Our Lady and celebrates its patronage on August 15th.
history
Founding of the monastery and early days
Before the year 1262 a monastery was founded in Pettendorf, two kilometers away . This monastery was dedicated to St. Bartholomew and was destroyed during the imperial period of the interregnum between 1271 and 1274. Traditionally, the robber barons of the nearby Löweneck Castle are blamed for the destruction and pillage.
After the destruction, the monastery was moved to the Adlersberg, where from 1274 new convent buildings were erected. Ludwig the Strict is named as the founder of the monastery , who in 1276 “allowed the nuns of Weißenburg to move into the convent he established in Pettendorf”. More nuns were brought from the Heilig-Kreuz monastery in Regensburg . Even after it was moved to the Adlersberg, the monastery is still called "Pettendorf" or "Neu-Pettendorf" in all documents.
The monastery was supported by the Dominican Order , who founded one of the few monasteries in rural areas on the Adlersberg. As a mendicant order, the Dominicans were usually represented in cities. The foundation of the monastery coincides with the work of Albertus Magnus as Bishop of Regensburg , which suggests a connection with the election of the order. The convent was directed by a prioress, while the monastery was supervised by the Regensburg monastery of St. Blasius .
The buildings of the monastery are to put the beginning of the Gothic period . On the processed stones of the monastery church there are 30 stonemason's marks , which were also found on the Regensburg Cathedral and which prove the exchange of craftsmen between the construction sites. The interior of the church is similar to the Dominican Church of St. Blasius in Regensburg, which was built a few years earlier or at the same time , which suggests that the building was planned in parallel. The church is 45 meters long and eleven meters wide. The nave has a height of twelve meters in the interior and on the outer wall including the roof of 19.5 meters.
Between 1316 and 1323, the future Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian made extensive donations to the monastery and was therefore venerated as the second founder of the monastery. The Madonna and the important wall paintings were probably created around the year 1400. It is assumed that the works of art originate from the Wittelsbach family . It is noteworthy that the oldest documented figure of a Madonna with a protective cloak can be seen in the Adlersberg Church . The two donors, Duke Ludwig the Strict and Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian, can be found in other significant frescoes.
The monastery was mainly supported by the local landed gentry and patrician families from the nearby city of Regensburg . Among the prioresses of the monastery there are daughters of well-known families such as the Paulsdorfern , Portnern, Nabburgern, Auer von Brennberg, Gumprecht or Ingolstädter. The ownership of the monastery was mainly limited to the area around Pettendorf. In addition to farming, the monastery also ran a brewery on the Adlersberg. The convent never excelled in any particular activity and evidently limited itself to its own administration.
Dissolution and follow-up time
In the course of the Landshut War of Succession , the monastery was seriously affected and as a result of the dispute no longer belonged to the Duchy of Bavaria from 1505 , but to the newly founded Principality of Pfalz-Neuburg . In the course of the conversion of the Prince of Pfalz-Neuburg, Ottheinrich , to the Protestant faith , the monastery was dissolved in 1542. At that time only the prioress and four nuns lived in the monastery , as even before that, in the course of the emergence of Martin Luther's theses, hardly any offspring could be found and the number of people leaving the convent increased. The dissolution commission noted that the facilities of the monastery were "poor" and only the most necessary utensils for holding the services were available.
During the Schmalkaldic War , the possessions of the princes of Palatinate-Neuburg were occupied by Emperor Charles V , who was considering leaving the former monastery on the Adersberg to his confessor, Pedro de Soto . However, the outcome of the war meant that the areas were taken back by the Prince of Pfalz-Neuburg and remained Protestant. At times, lived in the former convent buildings, the Protestant pastors of the parish Pettendorf, that particularly with the poet crown excellent Kaspar Brusch is mentioned. Brusch also made it possible for the Regensburg printer Hans Kohl to print politically explosive fonts in the convent buildings, which created the term “Adlersberger Winkeldruckerei” to denote the origin of the pamphlets.
After the Prince of Pfalz-Neuburg converted to the Catholic faith again in 1613, Catholic clergymen were appointed again in the parish of Pettendorf from 1617 onwards. In the following years the owners of the former monastery changed several times. Owners were among others the Regensburg monasteries Heilig-Kreuz and St. Blasius . The attempt to repopulate the monastery failed due to the effects of the Thirty Years' War , which also affected the Regensburg area. From 1676 the former Adlersberg Monastery belonged to the Cistercian Monastery of Kaisheim , which administered it as Hofmark through its subpriorate in the Pielenhofen Monastery .
From the time of the Counter Reformation , a small pilgrimage to the Adlersberg established itself . The "Mother of God of Forsaken" was worshiped as a miraculous image on the high altar of the former monastery church. The pilgrimage to the Adlersberg was one of a total of 44 pilgrimages in the Diocese of Regensburg. The catchment area of the pilgrimage was probably limited to the area around Regensburg. Votive tablets and other votive offerings in the church prove the importance of the pilgrimage. It is worth mentioning a votive tablet from 1736, which is still present today, with some treasures set in silver.
Secularization and worldly owners
In terms of church law, the monastery on the Adlersberg only went under with the secularization in 1803 - the property of the Imperial Monastery of Kaisheim was expropriated and passed to the Bavarian state. In 1809, after the battle of Regensburg , the former monastery complex was plundered first by retreating Austrian and later by advancing Napoleonic troops . In the period that followed, the owners changed again several times before the monastery economy passed into the possession of the Prößl family in 1838, who still run a brewery with an adjoining restaurant there to this day. The former monastery church was not included in the sale and remained in the possession of the Bavarian state. Between 1818 and 1838 the state negotiated the demolition of the monastery church, but this could be prevented through the efforts of the local pastor, Severin Fuchs, and his friend, the historian Joseph Rudolf Schuegraf .
present
Today the former monastery church is regularly used for church services by the parish of Pettendorf. In addition, the church is a popular wedding and baptismal church in the Regensburg area and the destination of various excursion and parish pilgrimages from the surrounding area. In 2004 the last major renovation was completed and a new organ was installed, which was consecrated in the same year by Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller .
The impressive church with part of its medieval frescoes and the altar, the entire monastery wall, the ruins of the old Zehentstadel and some parts of the monastery buildings are still preserved from the former monastery complex . According to the historian Alois Schmid , the complex is one of the most important art monuments of early Gothic and mendicant order architecture in Bavaria . Schmid also points out that a monastery complex from the Middle Ages has been preserved in its basic structure on the Adlersberg, the completeness of which can hardly be found anywhere else. He attributes this to the fact that the monastery tradition on the Adlersberg ended as early as the 16th century and construction work came to a standstill, which meant that the original condition of the complex was retained.
Stories and legends about the former monastery
The flight of the prioress to Nuremberg
The monastery on the Adlersberg near Pettendorf was never very important, although shortly before its dissolution in 1542 it emerged from a romance that is still told today by city guides in Regensburg.
The prioress there, Katharina Sinzenhofer, fled under adventurous circumstances with Father Moritz Fürst from the Regensburg monastery of St. Blasius to Fischbach near Nuremberg in 1525 to marry there. The monastery on the Adlersberg and St. Blasius have always traditionally been closely connected with each other, and in the course of time the two religious have apparently developed more than a pure working relationship. The decisive factor for this was probably the teachings of Martin Luther , which had also found their way into the monastery on the Adlersberg and in Regensburg in 1524/25.
However, both religious did not flee empty-handed, but instead took various valuables with them from their monasteries, which they were looking to sell in Nuremberg. The convent of St. Blaise then filed a complaint with the imperial city of Nuremberg. The following process ended with a settlement that obliged the former Father Moritz Fürst to pay a sum of money to the monastery.
In the period that followed, the Fürst-Sinzenhofer couple lived in various Franconian parishes, where Fürst worked as an Evangelical Lutheran pastor. After Sinzenhofer's flight, the monastery on the Adlersberg only had four nuns and was dissolved in 1542 when the princes of Palatinate-Neuburg converted to Protestantism.
Secret passages to the Danube and Regensburg
First the monastery was founded around 1260 in Pettendorf, two kilometers away, where according to the documents the "almost completed monastery complex was destroyed". Then the monastery was relocated to the Adlersberg, where the construction of new convent buildings began in 1274. The destruction of the first monastery complex in Pettendorf is traditionally attributed to the robber barons from Löweneck Castle .
According to legend, the nuns drew their lessons from this pillage and built secret passages as escape tunnels under the new monastery on the Adlersberg . Depending on tradition, the escape routes led to a place just outside the monastery, into the valley near Tremmelhausen or as far as the Danube near Kneiting . Another legend even speaks of the fact that one of the tunnels under the Danube led to the Niedermünster monastery in Regensburg, eight kilometers away .
One of these escape routes can still be seen a few meters to the left of the main entrance to the church. The entrance to this escape passage is now blocked by an iron grille and you can see the stairs there that lead down into the darkness. This escape tunnel can no longer be entered due to the risk of collapse and ends after about 50 meters at a wall. This tunnel, which is visible to everyone, was probably also the basis for the legends surrounding the local population about secret passages and escape tunnels under the former Adlersberg monastery. To date there is no evidence that there were actually any other escape tunnels, and the purpose of the existing corridor can no longer be determined.
literature
- Municipality of Pettendorf (ed.): Municipality of Pettendorf: Past and present , ISBN 978-3784711515 .
- Eva Schlotheuber (Ed.): Nuns, canons and mystics: Religious women's communities in southern Germany. Publications by the Max Planck Institute for History , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1st edition (January 23, 2008), ISBN 978-3525358917 .
Web links
- Homepage of the community Pettendorf - overview of the community history
- Homepage of the Catholic Parish Pettendorf - Explanations of the former Adlersberg monastery church
- Homepage of the brewery Prößl, Adlersberg - The history of the monastery on the Adlersberg
- Homepage of Oberpfalz Luftbild - Aerial view of the former Adlersberg monastery
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Archived copy ( memento of the original dated May 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) 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.
- ↑ http://www.adlersberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=8&Itemid=12
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated August 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Alois Schmid in "Nonnen, Kanonissen und Mystikerinnen", p. 139
- ↑ Kornmarkt stories ( memento from August 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on donaustrudl.de
Coordinates: 49 ° 2 ′ 36.3 " N , 12 ° 0 ′ 59.4" E