Koenigsfelden

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Plant from the south
Plaque on the in the Battle of Sempach in 1386 killed and buried in Königsfelden nobles

Königsfelden is a former double monastery of the Poor Clares and Franciscans in the municipality of Windisch in the Swiss canton of Aargau . It was founded in 1309 by the Habsburgs and secularized after the Reformation in 1528. The building complex then served as the residence of the Bernese bailiffs, and a psychiatric clinic has been located here since 1868 . The church has been part of the Aargau Museum since 2009 . The stained glass cycle, which dates back to the 14th century, is considered to be the most important in Switzerland with the glazing of the choir in the Bern Cathedral .

history

Königsfelden Monastery in 1669
Königsfelden in Christoph Silberysen's chronicle . In the background the city of Brugg .
Historical aerial photo by Werner Friedli from 1949. Former monastery building and church

The monastery was built on the initiative of the Habsburgs , whose headquarters are about two kilometers southwest of Windisch. On May 1, 1308, King Albrecht I was murdered by his nephew, Duke Johann von Schwaben , not far from the Reuss crossing near Windisch . To commemorate this family tragedy, the king's widow Elisabeth von Görz-Tirol founded a Poor Clare monastery called Königsfelden. A small Franciscan convent, which was responsible for pastoral care, was attached to the Poor Clare Monastery from the start. The first Franciscan Brothers moved in in 1311, the nuns followed in the following year. The Königsfeld Chronicle reports that finds were made during the construction of the monastery. The legionary camp of Vindonissa was once located here .

Albrecht's daughter Agnes of Hungary , widow of the Hungarian King Andreas III , who died in 1301 . , lived in Königsfelden from 1317. Thanks to extensive land purchases and economic skills, the monastery flourished. On August 22, 1344 Pope Clement VI granted her . the privilege to visit the monastery as often as she wanted and to build a house on the monastery. In 1397, the Habsburg dukes gave the monastery its own office with all associated rights of rule. After her death in 1364, a gradual decline began.

With the conquest of western Aargau by the city ​​and republic of Bern , the connection to the donor house was lost. After the introduction of the Reformation in 1528, the monastery was closed. The initiative for the dissolution came from the nuns of the monastery.

The building complex underwent numerous renovations and served as the official residence of the Bernese governors of the Königsfelden office. A court master took over the administration of the former monastery property. In 1804 the former monastery came into the possession of the Canton of Aargau, which had been founded the year before. From 1868 to 1872 it was converted into a cantonal sanatorium, a psychiatric clinic . A large part of the Franciscan convent was demolished.

Well-known abbesses

  • around 1313 Hedwiga von Kuntzlau
  • 1318–1324 Guta von Bachenstein
  • 1329 Benigna von Bachenstein
  • around 1330–1340 Agnes von Brandis? (It cannot have been Agnes of Hungary, as is generally assumed, since, according to Gerbert, she herself never joined the order and took the veil ). It is possible that the abbess of the Säckingen monastery was at times also the abbess of the Königsfelden monastery. At the same time, Agnes von Brandis was abbess of Säckingen. As its predecessor, the nobility of Uhlingen is named there until 1330.
  • around 1334 Adelheid I.
  • around 1355 Elisabeth I of Leiningen? (Liebenau sees this as a mistake for the year 1455)
  • around 1371 Anna I of Goldenberg
  • 1374–1383 Irmengard von Hohenberg
  • around 1405 Adelheid II von Hallwyl
  • 1406–1408 Margaretha I of Wachingen
  • 1411–1415 Margaretha II of Grünenberg
  • 1416–1456 Elisabeth II of Leiningen
  • around 1456 Ursula von Mirlingen
  • around 1459 Eva von Erpach
  • around 1471 Osanna Jäger
  • 1472–1492 Apollonia von Hohenberg
  • 1497–1506 Anna II von Stein
  • 1511–1513 Emerita lollipops
  • 1516–1528 Katherina von Waldburg

Clinic directors

  • 1872–1891 Edmund Schaufelbüel
  • 1891–1902 Adolf Weibel
  • 1902–1920 Leopold Frölich
  • 1920–1944 Arthur Kielholz
  • 1944–1970 Peter Mohr
  • 1970–1990 Fritz Gnirss

The monastery complex

Cloister

When the Königsfelden Monastery was founded, the deed of foundation stipulated that two convents would be located on the site. This is how the double monastery was created. The church was originally framed by a convent on both sides: to the north was the Franciscan convent, of which only the so-called archival vault - the actual purpose of the room is still unknown - escaped demolition in 1870. Wall paintings with the fallen knights from the battle of Sempach in 1386 can be seen in it. These representations were the models for the wooden panel made in the 17th century, which is located in the nave of the monastery church. The remaining parts of the Franciscan monastery are marked by stone slabs set into the floor.

To the south there are still parts of the nunnery, for example the cloister . The surrounding buildings in their current extent only give an approximate impression of the former large monastery buildings on this side. On the way back to the church, the path leads through a former farmyard with various parts of the building. These buildings were rebuilt or heavily redesigned during the Bernese era, namely the Hofmeisterei with its striking stair tower and Renaissance portal. The whole area to the west of the church facade was surrounded by farm buildings from the mighty Königsfelden monastery in the Middle Ages.

Former Hofmeisterei

Franciscan monastery in Königsfelden

To the west of the small farm yard of the former monastery is the former Hofmeisterei, an attached, five-tiered late Gothic wing from the 15th / 16th. Century.

building

The church, the archive and the treasure vault of the Franciscan monastery, the Bernese court master's office in late Gothic style with a Renaissance portal and parts of the former Poor Clare monastery have been preserved from the extensive complex with the former monastery park.

The monastery church was built between 1310 and 1330 and is one of the main works of mendicant order architecture in Switzerland. After the Bernese provincial bailiffs had temporarily misused the nave of the monastery church as a grain store, the building was extensively restored in 1891/93. During renewed restoration work in 1983/86 by architect Walter Moser in cooperation with the monument protection, the rood screen between the nave and the choir was reconstructed. In the central nave there is a marble cenotaph above the former crypt , which served as the burial place of the Habsburgs until 1770 , when the celebratory transfer of the highest corpses, imperial-royal-ducal-Austrian, to the monastery of St. Blasien took place.

Stained glass window

description

The largely original stained glass cycle in the choir , probably created between 1330 and 1340 , is one of the most important achievements of European Gothic stained glass . A workshop with stylistic influences from Alsace and the Lake Constance region that cannot be documented in a document was the creator of the outstanding works of art (see also: Master of Königsfelden ). The stained glass was donated by the relatives of the German King Albrecht, who was murdered in 1308 . The representations of the donors are partially still present in the choir windows and testify to the importance of Königsfeld for the House of Habsburg.

Despite some losses on the south side, the image program of the windows has been almost completely preserved. In the apex of the choir the Passion of Christ is depicted, flanked by the windows of the Incarnation of Christ and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ . The next pair of windows shows the forerunner John the Baptist (together with St. Catherine ) and the successor Paul (with Mary ). The third pair of windows is dedicated to the apostles . The following two pairs of windows are dedicated to saints to whom the order or the founding family had a special relationship: Francis , Nicholas , Anna and Clare . In addition to the choir, the nave of the former monastery church also contains significant remains of ornamental glazing and a dynastic cycle with members of the Habsburg dynasty from four centuries.

Restorations

After the dissolution of the monastery, the stained glass began to gradually decay. The windows lost parts of their original glazing as a result of the weather and vandalism, among other things. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the resulting gaps in the choir were filled with glass paintings from the nave windows, which had become dispensable after the nave was converted into a granary . Between 1896 and 1900, the glass paintings were extensively renewed and supplemented by the Zurich glass painter Richard Arthur Nüscheler. The main aim of this restoration was to restore as much as possible the original concept of the choir windows. All windows were re-leaded and missing parts in the preserved image fields were recreated. In the windows on the south side of the choir, which had lost most of their original fields, only the original composition was reconstructed and for the most part no visual additions were made.

In keeping with the spirit of the times, Nüscheler's restoration was carried out in the style of historicism . Unlike today, where attempts are made to preserve what is found, the aim of the restorers of historicism was to restore a presumed original state, even if it may never have existed in this way. Nüscheler's sometimes deep interventions in the original substance disturb and falsify parts of the stained glass in Königsfelden today. Another example of this restoration practice is the stained glass in the minster of Freiburg im Breisgau , which has been irreparably altered in a similar manner. During the last restoration of the windows in 1987–2002 by the restorers Fritz J. Dold and Urs Wohlgemuth, the condition that Richard Arthur Nüscheler had created around 1900 was largely respected.

  • Francis and Apostle Windows

  • John and Catherine windows, the Incarnation of Christ and Passion windows

  • Habsburg hereditary burial, black marble cenotaph, around 1320

  • Habsburg crypt

Monastery barn

Königsfelden monastery barn

The monastery barn, which was built in 1744 and is the most powerful of its kind in the canton, is a reminder of the former economic status of Königsfelden as the richest Bernese court estate administration. Although it took some modernization, it has essentially retained its original substance.

literature

  • Theodor von Liebenau: History of the Königsfelden Monastery. Lucerne 1868.
  • Conrad Ferdinand Meyer : The gentle abolition of the monastery. around 1876 (fragment of a novella)
  • Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz: The medieval glass paintings of the former monastery church in Königsfelden. (= Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Switzerland. Volume 2). Stämpfli, Bern 2008, ISBN 978-3-7272-1118-8 .
  • Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz: The Königsfelden monastery. (= Swiss Art Guide . No. 900, Series 90). Edited by the Society for Swiss Art History . GSK, Bern 2011, ISBN 978-3-03797-017-1 .
  • Simon Teuscher, Claudia Moddelmog (ed.): Königsfelden. Regicide, monastery, clinic. here + now, Baden 2012, ISBN 978-3-03919-259-5 .
  • Lea Gafner: The nun is dancing. Cosmos Verlag, Muri 2015, ISBN 978-3-305-00457-7 . (Historical novel about the abolition of the monastery)
  • Canton of Aargau: Department of Education, Culture and Sport

Web links

Commons : Kloster Königsfelden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Theodor von Liebenau: History of the Königsfelden monastery. Lucerne 1868, pp. 51–52. queried on August 22, 2009.
  2. ↑ Ralf Kaminski: Forbidden love behind monastery walls. In: Migros Magazin. Zurich September 11, 2017, p. 32.
  3. ↑ a b Theodor von Liebenau: History of the Königsfelden Monastery. 1868, p. 43 ( limited preview in Google Book Search, accessed October 17, 2016.)
  4. ↑ Martin Gerbert: Crypta San Blasiana ... San-Blasianis 1785.
  5. ^ A b Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Friedrich von Wyss, Georg von Wyss: Letters from 1855 to 1897 (= CF Meyer's correspondence. Volume 3). Benteli, Bern 2004, p. 337.
  6. ^ Hans Wysling, Elisabeth Lott-Büttiker: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer 1825–1898. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1998, p. 455.
  7. ↑ a b c The Königsfelden Collection , website of the research project “Preserving special cultural assets”, accessed on July 1, 2013.

Coordinates: 47 ° 28 '49.2 "  N , 8 ° 13' 4.6"  E ; CH1903:  658 741  /  259132