Berich Monastery

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Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′ 47 ″  N , 9 ° 2 ′ 2 ″  E

Map: Germany
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Berich Monastery​
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Germany
Former village of Berich in Edersee (when the low was in September 2008); in the center of the picture remains of the village church as a pile of stones, on the right on the slope remains of the wall of the former monastery

The former Berich monastery is now a ruin sunk in the dammed Edersee , which stood in the also submerged village of Berich in today's Waldeck-Frankenberg district in northern Hesse .

history

The monastery was founded in 1196 by the noble Engolf (Engelolph, Egelolf), Count von Battenberg, as a Benedictine monastery, in the same year it was given special protection by Archbishop Konrad I of Mainz and confirmed by King Philip in 1205 . The facility was located about 2.5 kilometers southwest of the Waldecker Schloss on a narrow hill above the north bank of the Eder . The Gothic monastery church was built in the 13th century.

Like all women's convents of the time, Berich also served primarily to care for unmarried daughters of the nobility and received donations for this purpose. For example, Count Siegfried I von Battenberg-Wittgenstein certified in 1243 that Tammo von Beltershausen had transferred three farms and a mill in Beltershausen to the Berich monastery to support his daughter . Three years earlier it was announced that the same Tammo had given the Berich monastery a farm in Mandern , and in 1255 he reached an agreement with the monastery about the payment of annual interest from Mandern. It is documented from the 14th century that the knight Otto Hund from Kirchberg gave the monastery half of three hooves in Heimarshausen on October 27, 1303 , and that Hermann and Otto Hund met with Provost Reginhard, the prioress Walburgis , on October 29, 1356 and the convent of the monastery agreed on the clearing and leasing of an area overgrown with thorn bushes near Altenstädt and Gerhardshausen.

In many monasteries, including Berich, there were general signs of deterioration in the 15th century due to aging, a decline in the number of new entrants and financial bottlenecks, and the Waldecker Grafenhaus tried to implement reforms. The abbot of the Bursfelde Monastery , Johannes von Hagen († 1469), on behalf of the Archbishop of Mainz and the Count of Waldeck, investigated the desolate conditions of the Berich Monastery in 1459. In 1463 there was a reform by the Böddeken monastery near Büren , the conversion into an Augustinian choir women`s monastery and the affiliation to the Windesheim congregation .

Repeal

After the Reformation was introduced in the county of Waldeck in 1526 , the monastery was closed in 1566 after the death of the last prioress , Anna von Weiters. It came into the possession of the Counts of Waldeck and was used as a dairy farm . From 1577 on, the high school built by the counts in Korbach received the income. In 1753 it was converted into a village, called Berich , in which ten colonist families were initially settled. The village, which had 134 inhabitants in 1905, had to be abandoned when the Edertalsperre was built (1908–1914), as it went down in the lake when the dam flooded.

church

The monastery church was used as a Protestant church from 1544. A plaque hanging today in the Protestant church in Neu-Berich attests to a church renovation in 1699. After 1766, Berich was a branch of Netze , a current part of the town of Waldeck . In the years 1912 to 1914, before the Edersee flooded in, the church was partly demolished and rebuilt in the new village in Neu-Berich in its old form, but shortened by two yokes . The stones around the windows and around the portal were carefully dismantled by the villagers, numbered and brought to Neu-Berich in ox and horse carts. This also happened to the doors, windows, floor, organ and altar. The cost of rebuilding amounted to 20,000 marks. The late Gothic St. Mary's altar in the old monastery church is now in the rebuilt church in Neu-Berich. It dates from around 1520. Its origin is difficult to prove; he probably belongs to the Waldeck school.

literature

  • Götz J. Pfeiffer: The tablet from 1699 from the Protestant church in Berich. References to Pietism in Waldeck under Count Christian Ludwig , in: Geschichtsblätter für Waldeck , Vol. 106, 2018, pp. 33-40.
  • Ulrich Ritzerfeld: The knight Tammo von Beltershausen, Berich Abbey and the founding of the city of Frankenberg an der Eder. A contribution to the history of the monastery and the Ludowingian ministry in Hesse in the middle of the 13th century , in: Enno Bünz, Stefan Tebruck, Helmut G. Walther (eds.), Religious Movements in the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Matthias Werner (publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia, Kleine Reihe 24 = series of publications of the Friedrich Christian Lesser Foundation 19), Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna, 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-20060-2 (p 173-211).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Engolf is often referred to in the literature as a "Graf von Battenberg", but a Graf von Battenberg with this name is not recorded. Count von Battenberg was Werner I. (Battenberg and Wittgenstein) at this time . HB Wenck suspects that Engolf / Egelolf could have been a Herr von Itter ; There were close relationships between the Lords of Itter and the Berich monastery in its early years: Hermann II von Itter was present as a witness when the Archbishop of Mainz took protection of the monastery, Konrad I von Itter was the cloister's guardian, and Konrad's daughter Adelheid was prioress in 1241. (Helfrich Bernhard Wenck: Hessische Landesgeschichte , vol. 2, Varrentrapp & Wenner, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1789, p. 1066. (at Google Books) )
  2. ↑ Documents for the Naumburg Office
  3. ↑ http://www.altenstaedt.de/Unser_Dorf/Chronik/Chronographie/14_-15__Jhdt_/14_-15__jhdt_.html
  4. ^ Förderverein Bericher Geschichte eV
  5. ↑ "Augustinian monastery Berich, Waldeck-Frankenberg district". Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  6. ↑ Götz J. Pfeiffer: The tablet from 1699 from the Protestant church in Berich. References to Pietism in Waldeck under Count Christian Ludwig . In: History sheets for Waldeck . tape 106 , 2018, p. 33-40 .

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