Gnadenberg Monastery
The Gnadenberg Monastery is a former monastery of the Birgittenordens (Order of the Redeemer) in the district of the same name in the municipality of Berg near Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate in Bavaria in the Diocese of Eichstätt .
location
The former monastery is located halfway up the mountain above the Schwarzachtal south of the state road St 2240 in the middle of the village at 421 m above sea level. NHN .
history
Gnadenberg was the first Birgitten monastery in southern Germany. It was founded in 1422 by Count Palatine Johann I von Neumarkt and his wife Katharina , daughter of Duke Wratislaw VII of Pomerania , at the place originally called Eichelberg. Katharina knew the order from the Vadstena monastery in Sweden , where she had spent her youth. In 1420 Pope Martin V granted permission to build a Birgitten monastery. The foundation letter of the Count Palatine is dated February 3, 1426. In 1430 the first monks came from the Paradiso monastery near Florence . The Birgitten monasteries were laid out as double monasteries by the founder of the order ; After the women's monastery was completed in 1435, the first nuns came to Gnadenberg with their first abbess Anna Svenson from the Maribo monastery in 1435.
Monastery gate
Monastery church inside, to the north
Monastery church inside, to the north
Monastery church inside, to the south
Inside the monastery church, towards the refectory
Epitaph of the Knight of Wildenstein
Remains of the sister monastery with the refectory
Remains of the sister monastery with today's parish church (right)
The consecration of an emergency church took place on July 15, 1438 by the Eichstätter Bishop Albrecht II. Von Hohenrechberg ; the construction of the monastery church did not begin until 1451. At the consecration of the monastery on July 11, 1451 by Bishop Johann III. von Eych had already returned to their homeland in 1438 thanks to the rapid recruitment of young children . Elisabeth Kniepantlin from Munich (1438–1451) was elected the second abbess; in the second half of the 15th century, Gnadenberg developed under the abbess Elisabeth Volkenstaller (1451–1471) into a leading monastery of the Birgit order.
The monastery church, according to the regulations of the Order of the Birgit, consisting of three naves of equal size and height, each with five vaulted yokes with an approximately square floor plan and an altar choir with 13 altars in the west, was covered in 1477-79, but was not yet vaulted when it was at Pentecost in 1483 was consecrated by Auxiliary Bishop Kilian von Eichstätt. In addition to the order building program, a gallery was built on the inner walls. The vaulting of the church took place in 1511-18, with reticulated vaults; at the same time the nurses' house was being built. The builders were all from Nuremberg, such as Master Jakob Grimm (construction plans and site management), Master Eucharius Gaßner (carpentry) and Hans Frommiller (arching); Albrecht Dürer had been commissioned to provide an expert opinion on the somewhat problematic, according to the chroniclers, enormous and artistic roof structure of the monastery church. The church had no tower, only a roof turret.
The monastery, the buildings of which were on both sides of the church (the brothers' wing in the south-east, which has now completely disappeared, the sister's wing in the north-west), received rich support from bourgeois families from the nearby imperial city of Nuremberg , whose daughters often entered the monastery. Especially the patrician dynasty of the Fürers stood out; Barbara Fürer was an abbess in the 16th century.
When the Reformation in Nuremberg , which also held the protectorate over the monastery, was introduced around 1524 , the monastery went downhill, and when the Reformation entered the Upper Palatinate in 1556 through the new sovereign Ottheinrich , it was gradually dissolved. The last abbess was Ursula Breunin (1533–1558). The monastery was secularized in 1563 ; the monastery business came to a standstill in 1570. From 1577 the monastery goods were sold or given as fiefdoms. During the Thirty Years' War , Swedish troops burned down the church and parts of the monastery on April 23, 1635; since then Gnadenberg has been in ruins.
In 1671 the monastery was assigned to the new order of the Salesian Sisters, who came to Gnadenberg from their first German settlement St. Anna in Munich , but did not rebuild the church. With the secularization in Bavaria at the beginning of the 19th century, this successor monastery was also dissolved. The monastery estates and the ruins came into private ownership, the latter until it was acquired by the Bavarian state in 1898. In the course of the 19th century, parts of the ruins were demolished and a house was built into the south corner of the church ruins.
List of Abbesses of Gnadenberg Monastery
- Anna Svenson (1435–1438) from Maribo Monastery
- Elisabeth Kniepäntl (1438–1451) from Munich
- Elisabeth Volkenstaller (1451–1471) from Nuremberg
- Margaretha Rindsmaul (1471–1489)
- Barbara Fürer (1489–1509) from Nuremberg
- ...
- Ursula Breun (1533–1558) from Nuremberg
Current condition
The ruins of the former monastery church impress with the monumentality of the still standing high outer walls made of light brown sandstone and the Gothic tracery of its large window openings. In the southeast wall is the only preserved grave monument, the life-size relief epitaph of the knight Martin von Wildenstein , who died in 1466 and who donated an ascension altar and money for glass paintings in 1460 ; the high grave of the founder Katharina († 1426) in front of the brothers' choir has disappeared. On the outside, the buttresses are set off and simply covered. The area of the former hall church is 70 by 37 meters. The church ruins are only partially accessible because of a private garden, under which the pillar bases are suspected. The remains of the formerly vaulted cloister in the former cloister courtyard and the nunnery, which formed a square from which the northeast wing has been preserved, are also inaccessible. The surrounding walls of the entire monastery complex are still partially in place.
Parish church
After the reintroduction of Catholicism in the Upper Palatinate, the sacristy of the former monastery church was initially used as an emergency church for the parish of St. Birgitta. In 1654–55, the wing of the monastery in the northwest, which had contained the refectory, was converted into a church; this has four window axes and no separate choir. There is a roof turret above the gable. The church has a baroque interior from the second half of the 17th century; the high altar shows the mystical marriage of Birgitta with Christ in the altarpiece.
From 1834 to 1840 the later Würzburg cathedral dean and Bavarian state parliament member Georg Joseph Götz (1802–1871) worked as pastor.
literature
- Gnadenberg. In: Friedrich Hermann Hofmann and Felix Mader : The art monuments of Upper Palatinate & Regensburg. Book XVII. City and District Office Neumarkt. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1909, pp. 105-121.
- Sandra Frauenknecht: Gnadenberg Monastery. Volume 17 of the series Mittelfränkische Studien on behalf of the Historical Association for Middle Franconia, edited by Gerhard Rechter in collaboration with Robert Schuh and Werner Bürger. Ansbach 2004. First published in 2001 as a dissertation at the University of Eichstätt.
- Birge Tetzner: "In domo mea debet esse omnes humilitas" - On the Gnadenberg monastery church in the Upper Palatinate and on the Birgitten churches. In: Contributions to Franconian Art History , ed. v. Markus Hörsch and Peter Ruderich. Bamberg 1998, pp. 109-131.
- Rudolf Wiesneth: Palatinate- counts places of activity . In: Hans Fischer, Manfred Kindler, Theo Männer, Peter Pauly, Otto Reimer & Rudolf Wisneth (eds.): Festschrift for the year of the Pfalzgraf-Johann year 1983 . Schmiedl, Neunburg vorm Wald 1983. pp. 60–68.
Web links
- Gnadenberg Monastery , basic data and history: The Birgitten am Gnadenberg in the database of monasteries in Bavaria in the House of Bavarian History
- Aerial photos of the ruined monastery
- In the context of the Ludwig Canal - pictures of the Gnadenberg monastery and cloister mill
Coordinates: 49 ° 22 '8 " N , 11 ° 24' 39.6" E