Gottesthal Monastery

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Gottesthal Monastery
Reconstruction plan of the Gottesthal monastery
Reconstruction plan of the Gottesthal monastery
location Germany
Hessen
Coordinates: 50 ° 1 '3.1 "  N , 8 ° 0' 46.1"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 1 '3.1 "  N , 8 ° 0' 46.1"  E
Patronage Maria and Nicholas
founding year 1213 by Augustinian choir women
Cistercian since 1247
Year of dissolution /
annulment 		1811
Gate house (1697) with monastery gate
Köther Hof, Kiedrich

Gottesthal Abbey was a Cistercian abbey near Oestrich , a district of Oestrich-Winkel in the Rheingau-Taunus district in Hesse .

Geographical location

Gottesthal is located in the midst of vineyards about one and a half kilometers northwest of the center of Oestrich am Pfingstbach , near the Lohmühle and the confluence of the Dornbach at an altitude of 144 meters. The street leading there from Oestrich is called Gottesthal . It continues to a number of mills above, the Gottesthaler Mühle or Kremers Mühle , followed by Kühns Mühle , the Pfingstmühle and finally on the edge of the forest is Korns Mühle , also called Obere Mühle . The vineyard corridor around the monastic relics is called the monastery garden . Vollrads Castle in the southwest and Hallgarten in the northeast are both around one and a half kilometers away.

history

The history of the Gottesthal monastery is closely linked to the history of the Egidius monastery in the former Winkel (today Mittelheim ). The Kurmainzer Ministeriale Wulverich von Winkel had set up an Augustinian women's choir there at the beginning of the 12th century . Whether in 1131 Augustinian canons expelled from Eberbach Monastery found accommodation in the Winkler monastery is disputed. It is likely that the Winkel / Gottesthal monastery was a double monastery , which was spatially separated, but under the direction of a provost with a common church (St. Giles).

In a document from 1145, in which Ehrenfrid, the provost of Winkel, is named as chairman of the canons' convent, the Archbishop of Mainz, Heinrich , confirmed an older deed of donation. In this the donation of a Rheinaue by Heinrich's predecessor Markolf in 1141 or 1142 to the Winkel / Gottesthal monastery was recorded. In this document, “Vallis dei”, i.e. Gottesthal, was given as the location for the canons' convent. The Eberbach Monastery was a co-owner of the Gottesthaler Aue or Nonnenaue, which was originally located in the Rhine and is now firmly connected to the Heidesheimer Ufer. In 1186, Emperor Friedrich I is said to have taken the Gottesthal monastery under his protection. After the Augustinian Canons gave up their monastery in Gottesthal, the Augustinian nuns moved to the monastery in 1213. One reason for the change of location remains open, as is documented in an Eberbach property register that there were nuns in Gottesthal in the first decade of the 13th century.

A document dates from 1217 in which a tithing dispute between the monastery and the Mainz St. Viktor Stift was settled. Accordingly, the monastery owned the actual monastery square, two orchards, three vineyards and an olive tree plot within the monastery. The agreement stipulated that no tithe would have to be established for this property . These properties were probably only property in the immediate vicinity of the monastery; the nuns received interest in kind and money from properties further away. In the 1240s, the nuns tried to join the Cistercian order . After a split in the convent , the majority of the Gottesthal nuns converted to the Cistercian order around 1247, models for converting were probably the conversions of other women's convents in the vicinity, such as Marienhausen or Tiefenthal monastery .

The remaining Augustinians moved into their old convent in St. Aegidius. They were forbidden to accept new members in the coming years, which led to the extinction of the Winkler monastery around 1263. All properties of the Aegidius Stift were transferred to the Gottesthal monastery, the monastery church became a parish church and from 1284 was under the patronage of the Gottesthal monastery. At the time of the split in 1247, construction began on its own church in Gottesthal, which was consecrated to St. Mary and St. Nicholas of Myra in 1251 . In 1265 the monastery was subordinated to the Eberbach monastery, as all women's convents had to be subordinate to a father abbey. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the nuns managed to increase their property. In addition to the actual property around the monastery, farms (“Curia”) were added further away, for example the Köther Hof in Kiedrich , which was first mentioned in 1351.

The House of Nassau brought in the 15th and 16th centuries, some female members in Gottesthal visit: From 1499-1517 Margaret was from Nassau abbess of Nassau laid the monastery, Elisabeth 1509 their profession , and from 1531 to 1566 was Katharina Mör from Nassau abbess. The size of the convent in the period from 1497 to 1521 was around 40 people.

In 1468 the reforms of the Council of Constance were introduced. At the beginning of the 16th century, Gottesthal was endangered by riots in the Rheingau as a result of the Peasants' War : The Rheingau wanted to take their self-government into their own hands and increasingly rebelled against the burdens of the clergy. All monasteries were to be dissolved and their property transferred to the surrounding villages. In addition to Eberbach, Marienhausen and Tiefenthal, Eibingen and Mariental monasteries were also affected by these demands. In June 1525 the uprising was ended.

During the Thirty Years' War the Rheingau was initially relatively protected by the Rheingau Gebück , but in 1631 the Swedes invaded the Rheingau and at the end of the year took possession of the Eberbach Monastery, which had been abandoned by the monks. The Gottesthal nuns stayed either on their Rheinaue or in Mainz around 1643 and did not return to their monastery until 1644. The consequences of the war were a drastic decline in the nuns' lease income.

Major economic problems emerged for the monastery in the 1780s. As a result of the French Revolution , the monastery lost all of its holdings on the left bank of the Rhine, high demands for contributions from France and its allies as well as internal tensions weakened the monastery’s economic strength. In 1802 the Rheingau passed into Nassau ownership. In 1810 there were 11 nuns and 3 lay sisters in the monastery, which was secularized on February 5, 1811 by Duke Friedrich August von Nassau .

Todays situation

The gate house with remains of the monastery wall

After the monastery was dissolved, the monastery buildings were sold for demolition and the inventory was given to various parishes. Only the listed gate house from 1697 and the remains of the monastery wall have survived today. Opposite the former monastery and further north in the valley are the former monastery mills Lohmühle and Kremersmühle.

The organ by the Frankfurt organ builder Johann Friedrich Macrander was installed in the St. Ferrutius church in Bleidenstadt . The Justinuskirche in Frankfurt-Höchst is now in possession of two side altars from the monastery from 1737 ( Pietà , Maria Immaculata ). The pulpit can be found in the Catholic Church of St. Georg in Marxheim . The choir stalls of the Evangelical Church in Wehen may come from Gottesthal, according to another opinion from Nothgottes Monastery or Eberbach Monastery. In 1992, during construction work, the grave slab of Abbess Maria Dorothea Ludwig von Blumencron (Abbess from 1686 to 1715) was rediscovered; it is now in the Catholic parish church of St. Martin in Oestrich.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Köther Hof ( Memento from February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Förderkreis Kiedricher Geschichts- und Kulturzeugen eV
  2. ↑ Abbess Margaretha von (from) Nassau 1517, Gottesthal. Grave monuments in Hesse until 1650. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  3. ↑ Abbess Katharina Mör from Nassau 1566, Gottesthal. Grave monuments in Hesse until 1650. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  4. ^ Georg Dehio , Handbook of German Art Monuments - Hesse 2: The Darmstadt District , Deutscher Kunstverlag Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3422031173
  5. ^ Franz Bösken : Sources and research on the organ history of the Middle Rhine. Vol. 2: The area of ​​the former administrative district of Wiesbaden. Part 1 (A – K), p. 378. Schott-Verlag, Mainz 1975, ISBN 3-7957-1307-2
  6. ↑ Yvonne Monsees: The Cistercian monastery Gottesthal in the Rheingau. History, constitution, possessions . (Publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau XLII) Historical Commission for Nassau  : Wiesbaden 1986, ISBN 3-922244-72-6 , p. 61.
  7. ^ Cultural monuments in Hesse State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse
  8. ↑ Yvonne Monsees: Gottesthal in: Germania Benedictina, Volume IV-1 The monasteries and nunneries of Cistercian in Hesse and Thuringia, EOS Verlag St. Ottilien Archabbey 2011, ISBN 978-3-8306-7450-4 , S. 866th

Web links

Commons : Kloster Gottesthal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files