Engelthal Monastery (Wetterau)
Kloster Engelthal (lat. Abbatia BMV in Valle Angelorum ) is a Benedictine - Abbey of Beuron congregation in the town of Old Town in the Wetterau . From 1268 until the secularization in 1803 it was a Cistercian abbey and a nobility monastery .
history
Cistercian women
In 1268 the knights of Buches and the Friedberg burgrave Rupert von Carben donated the monastery and handed it over to the Cistercian Order . The founder Konrad von Büches lived in the monastery until his death in 1294, his grave slab has been preserved. Engelthal Monastery was under the control of the Cistercian Abbey of Arnsburg near Lich until it was abolished in 1803 .
In the Thirty Years' War the monastery was completely destroyed, the sisters of the monastery fled to Aschaffenburg in 1622 .
From 1666 to 1750 the monastery was rebuilt in the late Baroque style on the ruins of the old monastery complex. With a church, convent and farm buildings and a representative abbess building, the monastery essentially got its present form.
secularization
In 1803 Engelthal Abbey was secularized by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , the 24 nuns were sent back to their families, the last abbess died in Frankfurt in 1823. The abbey was given to the House of Leiningen-Westerburg-Neuleiningen as compensation for the loss of territories on the left bank of the Rhine . However, shortly afterwards they sold the new advertisement to the Count of Solms-Wildenfels .
The farm buildings subsequently became an agricultural estate. The hermitage and convent building were partially demolished. The church, which previously served as a Roman Catholic parish church, was retained.
But the territories of the Counts of Solms were mediatized with the Rhine Confederation Act as early as 1806 , when the Grand Duchy of Hesse joined the Rhine Confederation and received sovereignty over Engelthal. This divided the area into the Principality of Upper Hesse (from 1816: "Province of Upper Hesse") and the Altenstadt office . This happened with the restriction that the Counts of Solms were now protected as noblemen and also in their traditional sovereign rights in administration and jurisdiction . The Counts of Solms led this small territorial unit as "Amt Engelthal".
In the administrative reform of 1821, the state dissolved all offices and also separated jurisdiction and administration at the lower level . For the previously perceived by the offices administrative tasks were district districts created for the first-instance jurisdiction district courts. The administrative tasks of the former Engelthal office were transferred to the district of Vilbel and the jurisdiction to the Großkarben district court .
In 1836 the facility was sold to the Count of Solms-Laubach, in 1917 to the Barons Heyl zu Herrnsheim and in 1948 to a settlement company.
Benedictine women
The diocese of Mainz acquired the enclosure district in 1952. In 1962 the monastery buildings were repopulated by Benedictine nuns from the Abbey of the Holy Cross, Herstelle . As early as 1965, the monastery belonging to the Beuron Benedictine Congregation was elevated to the status of an abbey .
In addition to receiving and looking after guests, a restoration workshop for church art is an important area of work for the sisters.
In April 2010, a large new building was added to the monastery, which has been worked on since 2008. This new building implements important aspects of an ecological redesign of the energy supply, with geothermal heating playing the main role. It replaced the western and southern cloister wing as well as the small annex to the west of the church, which had to be demolished due to dilapidation.
- Abbesses
- Diethild Eickhoff 1965–1986
- Gabriele Cosack 1989-2002
- Elisabeth Kralemann, since 2003
literature
- Siegfried RCT Enders: Monument Topography Federal Republic of Germany , Department: Architectural Monuments in Hesse. Wetteraukreis I. Ed. By the State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse , Vieweg, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1982, ISBN 3-528-06231-2 , p. 29.
- Georg Ulrich Großmann : South Hesse. Art guide. Imhof, Petersberg 2004, ISBN 3-935590-66-0 , p. 122.
- Notker Hiegl OSB : Pastellorum in valle angelorum . (Christian Waymarks Volume 11), Beuroner Kunstverlag, Beuron 2018, ISBN 978-3-87071-363-8 .
- 750 years of Engelthal Abbey. Sermon and lecture by Abbot President Albert Schmidt and Sr. Dr. Michaela Pfeiffer. In: Cistercienser Chronik 126 (2019), pp. 5–16.
- Paschasia Stumpf OSB: From the history of Engelthal Abbey in Wetterau. For the 700th anniversary of the monastery . Edited by the Benedictine Abbey of Engelthal Monastery, Pallotinerdruck, Limburg an der Lahn 1968.
Web links
- Website of the Engelthal Monastery
- Entry to Engelthal Monastery on medals online
- The content of the inventory of the Cistercian convent Engelthal (PDF; 80 kB) 1340 to 18th century with partly Directory of Abbesses
- Cistercian convent Engelthal, Altenstadt community. Monasteries. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
Individual evidence
- ^ "Konrad von Buches 1294, Engelthal". Grave monuments in Hesse until 1650 (as of February 12, 2006). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS) ..
- ^ L. Ewald: Contributions to regional studies . In: Grand Ducal Central Office for State Statistics (ed.): Contributions to the statistics of the Grand Duchy of Hesse . Jonghaus, Darmstadt 1862, p. 56, no.964.
- ↑ Art. 24 Rhine Confederation Act .
- ^ Ordinance on the division of the country into districts and district courts of July 14, 1821 . In: Grand Ducal Hessian Government Gazette No. 33 of July 20, 1821, p. 403ff.
- ^ Ordinance on the division of the country into districts and district courts of July 14, 1821 . In: Grand Ducal Hessian Government Gazette No. 33 of July 20, 1821, p. 410.
- ^ Ordinance on the division of the country into districts and district courts of July 14, 1821 . In: Hessisches Regierungsblatt No. 33 of July 20, 1821, p. 411.
- ^ Cistercian convent Engelthal . In: LAGIS : Monasteries ; accessed on June 3, 2020.
- ^ Cistercian convent Engelthal . In: LAGIS : Monasteries ; accessed on June 3, 2020.
- ↑ Cardinal Lehmann blesses annex in Engelthal Monastery
Coordinates: 50 ° 16 ′ 57.4 " N , 8 ° 54 ′ 47.2" E