Gertrudenberg Monastery
The monastery Gertrudenberg is a former Benedictine - Abbey in Osnabrück (Lower Saxony). It was founded in the first half of the 12th century and existed until 1803. The Lower Saxony State Hospital Osnabrück , which was privatized in 2007, is located on the former monastery grounds . The former abbess house and the monastery church with a baroque high altar, the Gertrudenkirche, have been preserved. It is used as a simultaneous church.
history
prehistory
On the site of the later monastery, on a strategically important hill northeast of the old town of Osnabrück , a Carolingian Michael chapel was built as early as the end of the 8th century, during the Christianization by the Franks . It was probably on the site of a pre-Christian Saxon sanctuary.
Founding and building history
The Osnabrück bishop Benno II (tenure 1068-1088), who had founded the Benedictine monastery in Bad Iburg , wanted to found a Benedictine monastery consecrated to Saint Gertrude on the later Gertrudenberg . To do this, he wanted to bring canonesses from the Herzebrock Abbey to Osnabrück. However, it failed because of their resistance. They did not want to submit to the Benedictine rules . Nevertheless, a monastery church was built into which the stonework of the Michael's chapel from the 8th century was built. After the founding of the monastery failed, the church fell into disrepair.
The monastery was finally founded around 1140 under the bishop Udo von Steinfurt (1137–1141); his successor Philipp von Katzenelnbogen (1141–1173) enforced the rules of St. Benedict . Now a significantly enlarged church was built using the existing foundations and walls. This church was possibly destroyed in a military conflict in the early 13th century.
The monastery church was then built in its current form, which was completed between 1230 and 1235. The foundations and walls of the previous buildings were again used.
More monastery history
The monastery benefited from donations, such as that of a farm in Osterdamme near Damme in 1180 by Count Simon von Tecklenburg . The Osnabrück bishop Konrad I von Velber (1227-1239) also considered the monastery to dispose of properties in Lotte and the Düte farmers in what is now Westerkappeln , as the Osnabrück document book on October 18, 1272 shows. A farm in Ostercappeln also became the property of the monastery. Through this income and other economic ventures of the nuns, the monastery became wealthy, which was displeased by the Osnabrück citizens. It survived the Reformation unscathed.
Due to its strategically favorable location, the monastery was often fought over and damaged during armed conflicts. When Osnabrück was besieged by imperial troops in the Thirty Years War in 1636 , the monastery burned down. Therefore, apart from the church, there are no more older monastery buildings today. The reconstruction was completed in 1658. The abbess's house built in 1767 with two storeys and a hip roof has been preserved, as has the older west wing, which was rebuilt in 1765. The oldest monastery building is the cloister from the 12th century. The gate house dates from 1709.
The monastery was abolished in 1803 after the monasteries in the areas that fell to France were secularized in accordance with the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss . The monastery facility was subsequently sold.
The former monastery grounds after 1803
After the abolition of the monastery, the buildings were used as an armory until 1849 and then as a military hospital . The Kingdom of Hanover had the “Provincial Insane Asylum” built on the site in 1861, which was opened in 1868 for 200 patients. During this time, the former monastery church was also used for the institution, for which it was furnished in a neo-Gothic style.
During the Second World War , the former monastery buildings were badly damaged by bombs. During the reconstruction from 1949, attempts were made to approximate the original state of the 13th century and orientated towards the Marienfeld monastery church , which survived the war without damage.
The site has been open to the public since 1970. The former abbess house is partly used as a café. In today's clinic and the Gertrudenkirche there is a Protestant and a Catholic clergyman. The old Catholic parish in Osnabrück held services in the church until it moved to Bonnuskirche at the end of 2002. The church is only open during services.
Today the street names Klosterstraße , Gertrudenstraße and Nonnenpfad remind of the monastery on Gertrudenberg .
The monastery church
architecture
The floor plan of the Gertrudenkirche in its current form essentially reflects the state of construction in the 13th century. The church is a Romanesque hall building made of exposed stone . It consists of a single-nave , two-bay nave , a single - bay, rectangular choir and a west tower.
In the south of the eastern Langschiffjoch there is a one-yoke transverse arm, to which the baroque abbess house was built. There used to be a passage there through which the abbess could directly enter her gallery in the cross arm.
The choir comes from the previous building from the 12th century. On its south side, two pilaster strips can be seen, which consist of the ashlar stones used at the time. The cloister , which was built over by a building from the Baroque period and adjoins the nave to the north, also comes from the previous building .
Romanesque portals are located on the east side of the transverse arm (today's main entrance) and on the north side of the western yoke (to the cloister). In addition to round-arched, Romanesque windows, there are also ogive, Gothic windows that were installed during a renovation in 1482. The late Gothic chapel on the north side of the choir, which today serves as the sacristy, also dates from the 15th century . A covered corridor is connected to it, which runs parallel to the nave up to the cloister.
Today, like the entire church, the tower is covered by a simple gable roof made of tiles . An earlier octagonal baroque tent roof of the tower was destroyed in the Second World War.
Interior
The east side of the choir is covered by a two-storey baroque high altar, which was created by the regional sculptor Thomas Simon Jöllemann (* 1670). It was ordered in 1717 and delivered in 1729. After the secularization, the altar, like many other furnishings, was sold, came to the St. Laurentius Church in Neuenkirchen in 1815 and from there to the Hannover Provincial Museum . After a thorough restoration, it has been back in its original location in the Gertrudenkirche since 1980. It is the only high altar from the Baroque period preserved in Osnabrück.
Tower and western nave yoke from the southwest
Transverse arm and choir from the southeast
Works of art
In the area of the former monastery there are a number of works of art from the 20th century. They include two bronze sculptures by the Schleswig-Holstein-based sculptor Frauke Wehberg (* 1940). The bronze sculpture dove of peace (1986) stands at the entrance to the monastery church. Her sculpture Lily (1986) can be found on the southern front of the abbess house . The Schäfer an der Tränke fountain (1983), also made of bronze, next to the monastery church, was designed by Hans Gerd Ruwe .
Frauke Wehberg: Lily (1986)
Frauke Wehberg: Dove of Peace (1986)
Hans Gerd Ruwe: Shepherd at the Tränke (1983)
literature
- Georg Dehio (Ed.): Handbook of German Art Monuments , Volume 2: Bremen / Lower Saxony, Neubearb., Munich 1992, ISBN 3-422-03022-0
- Gerd-Ulrich Piesch: Monasteries and monasteries in the Osnabrücker Land , Regensburg 2006, ISBN 3-7954-1737-6
- Hermann Poppe-Marquard : Osnabrück Church Chronicle. Building history and works of art of all Osnabrück churches of the major denominations , Osnabrück approx. 1990, ISBN 3-88926-890-0
Web links
Individual evidence
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^ Old Catholic Church. In: evlka.de. April 9, 2000, archived from the original on December 12, 2000 ; accessed on January 25, 2020 . Old Catholics Hanover Lower Saxony. (No longer available online.) In: alt-katholisch-hannover.de. Formerly in the original ; accessed on January 25, 2020 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )
- ^ City of Osnabrück, the Lord Mayor, Department of Culture, Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche (Ed.): Art in public space . Osnabrück 2007
Coordinates: 52 ° 17 ′ 0.5 ″ N , 8 ° 2 ′ 51 ″ E