Lamspringe Monastery
The former Lamspringe monastery is located in Lamspringe in southern Lower Saxony . The complex goes back to a Benedictine monastery founded in the 9th century . The monastery , which is richly equipped, was once a prosperous business enterprise.
history
founding
The lamspringe abbey was first mentioned in 872 as a nunnery, the bishop Altfried of Hildesheim the tithe ceded. The history of the monastery and thus also of the place was written down by a priest of the monastery in 1696 on the basis of original documents that are no longer available today.
According to a founding legend in the 16th century, the monastery was founded as a women's monastery in Lamspringe by Count Ricdag , a Saxon nobleman from the Immedinger family , and his wife Imhildis at the source of the Lamme . Their only daughter Ricburga was installed as the first abbess; Bishop Altfried von Hildesheim, the nephew of the founder, was involved in the establishment. According to the founding legend, the Ricdag couple went on a pilgrimage to Rome and received the remains of the martyr Hadrian from Pope Sergius II (844–847) .
development
Favorable settlement conditions for the place and monastery Lamspringe prevailed due to the location on an old military and trade route as well as in an area rich in springs. The monastery was given property through donations when it was founded and also in later centuries. In the 12th century the monastery owned around 300 Hufen fields and forests, 10 mills and tithe rights in 17 places as well as church rights in four churches. The possessions ranged from Seesen to Braunschweig and the Schaumburger Land . The focus of ownership was east of Lamspringe and in Ambergau . The cannon monastery experienced its heyday in the 12th and 13th centuries with around 180 nuns. It acquired properties far beyond the region's borders. In 1190 Konrad von Westerhof and 1230 Count Wedekind von Poppenburg contributed to this development by transferring goods to the monastery in Elze . In 1178 Bishop Adelog confirmed ownership of the monastery and promised its protectors the assistance of Saint Dionysius . The monastery already had a scriptorium in the 12th century . This created a library with high medieval manuscripts, 22 of which have survived to this day and are kept in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel.
Setbacks
The agricultural town of Lamspringe owes its development to the monastery, which required a large number of workers as day laborers, servants, craftsmen and monastery servants. Until the 14th century, Lamspringe was the richest monastery in the Hildesheim diocese. From then on the steady upward development of the place and the monastery was slowed down by feuds, raids and fires, as the tithe levies and other income no longer went to the monastery. Even gifts from noble families could not avert the economic plight of the monastery. In 1405 the monastery was exempted from royal taxes, customs duties and military services at the request of King Ruprecht .
During the Hildesheim collegiate feud between 1519 and 1523 between the Hochstift Hildesheim and the Duchy of Braunschweig , Lamspringe was burned down and the monastery looted. Since then, Lamspringe has belonged to Guelph territory for a good hundred years . In the Schmalkaldic War came in 1552 to an attack by the mercenary leader Vollrad Mansfeld , whose mercenaries nuns raped .
During the Reformation , which took place in the region in 1568, Duke Julius von Braunschweig converted the Catholic nunnery into a Protestant women's monastery with 19 women living there. The reason for this was the preservation of the monastery as a prosperous business enterprise. At the same time, in a kind of robbery operation, the duke had valuable art objects and manuscripts as well as books sent to his residence in Wolfenbüttel. While the valuables were melted down and moved, the writings have been preserved in the Herzog August Library to this day. In 1616 only 8 canonesses lived in the monastery, but the entire staff in agriculture, the kitchen and on the farm was 75 people. A few decades after the town was rebuilt, the Thirty Years War broke out in 1618 , which hit Lamspringe hard again. After the Battle of Lutter am Barenberge in 1626, mercenary troops looted the place and again burned dozens of houses. After the war, the monastery complex was in a catastrophic state. According to the visitation report of an abbot from 1649, the horse stable was dilapidated, the brewery and bakery had collapsed, a 66 m long sleeping house was dilapidated and the pigsty had burned down. The monastery church with its inventory was also badly dilapidated and the building threatened to collapse.
Help from England
In 1643 the monastery, which had been Protestant since 1568, came back to the Hildesheim Monastery after the Goslar recession and became Catholic again. The Hildesheim bishop endeavored to create Catholic bases in his Protestant parts of the country. For this purpose he handed over the facility through the Bursfeld Congregation to English, black-clad monks of the English Benedictine Congregation . They had been driven out of England because of the dissolution of all the monasteries . The monks moved into the empty and neglected monastery buildings. They stimulated the institution economically and spiritually. Among the treasures they brought with them were the relics of St. Oliver Plunkett and the Albani Psalter . In 1670 they began to rebuild the church because the old one could no longer be rebuilt. The builders of the church were Father Everhard Lambers from Abdinghof Abbey near Paderborn and Jobst Scheck from Störmede , who also built Eringerfeld Castle, who, thanks to the mediation of Hildesheim Cathedral Capitular Johann Gottfried von Hörde , could be promoted for the building of the church. Funds from secular and spiritual donors came for the building project. In 1691, after a construction period of 21 years, the three-aisled hall church “St. Hadrian and St. Dionysius ”. The church was built in the Westphalian post-Gothic style. At the time it was one of the largest Catholic churches in what is now Lower Saxony. In 1693 she received an organ from Andreas Schweimb . In 1730 construction began on the abbey building, which was oversized for the time, with a 95 m long front facade. During this time, the extensive stables and barns of the monastery were built in massive stone construction. They replaced the dilapidated systems that can be seen on the Merian engraving from 1654. During the entire 18th century, the Lamspring monastery was the center of the training of Catholic clergy for England and the British Isles, as Catholicism there was exposed to severe oppression at that time. Monks taught English men at a young age. About 50 tombstones of deceased monks and students are still preserved in the church from this period.
Benedictine abbots
In the 160 years between 1643 and 1803 the monastery was headed by 8 English abbots:
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Glassworks
Around 4 km east of Lamspringe on the L 466 state road to Rhüden in what is now the Glashütte district of Lamspringen in the Schlörbach valley , the Lamspringe monastery founded a forest glassworks at the end of the 18th century . It was located in the midst of monastic forests in the extensive wooded area of the Klosterforst Westerhof, which borders the Heber ridge . The glass blowing shop was soon closed due to marketing difficulties.
In 1792 Johann Friedrich Stender from Ziegenhagen resumed operations and founded the Stender glass factory . Products were white hollow glass and light green medical glass. Beverage glasses, bottles, mason jars, glass bowls and laboratory equipment. In some cases, it was high-quality glassware that was exported to other European countries and overseas by ship via the Port of Hamburg. The glassworks had up to 80 employees who were making good earnings at the time. In 1883 13 houses with 27 apartments were built for the employees near the hut. In 1914 the hut was closed because of sales problems. Today the former workers' houses have been restored and more residential buildings have been built.
secularization
The monastery was dissolved by the Prussian state in 1803 as part of secularization . The property of the monastery, which belonged to the Benedictine order and not to the local monks, was expropriated and added to the state property. Then the economically important monastery property was converted into a royal domain and leased. The 21 monks received severance payments and 14 returned to England. In the 160 years (1643–1803) the presence of the English Benedictine monks in the monastery, there were 8 English abbots with terms of office of up to 41 years. In 1818 the monastery property came to the Hanover Monastery Chamber , which leased the land.
Monastery complex
The former monastery complex consists of stone buildings, whose owner and responsibility is today the monastery chamber of Hanover . These include above all the monastery church “St. Hadrian and St. Dionysius ”, the abbey building and the former stables.
church
architecture
It is a three-aisled hall church with plastered interior and built between 1685 and 1693 from rubble stones to replace a previous Gothic building. The pillars are octagonal. It is covered with groin and barrel vaults and a gable roof with a turret and has a crypt. The choir has a polygonal ending.
Furnishing
The rich baroque furnishings of the church with altars and figures of saints have been completely preserved , with the main altar by Johann Mauritz Gröninger and most of the other carvings, including choir stalls and pulpit, from the workshop of Jobst Heinrich Lessen . More recently, restorations of the monastery church have been carried out, including a. by Christian Buhmann . They came across ornate decorations from the 18th century that had been painted over in the early 20th century. Despite tight budgets, the decision was made to completely restore these paintings in addition to the expensive exterior renovation. The restoration of the original state is a task for decades, but was already carried out on the choir screen around 1960 and on the front left side altar. In the monastery church there is a reliquary of Saint Oliver Plunkett , who was executed in 1681 and whose bones were brought here in 1685 at the instigation of the Lamspring abbot Maurus Corker. The holy water font was artistically designed in the 1710s by a lay brother of the Benedictines using the stucco lustro technique. Today's organ was built in 1876 by the organ builder Philipp Furtwängler & Söhne , with the case and 24 of the 45 stops today being taken from the original organ.
Painting of the crypt
In 1926 and 1927, at the request of Pastor Friedrich Gatzemeyer, the artist Alfred Ehrhardt painted 14 paintings on the ceiling and walls of the crypt of the former Lamspringe monastery church in the New Objectivity style . "The figurative and decorative depictions show scenes of saints from Christian iconography with direct reference to the monastery church: scenes from the life story of the monastery founder Count Ricdag and the martyr Oliver Plunkett." The ceiling paintings were whitewashed in 1938 as " degenerate art ". The work fell into oblivion until 2003, when local historian Axel C. Kronenberg discovered old black and white photographs by the Gandersheim photographer Johannes Nissen (1881–1972). Between 2006 and 2010, six ceiling paintings were extensively uncovered by qualified restorers. The Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation took over the financing.
Abbey building
The abbey building, built in the 1730s, has mainly been used as the seat of administrative institutions since 1818. Today there are several representative rooms (large abbey hall, 12-month room, refectory) with large-format murals and paintings.
park
The monastery park with the spring grotto of the Lammequelle has been a public park since 1965. It used to be a 5.5 hectare monastery garden where vegetables were grown. The monastery mill there was rebuilt in the same place in the 18th century from half-timbered houses.
Events
The church is used by the Catholic parish of the Assumption of Mary , which belongs to the Diocese of Hildesheim and is based in Bad Gandersheim .
Today there are regular events in the monastery buildings. Throughout the month of September there is the “Lamspringer September” series with national events from the most diverse areas of culture and artistic entertainment. The “Philosophical Salon” has been taking place in the monastery calendar room since 2003. An annual event in the former monastery is the pilgrimage to the feast of Saint Oliver Plunkett on the last weekend in August .
literature
- Hans Ulrich: Modern church painting - The crypt paintings of the monastery church in Lamspringe near Gandersheim , in: Der Sonntag - Braunschweiger Latest News from December 25, 1927, p. 8.
- Daniel Rees: Lamspringe , in: The Benedictines in Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Bremen , arr. by Ulrich Faust OSB, ( Germania Benedictina , Vol. 6. North Germany), EOS-Verlag, St. Ottilien 1980, pp. 299-320, ISBN 3-88096-606-0
- H.-W. Böhme: Lamspringe in: Guide to prehistoric and early historical monuments. Volume 49. Part II excursions , Mainz 1981
- Carl Borchers: Lamspringe Monastery ( Small Art Guide for Lower Saxony , Issue 18). 4th edition, Göttingen 1991
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Lamspringe Monastery , pp. 37-39, in: If stones could talk , Volume II, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1992, ISBN 3-7842-0479-1 .
- Renate Oldermann-Meier, On the history of the new construction and historical furnishings of the former Lamspringe monastery church in the years 1670–1720, in: Die Diözese Hildesheim in Past and Present 61 (1993) pp. 33–59. ISBN 3-87065-797-9
- Renate Oldermann-Meier, The church treasure of the former Lamspringe Benedictine monastery. - Composition and induction at the time of the Lutheran Reformation - in: Die Diözese Hildesheim in Past and Present 66 (1998) pp. 111–146. ISBN 3-7698-1073-2
- Axel Christoph Kronenberg: Lamspringe Monastery , Alfeld, 2006, ISBN 978-3-9811183-0-8
- Axel Christoph Kronenberg: Alfred Ehrhardt - An artist from Gandersheim paints the crypt of the monastery church in Lamspringe , in: Kurzeitung Bad Gandersheim , edition 4/2006 , pp. 10–11.
- Axel Christoph Kronenberg: Alfred Ehrhardt - An artist paints the crypt of the monastery church in Lamspringe , in: Yearbook 2006. The magazine from the district of Hildesheim , Hildesheim 2006, pp. 121–128.
- Renate Oldermann , The church treasure of the former Lamspringe Benedictine monastery, in: Hedwig Röckelein (ed.), The Gandersheimer Treasure in Comparison, Regensburg 2013 , pp. 65–91. ISBN 978-3-7954-2638-5
- Renate Oldermann, Appropriation and Resistance in the Lamspringe Monastery, in: Rosaries and Soul Gardens. Education and piety in women's monasteries in Lower Saxony, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel 2013 , pp. 167–175.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kurt Kronenberg : From Gandersheim's Great Past, Volume 4, 1962, p. 18
- ^ Hermann Adolf Lüntzel : History of the Diocese and City of Hildesheim, 2, 1858, pp. 160–161
- ^ Hermann Adolf Lüntzel: History of the Diocese and City of Hildesheim, 2, 1858, p. 158
- ↑ Lamspringe Monastery, p. 11 accessed on August 15, 2010 ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.7 MB)
- ^ Glashütte, Hildesheimer Allgemeine, accessed on October 31, 2011
- ^ Wilhelm Mithoff : Churches and chapels in the Kingdom of Hanover, 1865, p. 42
- ↑ Hans-Georg Aschoff : The Catholic monastery landscape in the prince-bishopric of Hildesheim during the early modern period, in: Hansjörg Küster, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (ed.): To the qualities of monastic cultural landscapes, 2014, pp. 24-25
- ↑ Georg Troescher : Art and artist walks in Central Europe, 1954, p. 253
- ↑ KirchenZeitung No. 37/2015 of September 13, 2015, p. 14
- ^ Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation: The Lamspringe monastery church crypt , from March 5, 2011
- ^ Wilhelm Kleeberg: Niedersächsische Mühlengeschichte, 1964, p. 150
Coordinates: 51 ° 57 '48.2 " N , 10 ° 0' 57.8" E