Fraubrunnen Monastery
The nun fountain is a former Cistercian - Abbey in Fraubrunnen , in the Swiss canton of Bern , approximately 16 km north-northeast of the city of Bern . It is the seat of the district administration and a monument of regional importance.
history
Count Hartmann IV the Elder and Hartmann V the Younger from Kyburg left their territory in the area of the former settlement of Mülinen to the Cistercian order, who founded the women's monastery Fons beatae Mariae (Fountain of St. Mary) in 1246 . The monastery quickly acquired rich property through various donations and acquisitions. The Kyburger, from whom Fraubrunnen had taken over the coat of arms, served as castvögte of the monastery.
The monastery buildings were devastated by fire as early as 1280. After the reconstruction, the Fraubrunnen monastery experienced a cultural and economic heyday and rose (along with Königsfelden ) to become the most important and richest women's monastery in the Swiss plateau. The monastery estates included the localities in the vicinity with Grafenried , Zauggenried , Büren zum Hof , Limpach and Bittwil (near Rapperswil (BE) ). In addition, the monastery Rebberge on Lake Biel owned various other goods and houses in the cities of Burgdorf , Bern and Solothurn . Most of the nuns came from these cities.
In 1375 the Fraubrunnen Abbey was attacked by the Guglers who temporarily quartered here. On December 26th of the same year, a Bernese troop attacked the Guglers, defeated them on the Tafelenfeld north of the village and drove them out of Fraubrunnen. The monastery and parts of the village went up in flames during this battle. One of the earliest inscription monuments in the canton of Bern, made in 1475, commemorates the event. In the period that followed, the monastery recovered only slowly from the damage it had suffered. It came about in 1420 after the Kyburgs died out, depending on Bern, which tried to introduce reforms in monastic life, especially towards the end of the 15th century.
With the introduction of the Reformation , the monastery was secularized in 1528. The former monastery properties were converted to the Landvogtei Fraubrunnen, which was subordinate to the Zollikofen district court . Part of the monastery building with the church was demolished in 1535, which resulted in today's idiosyncratic angle hook shape from the south and west wings. The remaining part with the cloister was converted into a castle and from then on served as the seat of the governor until the castle was looted in 1798 after the defeat by the French.
Today two wings of the former monastery are preserved. They still have the basic structure of the monastery, which was rebuilt after the fire in 1280, but were rebuilt into a castle in the 16th century and underwent a further redesign to today's baroque castle in the 18th century . Today Fraubrunnen is a grown, baroque overformed monument on a monastic-medieval basic structure. It contains numerous particularly valuable elements such as early Gothic windowing, medieval brick associations and roof trusses and good furnishings from the 17th and 18th centuries.
List of the abbesses of Fraubrunnen
| abbess | from | to | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adelheid | before 1280 | before 1280 | |
| Elsebetha | 1280 | 1280 | |
| Berchta | 1285 | 1285 | |
| Geppa | 1293 | 1293 | |
| Jordana de Pont | 1296 | 1302 | |
| Ita von Grünenberg | 1303, 1305, ... | 1318 | entered the convent as a nun around 1291, was not abbess for about ten years |
| The courage of holding | 1307 | 1312 | |
| Clementa von Schwertschwendi | 1313, ... | 1321 | |
| Margareta von Hasle | 1324, ... | 1349 | |
| Judenta from Buchegg | 1326, ... | 1348 | |
| Margareta von Rormoos | 1352, ... | 1364 | |
| Anna von Deitingen | 1359 | 1359 | |
| Clara von Sumiswald | 1364, ... | 1379 | |
| Margareta von Signau | 1369 | 1370 | |
| Beatrix von Grünenberg | 1378 | 1380 | |
| Johanna von Möringen | 1383 | 1383 | |
| Anna Schauland | 1386, ... | 1401 | |
| Anastasia of Burgistein | 1392, ... | 1409 | |
| Adelheid von Erlach | 1412 | 1454 | |
| Margareta Lisser | 1468 | 1468 | |
| Katharina Hoffmann | 1472 | 1506 | |
| Margaretha from Balmoos | 1509 | 1525 | resigned from her position in the face of the Reformation movement, married the last prior of the preaching monks of Bern and died childless in 1543 |
| Catherine | 1525 | 1528 |
literature
- Jürg Leuzinger: The Cistercian monastery Fraubrunnen, From the foundation to the Reformation 1246–1528 . In: Europäische Hochschulschriften, Series III: History and its auxiliary sciences . tape 1028 . Peter Lang, Bern 2008, ISBN 978-3-03911-142-8 (dissertation 2004 University of Bern).
Text and images are partly taken from the public domain ( Art. 5 URG ) divestment concept of October 26, 2007 of the Office for Land and Buildings of the Canton of Bern, p. 13.
See also
Web links
Coordinates: 47 ° 5 '5.52' N , 7 ° 31 '35.68 " O ; CH1903: six hundred and six thousand six hundred seventy-eight / 214877