Graefrath Monastery

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The monastery building
The collegiate church at the monastery

The monastery Gräfrath (lat. Monasterium S. Mariae in Greuerode ) was founded in 1187 Convent of the Benedictine order in Solingen district Gräfrath . At the beginning of the 17th century it was converted into a monastery for the Augustinian women choirs . The pen was abolished in 1803. The monastery was a subsidiary of the Benedictine monastery Vilich near Bonn. The German Blade Museum is now housed in the ensemble of buildings . The former monastery church has become the Catholic parish church of St. Mary of the Assumption .

history

founding

Archbishop Engelbert von Berg

In the headwaters of the Itter in the village of Greverode, Vilich Abbey owned a courtyard with a chapel. In 1185 there was an apparition of Mary . The abbess Elisabeth then initiated the foundation of a monastery, which was notarized on July 31, 1187 by the Archbishop of Cologne, Philip I of Heinsberg . The excess of women in the aristocracy, caused by the death of many nobles on crusades and in feuds, caused the number of nuns in the Graefrath monastery to grow rapidly, so that Archbishop Engelbert von Berg felt obliged to limit their number to forty. In addition to this number, new nuns had to bring substantial wealth into the monastery. The mother monastery in Vilich built a lot in the second half of the 13th century, which became so financially threatening that the Archbishop of Cologne Wigbold von Holte intervened and limited the number of Vilich canons to twelve. Over the head of the abbess from Vilich, he also appointed provost Winrich as the renovator of the Gräfrath monastery. Winrich was successful in a few years. B. set up a brewery and bought clay pits and had bricks burned.

The Counts of Berg supported the monastery through donations and the granting of privileges. In 1257, Count Adolf IV von Berg confirmed that the monastery was exempt from customs duties in the port of Monheim am Rhein . The port was not only important because of the transport of materials for the construction and expansion of the church. The mother monastery was up the Rhine in Vilich . Nearby in Mondorf and further upstream in Erpel , the Gräfrath monastery had its own properties. In addition, Archbishop Engelbert von Berg had the monastery in memory of his brother Count Adolf III. , who fell on the crusade in Egypt in 1218, was given the Ehinger Hof in Mündelheim downstream . Count Adolf V , victor in the Battle of Worringen , was buried in the monastery church in 1296. His wife Elisabeth von Geldern became a nun in Graefrath and after her death in 1313 was buried at the side of her husband. In memory of Count Adolf V, his brother and successor Wilhelm I granted the monastery the lucrative privilege in 1298 that wine could only be sold in the monastery wine house in Gräfrath. He also gave the monastery an extensive tax exemption in 1301, through which the monastery no longer had to pay autumn wages for all estates in the county of Berg . The size of the monastery property in Gräfrath can only be measured from the route of the processional path, it led from the monastery via the station at the Itter spring Heiliger Born to the border of the monastery corridor near Kluse in today's Wuppertal - Vohwinkel and back via the place of the later from the Prussians in Klosterbusch parade ground to the monastery. In the 15th century, the monastery was the largest landowner in the city of Solingen with almost 1,000 acres .

Relic of Saint Catherine

Caravaggio : Saint Catherine of Alexandria (1595–1596)

According to legend, in 1309 a bone splinter of Saint Catherine came to the monastery as a relic . A knight of the order , a Count von Hückeswagen , had brought it from Mount Sinai as a present for his sister, who was a nun in Graefrath . On the return trip across the Mediterranean, his ship got caught in a severe storm. The box with the relic went overboard. An angel would have given this box to his sister in Graefrath. It is documented that the mother of Count Adolf V and regent of the former county of Hückeswagen, Margarete von Hochstaden , gave the monastery a glass vessel with oil from the bones of Saint Catherine in 1312. Since pilgrims on pilgrimages to the monastery testified that oil, milk, honey, water and blood had flowed from the bone, more and more pilgrims came to Graefath to see the miracle . After the nun Katharina von Hückeswagen died in 1323, there were no more miracles, but the Katharinen relic was still venerated into the 15th century. In 1346 at the latest, a Katharinen brotherhood had been formed. You belonged u. a. to: King John of Bohemia , a Count of Sayn , Count Wilhelm von Jülich and his younger brother Walram , Archbishop of Cologne. The Katharinen Altar was first mentioned in 1354. The St. Catherine's Chapel was probably also built in the monastery church in the 14th century. The chapel and altar survived the fire of 1686, but were then destroyed in the second fire in 1717. The boundary stones with which the monastery marked its property bore the Katharinenrad as a symbol . In 1817 the church choir St. Katharina of the Catholic parish was founded in Gräfrath. It is now the oldest church choir in Solingen.

reformation

Despite their ties to the Catholic Church, the Bergisch dukes strove for the sovereign church regiment . In 1471, for example, a visit to the Graefrath monastery was arranged with the Archbishop of Cologne . As a result, the nuns were subjected to the strict rules of the Bursfeld reform of the Benedictine monasteries. The Reformation then brought further changes to the monastery. At the beginning of the 17th century it was converted into a noble women's monastery (Augustinian choir women). A layman took over the administration of the monastery . On July 10, 1610, the abbess's seal was renewed. In 1614 the abbess Maria Magdalena von Hochstaden acquired a plot of land in Cologne not far from the church of St. Kunibert . The Grieffrader Hoff was the temporary storage facility for the agricultural products of the monastery estates for the Cologne market as well as the accommodation for Gräfrath canonesses visiting Cologne. The monastery district in Gräfrath has meanwhile become a Catholic enclave . Pastor Harspelt, vicar of St. George's altar in the monastery church, brought life to the small Catholic community when he founded the brotherhood in honor of St. The virgin and martyr Catharina founded and in 1725 the consent of Pope Benedict XIII. received. The abbess Wilhelma Katharina von Landsberg founded a Catholic school in the monastery on March 11, 1734, but a Protestant school in Gräfrath is mentioned as early as 1612.

Fires and loads of war

The monastery building and the collegiate church are located above the village

When Gräfrath burned down on December 27, 1686, only the tower of the monastery church with the Katharinen chapel remained of the monastery. To help with the reconstruction, Duke Johann Wilhelm II released the monastery from all real and personal charges for five years. Due to its income outside of Graefrath, the monastery was able to help the citizens to rebuild their houses by lending money. In 1717, after a lightning strike, the monastery, which was rebuilt in the Baroque style in 1704, was in flames again. This time the Katharinen Chapel was also destroyed, while the village of Gräfrath was spared from flying sparks. The monastery had to be rebuilt again. The construction of the church was completed in 1727, followed by its baroque interior in 1748. In the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) the monastery had to take part in the contributions for the French and Prussian troops passing through. In 1796, during the First Coalition War , when French troops were billeted, the monastery had to contribute to the contribution again. As early as 1794, the abbess and the nuns of the Milen monastery near St. Trond , Belgium, welcomed them as guests when they were driven out by French troops.

After secularization in 1803

The last abbess Sophia von Poseck had the monastery church plastered shortly before the monastery was dissolved. The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of February 25, 1803 with the secularization of church property then prevented the monastery building from being repaired. From the total annual income of the monastery of 8,000 Reichstalers were u. a. pays the pensions of the last ten canonesses and one lay sister. The Catholic priest, who was also paid from it, had to move into the monastery building. The band mill, the largest of the monastery mills, has already been auctioned under the Elector of Palatinate-Bavaria Maximilian I Joseph , who was also Duke von Berg until 1806. The band mill existed as early as 1492, while the age of the two other monastery mills is only vaguely determined. During the interlude of Napoleon's Grand Duchy of Berg from 1806 to 1813 were for the succession all former monastery privileges such organizations. B. the exclusive Weinzapfrecht in Graefrath, deleted. In July 1818, the domain administration of the Prussian province of Jülich-Kleve-Berg took on the sale of the monastery courtyard and other formerly monastic goods . Due to the lack of success of the sales campaign in the summer of 1822 after the formation of the Prussian Rhine Province, the property was re-divided by the domain administration and offered for sale again.

Church stairs to the monastery church

The walls that had surrounded the monastery district were removed thoroughly by the citizens of Graefrath in the first half of the 19th century so that they no longer had to circumvent the monastery district extensively. Only then could roads be built directly at the monastery, such as Gerberstrasse or the forerunner of the Abteiweg. The ophthalmologist Friedrich Hermann de Leuw , until his death in 1861 Gräfrath was a health resort for domestic and foreign eye patients, invested his ample income in real estate, including almost 1,000 acres of former monastery land. This also included the land on which the Grünewald house was built. The Grünewald house was inherited by the eldest son Friedrich August de Leuw , a landscape painter who had had his studio there for a long time and sold the property to a timber merchant in 1866. Luise de Leuw, later Mrs. Firnenburg, inherited the Gräfrather Stadtwald known as Klosterbusch and brought it to a De Leuw Foundation . The son Eduard de Leuw, at the time mayor of Cronenberg , got the Buchenhofen estate with his brandy distillery. Buchenhofen has belonged to the monastery since 1193. In 1862 the son Constantin de Leuw, living in Arnhem , offered the cloister courtyard with approx. 142 acres and newly built residential and farm buildings for lease. On the grounds of the monastery courtyard, the settlement on Abteiweg with 100 homes and 250 condominiums was built in the 1970s. The courtyard buildings on Gerberstrasse still existed at the time when the settlement was built on the so-called "Debt Hill";

The courtyard of the monastery building has been open since it was converted into a barracks

On December 15, 1818, the monastery building became a Prussian barracks . The monastery complex, which was closed on all sides, was rebuilt and one wing of the building was demolished. In 1822, the regular crew of the 40th Prussian Landwehr Battalion moved into the barracks. The Catholic school and the teacher's apartment, which until then had been housed in the monastery, had to give way to the soldiers. Solingen insurgents fetched rifles and clothing from the armory in the former monastery in the course of the imperial constitution campaign on May 10, 1849 . The military moved to Solingen in 1893. In 1896, the monastery was again rebuilt to a reform school record. On April 1, 1898, the royal Prussian educational institution for Catholic girls moved into the monastery building with 32 girls and young women. A two-storey house for the kindergarten teachers was built in 1900 in the Neo-Berg style behind the monastery church. A maximum of 60 to 80 girls were at the same time because of various offenses in the educational institution before it had to close in 1927 for lack of money. In 1903 the Sisters of St. Augustine moved into the newly built Sacred Heart Monastery on the slope south of the monastery church . A military hospital was set up there during the First World War . On its 50th anniversary on November 22, 1953, the Sacred Heart Convent was a retirement home for around 70 women of both denominations .

The Solingen city ​​archives moved into the monastery building in 1941 and stayed there until he moved in 1987. On June 17, 1946, the Solingen city ​​council decided to set up a city retirement home in the Gräfrath monastery. On January 6, 1948, the facility was completed as Solingen's fourth old people's home, which moved out of the building in 1976. After the city archives moved out, the monastery building was rebuilt to make it suitable for a museum under the direction of the architect Josef Paul Kleihues (construction costs: 5.9 million euros). In 1990 the Blade Museum left its previous rooms in the former town hall of Gräfrath and moved into its new location with almost 10,000 cutlery and more than 2,000 weapons. The inauguration took place on July 6, 1991, which NRW Prime Minister Johannes Rau also attended. In 2004 the blade museum for children was opened on the rented ground floor of the privately refurbished former nursery school house. The Gräfrath Museum has been located in two rooms in the basement of the Blade Museum since 2005 . The neighboring Herz-Jesu-Kloster is now a residential building of Heimstatt Adolph Kolping eV

Church treasure

The Gräfrath Monastery possessed a unique treasure trove of reliquaries and liturgical implements from the Gothic and Baroque periods. This Gräfrath church treasure is on permanent display in the Blade Museum. After the Cologne Cathedral Treasure, it is the most important collection of church goldsmith work in the Archdiocese of Cologne .

Monument protection

The buildings at the cloister courtyard were listed as a historical monument in 1984 . In addition to the monastery building and the monastery church, this also includes the following houses built around 1900: the former nursery school, the rectory and the Sacred Heart Monastery (see the list of monuments in Solingen-Gräfrath ). Two copper beeches in the courtyard of the former monastery have been protected as natural monuments since 2007 . The trees are likely to be 200 to 250 years old.

Others

After the merger of the cities of Gräfrath, Höhscheid , Ohligs , Solingen and Wald to form the city of Solingen in 1929, the street names were also rearranged. As a result, in 1935 in Gräfrath, the previous address Kirchplatz became the new name Klosterhof .

Web links

literature

  • Kurt Niederau , Aline Poensgen (arrangement): Gräfrath monastery - documents and sources 1185–1600 , in: Anker und Schwert, Volume 11, Solingen 1992.
  • Jürgen Simon: Monasterium S. Mariae in Greuerode: the monastery (Solingen-) Gräfrath from its foundation to the end of the 15th century , in: Studies on Cologne Church History, Volume 24, Siegburg 1990.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dietrich Höroldt (Ed.): 1000 Years of Vilich Abbey 978–1978. Bonn 1978, p. 50
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Heinz Rosenthal: Solingen. History of a City , Volume 1, Walter Braun Verlag, Duisburg, 2nd edition 1973, DNB 457973358
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Helmut Meya: Gräfrath. Chronicle of the Heimatverein Solingen-Gräfrath eV 1950-2000 , Hrsg .: Heimatverein Solingen-Gräfrath eV, 2000
  4. ↑ a b kirchenschatz.html Gräfrather Kirchenschatz  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Deutsches Klingenmuseum Solingen , accessed on September 6, 2015@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.klingenmuseum.de  
  5. ^ Church choir St. Katharina from the Catholic parish of St. Mariä Himmelfahrt, Solingen-Gräfrath , accessed on September 6, 2015
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Lutz Peters: Gräfrath - how it used to be , Wartberg Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen, 1st edition 2001, ISBN 3-8313-1162-5
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Heinz Rosenthal: Solingen. History of a City , Volume 2, Walter Braun Verlag. Duisburg 1972, ISBN 3-87096-103-1 .
  8. ↑ Information board at the church
  9. ↑ Bandesmühle (Itter) on zeitspurensuche.de , accessed on September 6, 2015
  10. ↑ Klostermühlen in Gräfrath on zeitspurensuche.de , accessed on September 6, 2015
  11. ^ Haus Grünewald on zeitspurensuche.de , accessed on September 6, 2015
  12. ↑ Gräfrath on solingen-internet.de , accessed on September 6, 2015
  13. ↑ History of the Blade Museum building ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on solingen.de , accessed on September 6, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.solingen.de
  14. ^ A b Heinz Rosenthal: Solingen. History of a City , Volume 3, Walter Braun Verlag. Duisburg 1975, ISBN 3-87096-126-0
  15. ↑ Solingen City Archives, Bergische Arbeiterstimme January 23, 1915 on blog: 1914-1918: A Rhenish Diary - Sources from archives of the Rhineland , accessed on September 6, 2015
  16. ^ Report of the Solinger Boten from March 1, 2012, accessed on September 6, 2015
  17. ↑ Stadtarchiv Solingen: Solingen - Chronik 1946 ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.9 MB) at www2.solingen.de , accessed on September 6, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www2.solingen.de
  18. ↑ Stadtarchiv Solingen: Solingen - Chronik 1946 ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.1 MB) at www2.solingen.de , accessed on September 6, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www2.solingen.de
  19. ^ Reference project Deutsches Klingenmuseum Solingen by the architects Kleihues + Kleihues , accessed on September 6, 2015
  20. ↑ Isabell Immel - Klingenmuseum für Kinder p. 1f (article in LVR-Zeitschrift Museen im Rheinland , issue 3/04) ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 60 KB) from rheinischemuseen.lvr.de , accessed on September 6, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rheinischemuseen.lvr.de
  21. ^ Report of the Solinger Morgenpost from January 6, 2015, accessed on September 6, 2015
  22. ^ Residential houses of Heimstatt Adolph Kolping eV Solingen , on hak-solingen.de , accessed on September 6, 2015
  23. ↑ Regulatory authority ordinance for the protection of natural monuments for the area of ​​the city of Solingen ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of September 21, 2007, p. 1 of the annex (PDF; 78 KB) at www2.solingen.de , accessed on September 6, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www2.solingen.de
  24. ↑ Copper beech in the Gräfrath monastery courtyard on baumkunde.de , accessed on September 6, 2015
  25. ↑ Double mocked (renaming of streets) on solingen-internet.de , accessed on September 6, 2015

Coordinates: 51 ° 12 ′ 35 ″  N , 7 ° 4 ′ 21 ″  E