Adelberg Monastery

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Ulrich's Chapel in Adelberg Monastery

Kloster Adelberg was a 1178 built Prämonstratenser in Adelberg at Göppingen ( Baden-Württemberg ). For 300 years a canon and a women's choir existed side by side, in 1476 the canonesses had to move to Lauffen am Neckar .

In its early phase, the monastery of the Reform Order was intensively promoted by the Staufers , who initially also provided the bailiffs . Adelberg was in competition with the neighboring Benedictine monastery Lorch . From 1372 the convent finally came under Württemberg rule, which brought the abbey to an economic boom in the 15th century and made Adelberg one of the richest monasteries in the old duchy.

The monastery was badly damaged during the Peasants' War . The Reformation took place during the reconstruction period . After its final introduction, Adelberg was the seat of a Protestant monastery school from 1565 to 1629/1630 . Her most famous student was Johannes Kepler . Until 1810 it was the seat of a prelature of the Württemberg regional church. During this time, prominent Protestant theologians served as abbots and prelates, including Jakob Andreae , Johann Jakob Heinlin , Lucas Osiander the Elder , Johann Wolfgang Jäger and Balthasar Sprenger .

Although the complex with its preserved walling can still be easily grasped, only a few buildings from the monastic time have been preserved; the monastery church was demolished after the Reformation. The Ulrich chapel with its altar from the workshop of Nikolaus Weckmann and the associated panel paintings by Bartholomäus Zeitblom stand out artistically from what has been preserved.

location

The monastery complex is about 460  m above sea level. NN on a cleared island at the height of the eastern Schurwald between the valleys of the Rems in the north and the Fils in the south. From a geological point of view, the buildings stand on the edge of a loess- covered Lias slab, which offers relatively good conditions for arable farming .

The road 1147 Schorndorf - Rechberghausen (- Göppingen ) leads directly past the monastery. The development of the Adelberg village begins about 300 m north of the main entrance to the monastery grounds; The dam of the Herrenbach flood retention basin is located to the southwest in the Herrenbachtal, approx. 500 m away . The district town of Göppingen is about 7 kilometers to the southeast as the crow flies , Schorndorf in the Rems-Murr district 7 kilometers to the northwest, Stuttgart 30 kilometers to the west, and the Staufer “sister monastery” Lorch 9 kilometers to the northeast.

history

Before founding

In contrast to the neighboring valleys of Neckar , Fils and Rems, the virgin forest plateau was not permanently settled until relatively late. The oldest places probably emerged from the end of the 9th century, i.e. at the end of the middle expansion period.

A previous building of today's Ulrichs chapel was after the founding history of Adelberg, written in the middle of the 13th century, by a "Remigus", his wife "Bilifrida" and her children and supposedly by the Scottish Bishop Thiallinus von Sodor und Man on behalf of Pope Leo IX. consecrated on January 28, 1054. The names of the donors could indicate family relationships with the Counts of Comburg-Rothenburg. The person of the consecrating bishop appears interesting in that he is only mentioned in this one source. Engels sees Thiallinus - due to the bishop's possible experience in dealing with the Norwegian Vikings on his native Isle of Man - as a useful advisor for Leo for the papal action against the Normans in southern Italy. Because of his relationship to the early Staufers (via Hildegard von Egisheim ), Leo himself may have felt obliged to dedicate himself to this rather insignificant chapel foundation.

Foundation from the environment of the Staufer

Philipp von Schwaben ( miniature ) in the chronicle of the Weißenau monastery from around 1250. Cantonal Library St. Gallen (Vadiana Collection, Ms. 321, p. 40)

Located in the center of the Hohenstaufen sphere of influence and within sight of Hohenstaufen Castle, which towers ten kilometers east-southeast , the monastery was so closely connected with the Staufer dynasty in its early phase , who provided it with property, income and numerous rights that it was used as a house monastery by the Family can be considered. The Provost was 1178 in the Ulrich Chapel of Volknand of Staufen-Toggenburg , a relative Kaiser I. Friedrichs , donated and canons from the Roggenburg under the leadership of Propst Ulrich passed. Previously, a Cistercian attempt at founding a company - probably based on Schöntal - and one by the Rot monastery had failed. In 1181 the emperor confirmed the foundation of his ministerial and appointed the respective lord of Hohenstaufen Castle as bailiff ; the sub-governors were allowed to choose the provost and convent themselves. After Pope Alexander III. The monastery had also privileged in 1181, the Welfs participated in the person of Welf VI. 1185 with a yard in Fellbach on the equipment of the monastery.

In 1187 Friedrich and three of his sons were again present in Adelberg on the occasion of the altar consecration, which the Münster Bishop Hermann von Katzenelnbogen performed. A women's convention was also set up in this context. In 1202 the construction of the monastery church under the patronage of Saints Maria and Ulrich von Augsburg was completed - at the consecration, Philipp von Schwaben , a high-ranking Staufer, was again on site. The young Philipp was taught at times in the Adelberg monastery. In 1208, just eight days before her own death, his widow Irene bequeathed a court to the convent at Esslinger Obertor for the salvation of her murdered husband, from which the Adelberg Freihof later developed. In 1220, Emperor Friedrich II instructed the mayors of the Staufer-friendly cities of Esslingen and Gmünd to take the monastery under their protection, as it had been founded and equipped by his ancestors and he had taken it under his special protection.

Two documents pertaining to Adelberg from the Staufer era are also of great importance for the history of the town of Schwäbisch Hall : In 1189, the Sankt Georgen monastery in the Black Forest exchanged its Holzhausen estate for an Adelberg estate in Hochdorf for 23 pounds Heller (XXIII libras Hallensiuma monetę) - the first Mention of the Heller and the Hall mint. In 1203, Philip of Swabia released the monastery from all taxes from its salt pans in Hall with the oldest document on medieval salt production in the city.

Under the Württemberg bailiwick - heyday in the 15th century

Fruit box

After the Hohenstaufen dynasty died out, the monastery tried to achieve imperial status, which ultimately failed. In 1291 it submitted to the protection of the Counts of Württemberg , who initially explicitly waived the bailiwick and jurisdiction; as early as 1372, however, the counts finally obtained the bailiwick as an imperial pledge from Emperor Charles IV. The dispute over the sovereign rights of Württemberg continued until the second half of the 15th century. Nevertheless, Count Ulrich the Well-Beloved did not shy away from demanding reforms from the Adelberg Canons as part of the general endeavor to improve church discipline. The women's convent - Adelberg was the last double monastery in Württemberg to which Ulrich's daughter Katharina also belonged at the time - had to move to Lauffen am Neckar in 1476 , with Adelberg maintaining the disciplinary supervision of the women choirs.

Facade of the Adelberger Kornhaus in Göppingen, today the city ​​library

In 1361 a fire destroyed the entire complex. After the reconstruction, Adelberg experienced its heyday in the 15th century: in 1441 the monastery was given the status of an abbey ; Until the Reformation, the convent owned 10 villages, 19 hamlets, 37 farms and 22 mills with around 3500 inhabitants, as well as individual goods and rights in 114 places. In addition, he earned income from numerous incorporated parishes and extensive forest holdings. The goods and rights of the monastery were spatially concentrated essentially in the area of ​​today's districts of Esslingen , Göppingen and the Rems-Murr district, with the abbey nursing yards in Stuttgart , Göppingen , Heilbronn (until 1465), Esslingen, Kirchheim to handle its income , Waiblingen and Schorndorf entertained. After Hirsau , Maulbronn and Bebenhausen , Adelberg took fourth place among the Wuerttemberg male monasteries in terms of tax payments.

Around 1500, under Abbot Berthold Dürr, the new construction of both the Ulrich's Chapel, which was now included in the walling of the monastery district, and the church in Hundsholz (until 1851, today's place was called Adelberg Hundsholz, after which the community took over the name of the monastery). Up until this point in time, the chapel served as a parish church for a number of residents from different locations in Adelberg's possession, whose access to the monastery area was to be restricted with the construction of the church in the village. At the same time, the new Hundsholz building simplified complicated canonical dependencies. Berthold Dürr's successor, Leonhard Dürr, was responsible for the precious furnishings of the Ulrich Chapel . Leonhard Dürr also set up a sculptor's workshop in the monastery, which produced various Mount of Olives groups and epitaphs , etc. a. in Börtlingen , Süßen and in Adelberg itself.

The border between the dioceses of Augsburg and Constance ran between the abbey and Hundsholz . The place and the Ulrichskapelle (this as a branch of the Lorch parish church) were under canon law Augsburg, but the monastery grounds were located in Konstanz area, which resulted in difficult conditions when filling parish posts or visitations . The construction of the Hundsholz Church as a "compensation" for the inclusion of the chapel in the monastery wall made the situation easier, but even after the Reformation there were still mutual dependencies and payment obligations between Adelberg, Lorch and Hundsholz.

Peasants' War and Reformation

In the unrest of the poor Konrad the monastery was looted in 1514; in Bauernkrieg the plant by the Gaildorfer (or Limpurger) pile partially destroyed 1525th The convent found refuge in Schorndorf, for which it hosted a so-called Laetare meal for the city's magistrate until 1753, well into the Protestant era. Abbot Leonhard Dürr fled with monastery treasure in the opposite direction to Geislingen in Ulm .

The reconstruction began immediately, but the introduction of the Reformation from 1535 by Duke Ulrich prevented its completion. Abbot Leonhard Dürr, who was appointed visitor of his order in Swabia in 1529 , died in 1538 in the Roggenburg mother monastery. The Augsburg Interim and the Edict of Restitution once again temporarily brought Catholic clergy to Adelberg.

According to a stock book from 1537, the following buildings were on the monastery grounds: “the monastery, the church, two chapels, the refectory, the abbey, the inn, the Pfisterei, the infirmary , the kitchen, two bindhouses , the new bath house, the Maierbau , the dog stable, a smithy, a grain chute, several stables, barns, wash houses etc., the sheep garden, the women's garden, the men's garden and the Pfister garden ”. In 1540, the Romanesque monastery church and the dormitory were demolished on the orders of Duke Ulrich, parts of the demolition material were used to build the fortress in Schorndorf. Numerous other buildings were demolished well into the 19th century.

Convent school and monastery office

Adelberg Monastery, 1685

After the death of the last Catholic abbot, Ludwig Werner, Christoph Binder became the first Protestant prelate. Since 1565 Adelberg was an "Evangelical monastery" and the seat of a lower monastery school, the most famous student of which was Johannes Kepler (1584–1586). The monastery also became the seat of one of the four prelatures (or general superintendencies or generalates) in Württemberg and the administrative center of a monastery office.

After the Thirty Years War the monastery school was closed. The extensive monastery property was administered by the Adelberg Monastery Office, which was divided into the sub-offices of Hundsholz, Kaisersbach , Steinenberg and Zell - Altbach .

In 1807, most of the old monastery office in the Oberamt Schorndorf went up; the prelature was repealed in 1810. With that Adelberg had finally lost its central role in the region. In 1830 the municipality of Hundsholz bought the monastery property in the village and the monastery itself. In 1843 the monastery area was formally incorporated and the entire community took over the name Adelberg.

Todays use

Prelature with two memorial plaques for Johannes Kepler

The Ulrichskapelle serves the Adelberg parish as a place of worship and space for special events. On the square in front of the chapel, the theater performances of the Adelberg open-air theater, organized by the Adelberg Culture and Art Association, take place in summer . The monastery museum in the monastery villa informs interested visitors about the history of the monastery, the rooms on the ground floor of the villa are used for temporary exhibitions. The prelature building is privately owned and cannot be visited.

Today the monastery grounds form the district of Adelberg-Kloster in the municipality of Adelberg. In addition to the few buildings that date back to the monastic period, there are now numerous privately used buildings of more recent date on the area. The monastery has been an important sight on the Staufer road since 1977 .

Description of the facility and building

Staufer stele in front of the north main portal
On the southern monastery wall

Most of the monastery buildings, including the monastery church, were destroyed or - well into the 19th century - demolished. The best preserved part of the complex is the approx. 1100 meter long monastery wall , which almost completely encompasses the approximately 6 hectare site. Its oldest sections - which probably originated in the Hohenstaufen era - are on the east side of the facility.

Three gates and a gate gave access to the monastery; the north main portal is designed as a double entrance typical of Premonstratensian monasteries, which was given a baroque crown in 1744 . Since the beginning of the 1950s, the wall has been renovated by the municipality of Adelberg and the State Monuments Office. In front of the main portal is a Staufer column, inaugurated on October 17, 2008.

The prelature , an elongated stone building with half-timbered gables, was the seat of the Adelberg abbots and housed the monastery school after the Reformation. After a fire, today's building was built between 1681 and 1684. Heinrich Waibel took care of the stucco ceiling inside , whereby the 12 meter long ceiling relief depicting a scene from King David's life stands out artistically in the prelate's hall. From 1810 to 1966 the building was used as a Protestant rectory; today it is privately owned.

The fruit box flanked by two round towers that served as a monastery prison dates from 1481; the tithe barn was built in 1747. The monastery villa , which borders a herb garden , is used as an exhibition room.

Ulrich's Chapel (St. Maria, Ulrich and Katharina)

Ulrich's chapel , altar

After the first consecration described above in 1054, the Ulrich's Chapel fell into disrepair, so that a new building was necessary at the beginning of the 13th century, which the Augsburg Bishop Siegfried von Rechberg consecrated on March 20, 1227. The chapel then served as a place of worship for simple monastery subjects until the Hundsholz Church was built. The current building was built between 1501 and 1507 under the abbots Berthold and Leonhard Dürr and is today the only sacred and art-historical building in the monastery. While the monastery church of the canons was destroyed in the Peasants' War, the Ulrich chapel was spared - according to tradition, at the intercession of a farmer. The interior of the chapel has a single nave , flat-roofed nave and a rib-vaulted choir in ⅜-end with figurative consoles and keystones as well as simple tracery windows . The west tower in front was built in 1703, its hood in 1744. Wall paintings (around 1550) on the north side of the nave illustrate the history of the founding of the monastery.

The high altar - a winged altar created by Nikolaus Weckmann in 1511 - and the associated panel paintings by Bartholomäus Zeitblom, the most valuable pieces of equipment in the chapel, have remained almost unchanged at the original location. The shrine sculptures show the saints Ulrich von Augsburg, Cutubilla , Maria , Katharina and Liborius , the paintings on the inside of the Annunciation and Coronation , on the outside the adoration of Jesus and the Annunciation to the Shepherds and the Magi .

  • Altar shrine and wing paintings

  • Left panel

  • shrine

  • Right panel

literature

  • Royal statistical-topographical bureau (ed.): Description of the Oberamt Schorndorf. J. B. Müller's Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart 1851 ( full text online at the University and State Library in Düsseldorf ).
  • Max Müller: Adelberg Monastery, its art treasures, history and earlier design . Schorndorf 1898 ( digitized on Commons).
  • Max Miller , Gerhard Taddey (ed.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany . Volume 6: Baden-Württemberg (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 276). 2nd, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-520-27602-X .
  • Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments . Baden-Württemberg I. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-422-03024-7 .
  • On the history of the monastery and its possessions: Harald Drös: The inscriptions of the district of Göppingen ; in: German inscriptions online. The inscriptions of the German-speaking area in the Middle Ages and early modern times ; Interacademic project of the Academies of Sciences Göttingen, Mainz and North Rhine-Westphalia; Volume 41: District of Göppingen , Heidelberg 1997 - available see [1]
  • The German royal palaces. Volume 3.1: Baden-Württemberg. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-36520-9 .
  • Kirsten Fast, Joachim J. Halbekann (Ed.): Between heaven and earth. Monasteries and nursing homes in Esslingen. Michael Imhof, Petersberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86568-483-7 ; to the Adelberger Freihof pp. 307-310.
  • Stefanie Albus-Kötz: Of herb gardens, fields, gülten and chickens. Studies on the ownership and economic history of the Premonstratensian monastery in Adelberg in the Middle Ages (= writings on Southwest German regional studies 73). Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2014 ( corrections and additions by Klaus Graf ).
  • Protestant monasteries in Württemberg ; Magazine in the “Traces” series; ed. Evangelical Church in Württemberg, Ev. Oberkirchenrat; Stuttgart 2018, page 30

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Georg Dehio : Handbook of German Art Monuments . Baden-Württemberg I. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-422-03024-7 , pp. 2-3.
  2. ↑ a b Geographical information according to: State Office for Geoinformation and Rural Development Baden-Württemberg: TopMaps. Leisure maps 25th edition 2011 (DVD), Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-89021-795-6 .
  3. ↑ State Office for Geology, Raw Materials and Mining Baden-Württemberg: Geological map of the Swabian-Franconian Forest Nature Park 1:50,000. Freiburg im Breisgau 2001.
  4. ↑ Manfred Langhans: The Schurwald. Country and people then and now. 2nd edition, Kohlhammer , Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-17-005680-8 , pp. 52-73.
  5. ↑ Historia monasterii Adelbergensis . In: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Repetorium “Geschichtsources des Deutschen Mittelalter” .
  6. ↑ a b Odilo Engels : The royal tombs of the post-Sali period. In: Caspar Ehlers , Helmut Flachenecker (Hrsg.): Spiritual central places between liturgy and architecture, praise to God and rulers. Limburg and Speyer (=  German Royal Palaces, Volume 6). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-525-35309-7 , pp. 175-181.
  7. ^ Knut Görich: Friedrich Barbarossa: A biography. Munich 2011, p. 206. See in detail Walter Ziegler: Philipp, Adelberg and der Hohenstaufen. In: Philipp von Schwaben - A Staufer in the struggle for royal rule, ed. from the Society for Staufer History eV (Writings on Staufer History and Art 27), Göppingen 2008, pp. 62–121.
  8. ↑ Kirsten Fast, Joachim J. Halbekann (Ed.): Between heaven and earth. Monasteries and nursing homes in Esslingen. Michael Imhof, Petersberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86568-483-7 , p. 307.
  9. ^ Klaus Graf: A lost mandate from Frederick II in favor of the Adelberg Monastery. In: Journal for Württemberg State History. No. 43, 1984, pp. 407-414 ( full text online at FreiDok ).
  10. ↑ Wirtemberg document book . Volume II, No. 509. Stuttgart 1858, p. 330 ( digitized version , online edition ).
  11. ↑ Wirtemberg document book . Volume II, No. 516. Stuttgart 1858, p. 336 f. ( Digitized version , online edition ).
  12. ^ Joseph Zeller: The Adelberg Premonstratensian Monastery, the last Swabian double monastery, 1178 (1188) to 1476. In: Württemberg quarterly books for regional history. XXV. Year, 1916, pp. 107–162 ( full text online in the Internet Archive ).
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Runschke: The manorial rule of the Lorch monastery. Dissertation. Tübingen 2010 ( full text online at the University of Tübingen ).
  14. ↑ Royal statistical-topographical Bureau (ed.): Description of the Oberamt Schorndorf. J. B. Müller's Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart 1851, p. 155.
  15. ↑ Hans-Joachim Albinus: Johannes Kepler in and near the old Duchy of Württemberg. From Leonberg's Latin student to a founder of modern astronomy - on his 444th birthday. in: Schwäbische Heimat 66 (2015), pp. 459–467.
  16. ^ Critical appraisal of the museum: Reimund Waibel: Museums des Landes - Klostervilla Adelberg im Schurwald . In: Schwäbische Heimat, 47/2 (1996), pp. 172-179.
  17. ↑ Straße der Staufer on stauferstelen.de. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
  18. ↑ Adelberg 2008 on stauferstelen.net. Retrieved March 23, 2014.

Coordinates: 48 ° 45 ′ 26 "  N , 9 ° 35 ′ 51.3"  E