Lehnin Monastery
| Lehnin Monastery | |
|---|---|
 St. Marien monastery church with cloister |
|
| location | Brandenburg in Germany |
| Lies in the diocese | once Brandenburg ; today the Archdiocese of Berlin |
| Coordinates: | 52 ° 19 '12.5 " N , 12 ° 44' 36.3" E |
| Serial number according to Janauschek |
465 |
| founding year | 1180 |
| Year of dissolution / annulment |
1542 |
| Mother monastery | Sittichenbach Monastery |
| Primary Abbey | Morimond Monastery |
|
Daughter monasteries |
Paradies Monastery (1230) |
The Lehnin Monastery (lat. Leninum ; Leniniense Monasterium, etc.) is a former Cistercian abbey in the village of Lehnin . The municipality of Kloster Lehnin southwest of Potsdam is named after the monastery. Founded in 1180 and secularized in the course of the Reformation in 1542 , it has housed the Luise-Henrietten-Stift since 1911 . The monastery is located in the center of the Zauche plateau in a forest and water-rich area around 700 meters from the Klostersee .
The abbey played in the Middle Ages an important role in the colonization of young Mark Brandenburg under the first Marquis of the House of Ascania . In addition to its historical significance, the monastery is also of great cultural importance: Its church is one of the most important Romanesque - Gothic brick buildings in Brandenburg . Its reconstruction in the years 1871 to 1877 is considered an early masterpiece of modern monument preservation . Today's Lehniner Stift sees itself with its nursing, medical and educational diaconal institutions in the monastic tradition and sees itself as the showcase of the Evangelical Church .
Stabilization factor of the young Mark Brandenburg
The Lehnin Monastery was founded by the second Brandenburg Margrave Otto I (1125–1184) in 1180 for economic, power-political and religious reasons. Twenty-three years earlier, in 1157, the first Margrave Albrecht the Bear († 1170) had decisively defeated the Slav prince Jaxa von Köpenick and raised the mark from the baptism. The Germans had already defeated the Slavic tribes residing in the Teltow , Havelland and Zauche several times in the previous centuries, but were never able to hold the areas and allowed themselves to be pushed back again and again. Therefore, the Ascanians Albrecht the Bear and his son Otto I knew that the victory of 1157 did not win the country by any means.
The Ascanians achieved the consolidation of the new areas with their Slavic population through a double strategy. On the one hand, they called Christian settlers, for example from Flanders (the name lives on in the name Fläming ), to the country, who quickly formed a counterbalance to the “ pagan ” Slavic population. On the other hand, with the founding of the monastery by the Cistercians, they brought particularly energetic Christians into the march, whose economically successful activity soon became a role model and met the Ascanians' interest in a country that would bring them high profits.
The territorial extent of the Mark Brandenburg towards the end of the 12th century did not correspond to today's territorial state - in addition to the Altmark , it essentially only included the eastern Havelland and the Zauche. It was not until the following 150 years that the Ascani succeeded in expanding the Mark Brandenburg to the Oder . During the gradual expansion to the east over the river line Havel - Nuthe in the Teltow, the Berlin glacial valley and the Barnim , the monks flanked the Ascanian settlement policy with the Christianization of the remaining Slavs and their church buildings. In addition, Lehnin won a strategic “inner-German” role for Otto I as a border guard against Archbishop Wichmann , who had made clear the interest of his Archdiocese of Magdeburg in this area as early as 1170 with the establishment of the neighboring monastery Zinna near Jüterbog and the Askanians south of the Nuthe river valley - Nieplitz faced.
History up to secularization in 1542
Founding history
Daughter of Morimond
The monastery foundation Lehnin by Otto I in 1180 was the first monastery in the Mark Brandenburg. Lehnin served as the home monastery and burial place of the Ascanians , later also of the Hohenzollerns , and was the mother monastery of the following Cistercian monasteries:
- Paradies Monastery (1230), today located in western Poland in the Lubuskie Voivodeship , Lubusz Land
- Mariensee Monastery (1258), relocated 16 years later: Chorin Monastery (1273) in Barnim near Eberswalde
- Himmelpfort Monastery (1299) in Himmelpfort (City of Fürstenberg / Havel ).
Lehnin was founded as a daughter monastery ( filiation ) of Morimond , one of the four primary abbeys of the original Cistercian monastery in Cîteaux ( Latin: Cistercium ; near Dijon ). The first twelve monks came with Abbot Sibold after a call from Otto I in 1183 from the Sittichenbach monastery near Eisleben in the Harz foreland. With this call Otto benefited from the contacts that his father Albrecht the Bear had made with the Cistercians of Sittichenbach when he opened the list of witnesses for the royal document issued for the Sittichenbach monastery in Quedlinburg on April 11, 1154.
Founding legend around Otto I.
The founding legend of the Lehnin monastery found its way into German literature, forms the basis for the municipality's coat of arms and is allegedly also decisive for the name Lehnin . The Legend of there was the following reason for the choice of location of the monastery building: Otto I had fallen asleep after strenuous hunt under an oak tree. In his dream a white stag appeared to him again and again, which threatened to impale him with its antlers and which he could not fend off with his hunting spear. In his distress Otto called on the name of Christ, whereupon the dream apparition finally disappeared. When Otto told his companions the dream, they interpreted the doe as a symbol for the pagan Slavic tribes and advised him to build a castle at this point in honor of the Christian god against the pagan deities. But it should be a castle of God, a monastery.
Willibald Alexis , the most important Brandenburg novelist before Theodor Fontane , presented the legend in detail in the novel Die Hosen des Herr von Bredow from 1846. His novel character Ruprecht has Alexis report: “The grim elen deer who wanted to kill him while sleeping could only to have been Satan, who snort and tremble in his anger, because the margrave in the country has already accomplished so great and wanted to accomplish even more that his, the reign of darkness, would cease. The margrave ... vowed ... that he would ... build a monastery ... on the same spot. From there the light of faith and good customs and honorable industry should emanate over the whole of the heathen land… ”. The founding legend is also told in Theodor Fontane's novel Before the Storm .
In the altar steps of the monastery church a silicified oak block is embedded, which is said to come from this time and is ascribed to the founding legend as an alleged part of the "Oak of Otto" (a dendrochronological investigation, i.e. dating using annual rings , has not yet been carried out). During the missionary period , pagan temples or shrines were often overbuilt with Christian sacred buildings in order to displace the old religion and to impressively demonstrate the power of the new faith. Some authors therefore suggest that the let-in tree stump could also be the central part of a former Slavic natural sanctuary , which the missionaries could have cut in a similar way to the Donar oak by Boniface . As a macabre sign of triumph, the tree stump would have been structurally integrated into the altar steps.
Oak and deer from the legend today form the coat of arms of the municipality of Kloster Lehnin. After Theodor Fontane Otto I. to the name Lehnin voted because Lanye in Slavic doe means. Fontane refers to the information in the Bohemian Chronicle of Přibík Pulkava , the historiographer of Emperor Charles IV in the 14th century. Stephan Warnatsch, who published a two-volume monograph on the monastery in 1999 , considers a derivation from Jelenin = deer to be more likely, but not to be valid either. Because, according to his considerations, it is not very plausible "that a German margrave should give a monastery foundation directed against the pagan Wends a Slavic name of all things ...". The previous derivations are therefore to be understood as later attempts to explain the Slavic name, which is unusual for a German monastery. "Lehnin" is probably derived from the proper name "Len" (Eng. Lazy) and should therefore be understood as the "Place of Len" - a very common settlement name. "
Seclusion from the world and simplicity of living
The Cistercians found difficult soil conditions for their buildings. The Zauche area is bounded to the northwest by the course of the Havel river , to the southwest by the Baruther glacial valley and to the east by the Nuthe-Nieplitz lowland. The flat, undulating plateau was formed around 20,000 years ago during the Vistula Ice Age , when the inland ice on the Fläming south of the Baruther glacial valley reached its maximum extent to the south and deposited its main terminal moraine in the northern Zauche . The ice and flowing melt water left undulating deposits of rubble , marl and sand on the Zauche , including the Beelitzer sand .
The name of the approximately 60 meters above sea level. NN lying Zauche comes from Slavic and means dry land - which, due to this drought, was settled by the Slavs on the edges of the plateau or on lakes that were mostly formed from blocks of dead ice . Remnants of dammed meltwater lakes and gullies such as the Emstertal gave rise to some deep, impassable swamps in this otherwise barren land, including around the Lehniner Klostersee.
The reason why the monks built the monastery in this rather inhospitable area was due to the strict, ascetic way of life of the Cistercians, who with their Carta Caritatis the original strictness and the rule of "ora et labora" of the Benedictine order , from which they separated in 1098 wanted to restore. Margrave Otto I took this ideal into account when he founded the monastery in 1180 in a swampy area 15 kilometers south-east of his capital, Brandenburg an der Havel. He also wanted his family to have a monastery as a dynastic burial place, which should therefore not be too far away from the prince's seat.
After the monastic rule of St. Benedict ( Benedictine Rule ), the monks wanted to live solely from their own hands. They rejected income from lease and interest, as well as the collection of tithes . Simple clothing, a modest diet with vegetables without any meat, thatched beds without cushions should shape their way of life. A choice of location fitted in with this way of life, which required particular rigor from the monks. According to Fontane, the monasteries should also therefore “in swamps and lowlands, i. H. be built in unhealthy areas ... so that the brothers of this order would always have death in mind. ... In a few places the advantages of this order might emerge more clearly than in the Mark, because nowhere could they find a better area for their work. ” The order's ideal of handwork disappeared shortly after 1200 (see below) and developed with its economic efficiency the monks Lehnin to a wealthy abbey.
The economic development of the monastery
Real estate
The basis of the successful economic activity was the property of the monastery. The foundation's equipment included the Klostersee up to the mill in Nahmitz with all its income, the five villages of Göritz, Rädel , Cistecal, Schwina and Kolpin , part of the village of Götz , a meadow each at Deetz and Wida, and a lift using five winch shovels from the salt tariff to Brandenburg. In the High Middle Ages, fishing in rivers and lakes was of great importance for the supply, so that the possession of lakes and fishing rights were of great importance. One year before his death, in 1183, Otto I added more villages and lakes to this basic equipment. In the period that followed, the Cisterze received gifts of property from the Ascanian rulers, which were usually transferred free of burdens and charges such as taxes or customs duties . The Lehnin monks steadily expanded their area of influence and used the surpluses they had generated to buy additional villages such as neighboring Nahmitz; The Zauche formed the core property of the monastery with a third of its area. Already in 1219 the village of Stangenhagen , which is about forty kilometers away, was added, and later also Blankensee , both of which are located in the south of Fontane's Thümenschen Winkel in the triangle of the rivers Nuthe and Nieplitz. This acquisition extended the Lehnin sphere of influence into Magdeburg, i.e. Saxon .
In 1317 they bought today's flower town Werder (Havel) for 244 marks of Brandenburg silver . The well-known fruit growing in Werder, which is celebrated annually in spring with one of the largest German folk festivals , the Tree Blossom Festival, goes back to the work of this planting place for all cultures in the Mittelmark (G. Sello). Another Lehnin village was today's southern Berlin district of Zehlendorf , as well as Slatdorp , which was separated from Zehlendorf at the time, with the Slatsee ( Schlachtensee ), and even north of Berlin in Barnim there were Lehnin lands such as the village of Wandlitz ( Vandlice ), the Grangie Altenhof in Schönerlinde or the village of Sommerfeld northwest of Oranienburg . The village of Lehnin , the core community of today's large community of Kloster Lehnin , was founded around 1415 when the Cistercians set up a market in front of the monastery walls.
Economic activity
The monks soon assumed an economic role model that was welcome in the Brandenburg villages. Their monasteries became model businesses, as the Cistercians were always up to date with the latest agricultural and economic technology, be it in the reclamation of swamps, the establishment of mills , the cultivation of wine or agriculture and livestock . As a rule, this work was carried out less by the choir monks than by the conversers , the lay brothers with reduced prayer duties, or by employed workers. To support their extensive trade in products such as grain, meat, fish, dairy products, honey , beeswax , wine and leather , the monks maintained flourishing townhouses in Berlin and Brandenburg an der Havel . A document dated August 20, 1469 shows that grain deliveries went as far as Hamburg .
At the beginning of the 13th century, due to the advancing economic development, there was a decisive deviation from the original order ideal: There was no longer a need for specialists for reclamation , but for economy, trade and administration. After years of discussion in the General Chapter , the Cistercians gave up the rule of the order, which forbade sources of income such as interest income as well as the collection of tithes and rent ; this measure affected all Cistercian monasteries across Europe. The extended Lehniner land, partly equipped with the right to tithe collection , led to substantial revenue from these retirement sources that actually contradicted the rule "ora et labora". The trial register of the Lehnin monastery listed the following entry on September 23, 1443 for a rent that was stored in the huge granary ( karnhusz ) : “... twey wispel roggen ... clostere Lenyn hebben Gegeven, unde hebbe gesien, dat the lease in dat closter is fured and upp of the karnhusz monastery is dosed. "
Stephan Warnatsch calculates the total pension income per year, which he estimates to be around a third of the total income, for the period around 1375: "... 111.5 talents money, 3831 guilders, 414 groschen, 8153.5 denarii, 4210.5 bushels and 80 Measure of wheat, 2236 bushels and 13.5 measure of oats, 1792 bushels and 32 measure of barley, 50 bushels of rye, 40 bushels of humus, 2 bushels of poppy seeds, half a pound of pepper, 857 birds and 460 eggs ... “.
In the 15th century, the monastery had such financial strength that loans could be given to cities like Erfurt and Lüneburg . In 1443, for example, Lüneburg received a loan of 550 guilders at 6% annual interest, which the monks reduced to four percent in 1472. When the monastery was secularized in 1542 , the property comprised around 4,500 hectares of forest and arable land, 54 lakes, 9 windmills and 6 water mills, 39 villages and, with Werder, a town. The three mentioned founding of new monasteries in the 13th century, which were allowed as soon as a monastery exceeded the strength of 60 monks, were also an expression of Lehnin's prosperity.
Monastery history and a prophecy
This wealth was hard earned and paid dearly. The legend of the first abbot, Sibold, illustrates the political difficulties the monks had to struggle with in the first few years.
Legend of the murder of the first abbot Sibold
Archaeological research was able to identify several Slavic villages in the immediate vicinity of Lehnin, whose population, especially in the first years after the founding of the monastery until around 1185/1190, offered the monks considerable resistance in their missionary work and rebelled against the destruction of their places of worship. Recent research suggests that the monastery was demonstratively built on a pagan place of worship - the part of the oak trunk embedded in the altar steps of the church could come from an oak that was venerated as a sanctuary by the Slavs. If this analysis is correct, the block would be wrongly ascribed to the founding legend of Otto I. In 1170 the Slavs destroyed the neighboring Zinna monastery, responding to the destruction of the site of their god Triglaw on the Harlunger Berg near Brandenburg an der Havel . In 1179 Slavs murdered the Zinna abbot Rizzo in Jüterbog, Magdeburg.
While this information is historically proven, there is no evidence for the legend about the slaughter of the first Lehnin abbot Sibold in 1190. Nevertheless, it is very likely that this legend contains a real core in view of the circumstances of this time and thus illustrates the challenges that the Lehnins monks had to overcome. The story is passed on in detail by Theodor Fontane: According to this, Sibold went to rest in a hut in the neighboring village of Nahmitz, involuntarily frightened the residents and, after a suggestive misunderstanding about the fisherman's wife, was killed on a tree in the forest after fleeing. The monks are said to have decided to give up the Lehnin standpoint until the Virgin Mary appeared to them and shouted: Redeatis! Nihil deerit vobis . The reverse, you should not lack anything, instilled new trust in God in the monks, so that they continued the construction work on the monastery.
Stephan Warnatsch puts the possible murder of the abbot around 1185 and considers a dispute between the monks and the Nahmitzer Slavs over fishing and milling rights to be likely. Two surviving paintings from the time of the monastery, from the last quarter of the 15th century and the first quarter of the 16th century, depict the murder of Sibold. With their images of the monastery, they are also of interest for the history of the building and were used during the restoration in 1871 ( for a section of the older painting with the monastery church see below; the adjacent scene is a section from the younger picture). In the former Berlin boulevard Siegesallee , which was mockingly called Puppenallee by the population , a bust of the first Lehnin abbot, Sibold, stood next to the monument to Otto I.
Convention as a corrupt band of robbers
In the middle of the 13th century, according to unanimous estimates, at least 100 Cistercians, probably half choir monks and half conversations , lived in separate living areas. Until the middle of the 14th century, the monks came exclusively from the nobility, after which more and more “ commoners ” entered the monastery. Numerous monks studied at the universities in Wittenberg , Erfurt , Frankfurt / Oder and Leipzig .
Some friars gained considerable influence within the church. The monk Dietrich von Portitz, for example, called Dietrich Kagelwit , was Chancellor of Emperor Karl IV, then Bishop of Minden and then Archbishop of Magdeburg. The writer Willibald Alexis reproduces the legend Dietrich Kagelwit and the pig's ears in his novel The Werewolf . Afterwards the emperor brought Kagelwit to his court because he was impressed by the soup creation that the monk put in front of him to strengthen himself during a rest in Lehnin. To have no meat out of necessity and not being allowed to slaughter the pigs kept for the winter in reserve at the direction of the Abbot, who later became Bishop of legend cut after the pigs ears off and seasoned so by the Emperor finding the soup on the Most excellent .
After 170 years, the Ascanian rule in the march ended. With the Brandenburg Interregnum (1319 / 1320-1323) the time of turmoil began, which continued under the Wittelsbachers and Luxemburgers . It was reflected in hard arguments among the friars that went as far as the murder. The convent was at times considered a corrupt band of robbers , some monks were under arms.
In the 14th century, the abbey fought with some neighboring noble families, some of whom had illegally taken possession of monastery property. The von Rochow and von Gröben families are named as opponents of the dispute. There is also talk of the murder of a "knight Falko and four of his companions" who had spent the night in the monastery. Hermann II von Pritzwalk, who was later elected abbot Lehnins, is said to have been involved in the murder. After Falko's murder, monks are said to have armed themselves, recruited mercenaries and carried out raids. The monk Dietrich von Ruppin then reported to the general chapter of the order and Pope Benedict XII. of the operations. Based on the allegations made, the Holy See initiated an investigation into the incidents in 1339, which, however, did not lead to the defendant's removal from office. The applicant himself is reported to have spent nine months in detention at the monastery.
Only when the Hohenzollern came to power in 1415 did Lehnin Abbey flourish again. The leading resistance of the abbot Heinrich Stich (1400–1432) against the Quitzow robber barons and the Lehniner support for Friedrich I earned the abbots trusting and advisory functions also with the new rulers; they received the title of electoral council . The monastery gained further prestige in 1450 when the Pope granted the abbots the rank of bishop . Since then , reports Fontane, they wore the episcopal miter, pallium and crook on solemn occasions. In the state parliaments they sat on the first bench, immediately after the bishops of Brandenburg and Havelberg. The last abbot, Valentin , traveled to Wittenberg in 1518 on behalf of the Brandenburg bishop to see Martin Luther to prevent his publication About the indulgence .
Last abbot Valentin and dissolution of the monastery
“Indeed,” writes Fontane, “our abbot seemed to be called to steer through the manner of his appearance, through firmness and gentleness, the“ embrace of heresy ”, as it was called at the time ... His appearance does not seem to be without influence to have been on Luther, who not only remarked to his friend Spalatinus : "how he was quite ashamed that such a high-ranking clergyman (the bishop) had sent such a high-ranking abbot to him so humbly" ... "
The trusting advisory position, the abbot Valentin Elector Joachim II. Held was that secularisation not prevent Lehnins, but at least postpone until his death in 1542, even if the elector since 1540 won an increasingly willing to listen to Luther's interpretation of the Gospel, to which he officially declared himself in 1555. On his instructions, the Protestant visitors left the monastery of the pious old Father , which they had inspected in 1541, unmolested. After Valentin's death, the elector prevented the election of a new abbot and dissolved the monastery. According to Oskar Schwebel, the small Gothic town was converted into the electoral domain office Lehnin , headed by state officials . The 17 monks who remained with the father to the end resigned from the monastery convent and renounced all claims on the monastery and its legal successors. They received severance payments in the form of money and clothing and the majority of them returned to their hometowns. According to the register of registers (No. 751, see literature), for example, Brother Hieronymus Teuffel received 27 guilders. A monastery brother moved to the Zinna monastery and two older monks wanted and were allowed to end their retirement years in the monastery and received care for this.
Vaticinium Lehninense
Towards the end of the 17th century, a printed prophecy appeared in various places in the Mark Brandenburg, the handwritten original of which was allegedly found in the monastery in 1683 in the presence of the Great Elector . The monastery brother Hermann, who is said to have written the text in his cell in 1306, prophesies in it in Latin verses the fall of the Hohenzollern dynasty and the resurrection of the Lehnin monastery. This Vaticinium Lehninense , which was printed again and again for years and was much discussed until the middle of the 19th century, is a forgery. As a writer u. a. the Brandenburg converts Andreas Fromm and Nikolaus von Zitzewitz , the Jesuit Friedrich von Lüdinghausen Wolff and the historian Martin Friedrich Seidel suspected. The contemporary great echo of the prophecy resulted from the "clairvoyant", absolutely precise prediction of the events up to 1680, which is not surprising, since it was only written in these years. The predictions for the period after 1680 seem downright bizarre - at least from today's perspective. At the end of the eighteenth century even the most ardent proponents abandoned prophecy; the no less lively discussions that followed revolved around the question of who could have been the author of the Vatican.
Story after the monks, from 1543
Decay of the monastery and new prosperity
Elector Joachim II had the building and surrounding areas of the Lehnin electoral domain office, which had been electoral since 1542, expanded; Parts were used as hunting camps. Towards the end of the 16th century the Hohenzollern established the falconer's house as a guest house for the electoral hunting parties. During the Thirty Years War , the facility was looted and fires several times . In the 17th century, the former monastery experienced a temporary boom. The Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm had the west wing lengthened and the enclosure expanded into a hunting lodge around 1650, which brought about a modest court life. His first wife, Electress Luise Henriette von Oranien , made Lehnin her favorite summer residence . On May 9, 1667, the electoral family in Lehnin said goodbye to the seriously ill Henriette, and a few weeks later she died in Berlin. The name of the Electress lives on in today's church Luise-Henrietten-Stift .
When after the plague years and almost 50 years after the Thirty Years' War many Brandenburg villages were still almost orphaned, the Great Elector in 1685 with the Edict of Potsdam offered the Huguenots persecuted in France because of their religion free and safe settlement in Brandenburg. The refugees received generous privileges , including exemption from taxes and customs duties, subsidies for commercial enterprises and payment of pastors by the principality. Huguenots also settled in the orphaned domain of Lehnin. Because of the religious convictions of the French, a wall was drawn into the still existing monastery church, which led to the structural separation of the church into a Calvinist-Reformed and a Lutheran part.
With the subsequent boom in Brandenburg's economy and the new water connection to the Havel through the Emster Canal , the Lehniner brickworks, among other things, flourished again; At that time Lehnin had a port where barges could dock. The monastery did not benefit from the prosperity, but was increasingly forgotten and fell into disrepair again. Between 1770 and 1820 the Brandenburgers used the facility as a quarry and removed large parts. The three western central nave bays of the church, the north aisle , cloister , enclosure and hunting lodge were in ruins. The Romanesque eastern part of the church was spared and continued to serve as the parish church. Nine Ascanian margraves and three electors from the House of Hohenzollern had their graves in the monastery, only the grave slab of Otto VI. remained. In 1811 the now Prussian domain office Lehnin went into private ownership.
The complex flourished again in the middle of the 19th century, when emerging national consciousness and romanticism made the Prussian royal house and the educated classes aware of the almost ruined monastery. The manor owner of Lehnin, Robert von Loebell (1815–1905), who lived in the monastery grounds from 1846 to 1870, put an end to the devastation and used his very good relationships with the royal family, especially with Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, later King Friedrich III. in order to find financially strong sponsors for the preservation of this important cultural site. The romantic on the throne , King Friedrich Wilhelm IV , finally commissioned the restoration of the church, which took place between 1871 and 1877.
Luise-Henrietten-Stift, 1911
In 1911 the Evangelical Church of the older provinces of Prussia bought the building and founded the Deaconess Mother House Luise-Henrietten-Stift , with which a spiritual community moved into the monastery again after a long break. The pen looks with its various helping and healing institutions in the tradition of the Cistercian monastery. After various renovations and extensions, 128 deaconesses and trial sisters were active in the facility at its numerical peak in 1936 . During the time of National Socialism , the monastery management was brought into line and during the Second World War several institutions were closed. In 1943 the so-called General Representative for Chemistry (Gebechem) moved into several monastery buildings and had seven more barracks built on the site for his authority. The authority coordinated the interests of the war economy with those of the Wehrmacht and SS and from here distributed concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers to the chemical industry.
In 1949, the conversion of the former monastery farm into a hospital began, which was only completed after almost 20 years. Since the establishment of a geriatric rehabilitation clinic with an old people's and nursing home in 1993, the Luise-Henrietten-Stift has been a geriatric center in the Evangelisches Diakonissenhaus Berlin Teltow Lehnin Foundation . Today the facility with around 400 employees also has a clinic for internal medicine and palliative medicine , a hospice , nursing school, deaconry and kindergarten. The church and grounds belonged to the special fund of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg until January 1, 2004 and have since been the property of the Evangelical Deaconess House Berlin Teltow Lehnin , a foundation under civil law. In 2011 a memorial plaque was installed for the “FrauenOrte im Land Brandenburg” project funded by the Brandenburg Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Women and the Family.
Cistercian architecture
The art of simplicity
The strict lifestyle of the Cistercians was reflected in their simple buildings. The buildings should be sober and without ornamentation, without jewelry and gold. In 1218 the General Chapter, the highest authority in the strict, centralized leadership structure of the Order, even banned colorful church floors. Although the ascetic discipline found its equivalent in a simple, clearly structured architecture, very handsome and from today's perspective impressive buildings were built. In order to achieve an aesthetically pleasing aesthetic despite all the self-imposed restrictions, the monks used not only various frieze shapes but also two stylistic means: the brick technique and the grisaille technique as a special form of stained glass for church windows.
Brick technology
The Cistercians used the brick building in northern Germany because it produced more stable walls compared to the contemporary granite buildings. Granite stones were usually only used for the foundations. The monks found suitable clay in neighboring Kaltenhausen . The clay was soaked with water in the pits they found in 1876 and, after adding sand, kneaded into a mortar-like mass, which was placed in wooden box molds and smoothed. After a day in the sunlight, the mass was firm enough for further processing in the kilns. Here, up to 10,000 stones were burned simultaneously and from all sides for eight days with a weak wood / peat fire. During the subsequent four or five days of intense heating up to 1000 ° C, the yellowish iron hydroxide of the brick earth became the characteristic red iron oxide of the bricks. The ovens were then covered with soil and allowed to cool for around four weeks. The art of brick production consisted in the right strength of the fire, too weak a fire produced crumbling bricks that were too strong deformed. The “scrap” was used as filler material. The stones were on average 11 inches high, 14 inches wide and 26 to 31.5 inches long. Differences resulted from different shrinkage during firing and drying. Even if the early Gothic Cistercian buildings convey a uniform image, there were still no binding or generally valid building plans. The relatively uniform architecture results from the limited design possibilities of brick technology.
Grisaill technology
The central general chapter also gave the monasteries clear rules for the windows: They should be designed in white, without crosses and without the usual colored images of biblical figures. The monks helped themselves with the grisaill painting (from French gris - gray), which was developed in France and adorned gray glass or books with monochrome ornaments . The Cistercians developed their own style from this technique by painting white-milky discs with various forms of plant ornaments such as tendrils and foliage. They used black solder as the color, which was burned into the panes at a temperature of 600 ° C, resulting in the typical gray-on-gray tone. Black solder is a black color obtained from colored lead glass that is easy to melt. The high, artistically painted windows, along with stair turrets, were the dominant design elements of the Lehnin buildings. No such window has survived in Lehnin; various fragments of windows have been excavated in the Chorin subsidiary monastery.
Building history
Among the already restored buildings of today's monastery complex, not only the church with its enclosure is impressive, but also other historical brick buildings such as the royal house and the falconer's house . A brief description of these buildings and their current use follows after the sections on the church.
overview
There are almost no reliable sources about the early building history and the few excavation finds in the reconstruction phase of the 19th century do not provide any reliable information. Until the actual start of construction, the first monks from 1183 had makeshift accommodation and a provisional prayer chapel, which the conversers and recruited workers had created in advance. About five years after the monastery was founded, around 1185, construction of the church and the central monastery complex began, which, according to traditional representations, was essentially completed by 1260. More recent research suggests that the early buildings were already completed around 1235 and that the first renovations were completed around 1260.
The "old" abbot's house with the attached gatehouse at the west exit was also completed around 1270 with some certainty . In the 14th century the complex was expanded to include the hospital (later the royal house ), the granary and the monastery wall with a fortified tower in the southwestern part. The falconer house was added towards the end of the 15th century. The buildings were started in the late Romanesque style. When Gothic elements prevailed in Europe, their adoption in Lehnin was initially rather cautious, in line with the monastic abstinence.
After the reconstruction of the destroyed monastery church in the 19th century, restorations and renovations of various historical buildings followed, especially since the German reunification , which continued in 2004. More recent renovations were carried out to a large extent with financial subsidies from the State of Brandenburg and in some cases, as in 2004 with the old office building , were accompanied by the Brandenburg Office for Monument Preservation.
St. Marien Monastery Church
The three-aisled monastery church is a pillar basilica in the shape of a cross and one of the most important brick buildings in the Mark Brandenburg. In terms of style, the church is a late Romanesque-early Gothic building.
Construction phases
In a first construction phase from around 1185/1190 to 1195/1200, the monks built the eastern parts of the church with apse , sanctuary, crossing , transept and side chapels , the original foundation walls have been preserved to this day. The second construction phase from 1195/1200 to 1205, after a likely change in the construction plan, essentially involved raising the apse and building part of the eastern wing of the enclosure with a direct connection to the south side of the church. Another change in the planning led in a third phase from 1205 to 1215/1220 to the vaulting of the church with ribbed vaults , the east wing and the first nave yoke with a square floor plan were completed. At this point at the latest, the church could be used for the first time. Due to financial bottlenecks, there is said to have been a construction break of around thirty years, but the more recent deliberations of Warnatsch assume a fourth construction phase from 1220 to 1235, in which the remaining enclosure with sacristy, cloister and converse wing was built. The construction of the west facade closed the main nave and completed the church.
After a construction break of only around 15 years, according to Warnatsch, conversions followed in a fifth section from 1250 to 1262/1270, with which the Cistercians redesigned the three western nave bays and built a new imposing and representative western facade. The new west facade can be seen as a compromise between the monks' self-restraint towards simplicity and the sovereign claim to representation of the Ascanian founding family (monastery, burial place). In order to comply with the statute of the Cistercian General Chapter of 1157: Stone towers for bells should not be sufficient, the church was given a copper-covered roof turret instead of a bell tower . The successful reconstruction of the ridge turret in the 1870s was based, among other things, on the picture from the first quarter of the 16th century, which depicts the murder of the first abbot, Sibold.
Reconstruction - an early masterpiece of modern monument preservation
Friedrich Wilhelm IV commissioned various architects, including Ludwig Persius (1842) and Friedrich August Stüler (around 1860), to draw up reports and plans for the restoration of the destroyed church. The plans, which were repeatedly delayed and rejected, were followed by the first excavations and investigations of the church ruins in 1862. In the spring of 1871, the reconstruction of the church began, which is said to have been under the direction of the royal builder Geiseler until September 1871 and then under that of the building inspector Koehler ; however, this information is not yet fully established.
The aim of restoring the buildings as faithfully as possible led to the opening of the old clay pits so that the bricks could be fired in the historical colors. The builders and architects succeeded in rebuilding the destroyed parts and in particular the nave according to the historical model. On June 24, 1877, the later 99-day emperor Friedrich III consecrated . the church one. Georg Sello drew a bow from Otto I to Friedrich III: “The son of the founder of the Brandenburg state laid the foundation stone of the church…; the emperor's son closed the last link in the chain of their fates, which was so closely connected with the history of the march ... when in his presence ... the consecration was carried out. As before, the sound of bells and choir singing move across the calm waters of the monastery. "
According to recent comparative research, it is more of a reconstruction and less of a restoration. The deviations from the original, which are barely noticeable to the layman, do not, however, cloud the overall picture, so that the work of the Prussian master builders can still be considered an early masterpiece of modern monument preservation. This is all the more true as in the 1870s older construction plans and data that can be used for comparison today were not yet available. Another comprehensive restoration of the building took place in the mid-1990s.
Interior
Only the brick high altar, two grave slabs, the silicified oak block in the steps to the sanctuary with its unexplained symbolism and the two paintings on the legend of the slaughter of the first abbot Sibold remained of the historical furnishings of the church. The tombstone on the northwest wall shows the penultimate abbot Peter († March 6, 1509) with a staff and a symbolic dog as a symbol of Christian loyalty in vigilance and contemplation . The older plate comes from the grave of the Ascanian margrave Otto VI. (also Ottoko or little Otto ), who died as a monk on July 16, 1303 in the monastery. According to Warnatsch, the annoying assignment in literature and travel guides to Margrave Otto IV ( with the arrow ) is wrong, because he was buried in 1308/1309 in the daughter monastery of Chorin. All other plates from the grave of the ruling family have been destroyed.
It is not known whether an organ existed at the time of monastery life ; the existing organ from 1975 comes from the Schuke company from Potsdam.
The late Gothic wood-carved winged altar from 1476 was only brought into the choir room in 1948 on loan from the Brandenburg Cathedral Monastery . The Lehniner altar from 1518 was moved to the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul (Brandenburg an der Havel) in 1552 as part of the Reformation and has served there as the main altar in the high choir since 1727. The wooden baptism in the transept of the Lehnin Monastery dates from the 17th century. The simple, impressive triumphal cross came in 1952 from the village church of Groß-Briesen near Belzig. Its original location is unknown. According to estimates, the creation of the wooden cross was around 1240.
Today the Lehniner use the house as a parish church. Together with the Zinna Monastery, the historic building offers the Musica Mediaevalis series , medieval vocal music in Cistercian monasteries. Another musical specialty is the Lehniner summer music with concerts in the monastery church, in the cloister and in the monastery hall.
Central monastery complex, cloister, library
From the former enclosure , the actual habitat of the monks, some remains have been preserved, which come from the second (1195 / 1200–1205) and fourth construction phase (1220–1235). While the dormitory (dormitory) had a direct connection to the church, the western converse wing was strictly separated from the rest of the enclosure. The dining room was in the south wing. Around 1650, the enclosure was transformed into a hunting lodge. The former Konversenflügel is now known as the Luise Henrietten House and is the hospice and home of the deaconesses and sisters. In 2004, the monastery administration and the kitchen are located in the east wing with the cloister and the chapter house, today's Cecilienhaus . The new south wing is home to the geriatric rehabilitation clinic.
In the cloister you can see two book niches of the lost library , which with around 560 volumes and almost 1,000 titles already had an extraordinary collection for the time around 1450. According to the rules of the order, the handwritten volumes were not allowed to have gold or silver clasps and the letters had to remain free of colored and figurative representations. A catalog of the library from 1514 has survived. After that, the library owned the revelationes caelestes of St. Birgitta of Sweden and the writings of St. Hildegard von Bingen , who had a lively correspondence with her sponsor, Bernhard von Clairvaux , who was also canonized and one of the founders of the Cistercian order.
Royal house, falconer house, abbot house, Elisabeth house
The so-called royal house was very probably the "hospital" during the monastery. The monks built the building like the church in brick art, but in the late Gothic style. The last abbot Valentin had the house prepared around 1530 as accommodation for Joachim I for the days when the elector went hunting in the extensive Lehnin forests. The expansion to the royal house took place under Wilhelm IV. After the restoration in the old style in 1993–1995, the house is now a gem of Brandenburg architecture. A learning workshop uses the building for advanced training courses and seminars, as well as readings and smaller chamber concerts .
Directly south in front of the royal house, behind the south entrance of the monastery complex, is the similarly handsome falconer house . The building, built towards the end of the 15th century, served both the monastery and the later electoral hunting parties as a guest house. Today the day care center of the monastery is housed here. The “old” abbot's house at the west exit, the original gatehouse , which was probably built before 1270 , is part of the historical building fabric. A restoration and the almost right-angled extension of the Leibnizhaus took place in the years after 1877. Another listed modernization in 1995/1996 preserved many historical details and carefully incorporated them into the modern furnishings. Both buildings now house the guest house Kloster Lehnin with rooms that are open to all interested parties.
The adjoining Elisabethhaus , which has been known as the Elisabethhaus since 1911 , now houses the visitor reception, the celebratory and dining room of the monastery and apartments for the nursing school trainees on the first floor. There is also the permanent exhibition Cistercians in Brandenburg . The Elisabethhaus goes back to originally separate farm buildings such as stables, coach house and brewery, the construction of which the monks began around 1350. The building, which has been changed over and over again over the centuries, underwent extensive renovations, especially at the beginning of the 19th century. Another thorough renovation between 1994 and 1996 placed particular emphasis on preserving the historical substance.
Granary, wall, gate and other buildings
To the east of the Elisabethhaus is the former granary from the middle of the 14th century with a very simple, yet beautiful brick facade and a great roof construction. The huge granary, which with its imposing size refers to the wealth of the former monastery, was designed by the monks as a three-aisled hall construction. After renovations at the end of the 16th century, only the central part with a few pointed arcades remained . After completion of the office building (see below), the granary remains the last larger building that has not yet been renovated. The monastery is planning to expand into a restaurant with a garden terrace in the lower area and rooms for exhibitions and concerts in the roof structure . Further east follows the Gothic gate chapel , which was reconstructed on a private initiative from 1988 to 1991 and which the monastery now uses as a prayer room. The adjoining Tetzeltor , like the gate chapel, dates from the time of the monastery. The following office building from 1696 to the west served as the residence of the electoral domain administrator; The house was restored until 2005 and since then it has housed a local museum.
In the place of the medieval stables, the barn and the bakery on the north-eastern edge of the entire complex, there are now various hospital facilities, including the Lindenhaus and the Katharinenhaus . The few meters south to Sonnenschlößchen houses a youth assistance project of the pen. Some parts of the monastery wall to the southwest and the ruins of the monastery defense tower from the 14th century are part of the historical structure. In the time of the domain, the tower was given the name Hungerturm (or Kuhbier ) because the prison was temporarily housed here. Wall and tower border the former electoral official hiergarten . Located in the Gothic Revival held style rectory in the southwest corner, designed by Ludwig Persius dates back to 1845. It is now home to the superintendent of the church district Belzig-Lehnin. Various other buildings that were added in the 20th century are part of the clinics.
Cecilienhaus
Gate chapel
Elisabethhaus
Wall
Overview map
An overview map with all Brandenburg Cistercian monasteries can be found at the Marienfließ convent , the fourth monastery to be founded under the name of the Cistercians in the Märkisch-Lausitz area, donated in 1230 by the noble gentlemen Gans zu Putlitz in Prignitz .
Sources and research
Stephan Warnatsch brought together 765 notarized and verbally handed down events at Lehnin, although only a few original documents have survived. In the second volume of his work, the register of registers , the historian lists the sources on Lehnin in chronological order in the form of a source synopsis. In 1998, Wolfgang Ribbe , as editor, published the process register of the Lehnin monastery as a book, which reproduces the procedural disputes of the Cisterce in the 15th century for around 75 years in their historical wording. The register was created at the behest of Abbot Heinrich Stich under the name of the Lehnin Monastery Memorial Book and contains, for the most part, the Lehnin disputes of this time with towns and especially with the local nobility over property rights and rights of use.
The most extensive research on Lehnin, the 1999 dissertation by Stephan Warnatsch, has been available as a two-volume book edition since 2000. In addition to this work, there have only been a few topic-related articles in recent times; the last, more detailed monograph before that is from Johannes Schultze from 1930. The most important historical monograph is Georg Sellos Lehnin from 1881 and the oldest is from Moritz Wilhelm Heffner from 1851.
Remarks
- ↑ Reinhard E. Fischer : The place names of the states of Brandenburg and Berlin , Volume 13 of the Brandenburg Historical Studies on behalf of the Brandenburg Historical Commission, be.bra Wissenschaft verlag, Berlin-Brandenburg, 2005, ISBN 3-937233-30-X , p. 103, ISSN 1860-2436 .
- ↑ For the outdated view of Fontane see historical picture of the emergence of the Mark Brandenburg # Theodor Fontane: Quotes from walks through the Mark Brandenburg
- ↑ For the actual advantages of the Cistercians see Dorfkirchen in Berlin # Importance of the Cistercians . See also “Economic activity” below.
- ↑ today Emstal
- ↑ The calculation is based on the following values: for the volume measure bushel 55 liters; for a measure around one liter; see also old dimensions and weights
- ^ Marie-Luise Buchinger, Marcus Cante: Monuments in Brandenburg, Potsdam-Mittelmark district . In: on behalf of the Ministry of Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg from the Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and State Archaeological Museum (ed.): Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . 1st edition. tape 14 .1, part 1: Northern teeth. Wernersche Verlagsanstalt, Worms am Rhein 2009, ISBN 978-3-88462-285-8 , p. 319 .
- ↑ Louis de Bouveret: The wonderful prophecy of the brother Hermann von Lehnin: with complete explanations after the French. Works . Kremer & Becker, Cologne 1845, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 1-73342
- ^ GE Guhrauer: The prophecy of Lehnin . Breslau 1850 ( books.google.de ).
- ↑ Evangelisches Diakonissenhaus Berlin Teltow Lehnin ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) History of the Lehnin monastery.
- ↑ FrauenOrte: Kloster Lehnin, Evangelisches Diakonissenhaus Berlin Teltow Lehnin ( Memento from August 1, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
literature
Specialist literature
- Franz Winter : The Cistercians of north-eastern Germany. A contribution to the church and cultural history of the German Middle Ages. Volume 2: From the appearance of the mendicant orders to the end of the 13th century. Gotha 1871, pp. 268-271 and pp. 286-288.
- Johannes Schultze : Lehnin. 750 years of monastery and local history with previously unknown views of the 18th century. Bernburg 1930.
- Brandenburg monastery book. Handbook of the monasteries, monasteries and comers to the middle of the 16th century , ed. by Heinz-Dieter Heimann , Klaus Neitmann , Winfried Schich , 2 volumes. Berlin 2007, pp. 764-803.
- Wolfgang Ribbe : On the religious policy of the Ascanians. Cistercians and sovereignty in the Elbe-Oder region. In: Cistercian Studies I (= Studies on European History 11), Berlin 1975, pp. 77–96.
- Winfried Schich : Monasteries and cities as new central places of the high Middle Ages in the area east of the middle Elbe. In: Karl-Heinz Spieß (Hrsg.): Landscapes in the Middle Ages . Stuttgart 2006, pp. 113-134.
- Stephan Warnatsch: History of the Lehnin Monastery 1180–1542. Studies on the history, art and culture of the Cistercians. Volume 12.1. Freie Universität Berlin, Diss. 1999. Lukas, Berlin 2000. ISBN 3-931836-45-2 (quotations: Name Lehnin p. 47f; property p. 211; pension income calculation p. 258)
- Stephan Warnatsch: History of the Lehnin Monastery 1180–1542. Register directory. Vol. 12.2. ISBN 3-931836-46-0 (credit to Lüneburg No. 438 and 537, compensation to the monks No. 740 ff.)
- Wolfgang Ribbe (ed.): The process register of the monastery Lehnin . Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1998, ISBN 3-930850-80-X (Quote: Lease levy on the granary, p. 78)
- Lutz Partenheimer : Albrecht the Bear . 2nd Edition. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-412-16302-3
- Adolf Laminski: A Lehniner manuscript in the Marienkirche in Berlin. In: Marginalien , 110 (1988,2). P. 28–32: Fig.
Popular scientific literature
- Lehnin Cistercian Abbey. From the Ascanian family burial to the establishment of evangelical charity. The blue books. Text by Stephan Warnatsch, photos by Volkmar Billeb. 2nd, modified edition. Langewiesche Nachf., Königstein im Taunus 2008, ISBN 978-3-7845-0816-0 , 62 pp., 103 figs. And Plans, dav. 53 colored, detailed bibliography.
- Gisela Gooss, Jacqueline Hennig (eds.): All Brandenburg Cistercian monasteries. Marianne-Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-932370-33-3 .
Historical literature
- Major General z. D. v. Loebell: Lehnin Monastery. With 10 illustrations. Phot. H. Zernsdorf in Belzig. In: From rock to sea. 22. Vol. 2, 1903, pp. 1005-1009.
- Georg Sello : Lehnin Monastery. Contributions to the history of the monastery and office. Lehmann, Berlin 1881, publisher v. Richard George. W. Pauli's Nachf., Berlin 1900. (Quote: p. 79, excerpt from Lehnin in Hie gut Brandenburg all way! )
- Ernst Friedel , Oskar Schwebel: Pictures from the Mark Brandenburg. Otto Spamer, Leipzig 1881. (Quote: p. 439)
- Theodor Fontane : Walks through the Mark Brandenburg. Part 3. Havelland . (1st edition 1873.) Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich 1971. ISBN 3-485-00293-3 (Quotations after this edition. Because of the many different editions, a page number of the quotations is not given)
- Wilhelm Meinhold : Prophecy of Abbot Hermann von Lehnin around the year 1234. (Translation of the «Vaticinium Lehninense»), 1849
- Valentin Heinrich Schmidt: The prophecy of the monk Hermann von Lehnin about the Mark Brandenburg and its rulers. Enslin, Berlin 1820. ( digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)
- Eduard Roesch: Hermann's von Lehnin prophecy about the Brandenburg house. Scheible, Stuttgart 1820. ( digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)
- Siegmar Döpp : Vaticinium Lehninense - The Lehninsche prophecy. On the reception of a powerful Latin poetry from the 18th to the 20th century. Olms, Hildesheim 2015.
Fiction
- Willibald Alexis : Herr von Bredow's trousers. (1st edition 1846). Neufeld & Henius, Berlin 1925. (Quotations from this edition. For a detailed description of several pages of the legend of the murder of the first Abbot Sibold, see chapter Lehnin Monastery , p. 126 ff., Quotation: p. 133. ( Digitized at Zeno.org .) )
- Willibald Alexis: Dietrich Kagelwit and the pig's ears. In: Hie good Brandenburg always! Edited by Richard George. W. Pauli's Nachf., Berlin 1900, p. 188 ff. (Excerpt from his novel Der Werwolf , 1847)
