Marienborn Abbey (Eifel)
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Marienborn Abbey ( Latin: Fons beatae Mariae ) in Zülpich-Hoven is a former Cistercian abbey on the edge of the Eifel . It was founded in 1188 by Cistercian women from the Sankt Thomas an der Kyll monastery. One of the most distinguished inhabitants of the monastery is St. Hermann Joseph von Steinfeld , who lived here for a short time and died in 1246. The monastery church, which still exists today, houses the "Hovener Madonna", one of the most important Romanesque sculptures in the Rhineland from the 12th century. In the apse there are Roman stones (not Celtic, as described in the illustrated book that is available at the gate). One recognizes the Latin inscriptions, which point to a matron shrine.
In 1888 the monastery buildings were rebuilt by the Cologne Cellite Society according to the rule of St. Augustinus , who set up the Marienborn hospitals here, a nursing home for psychiatric care of seriously mentally ill women. Since 1985 it has been integrated into the regional care of the Euskirchen district as a specialist clinic for psychiatry and psychotherapy .
Monastery history
The Archbishop of Cologne, Philipp von Heinsberg , gave the Cistercian Sisters , who lived in Sankt Thomas (Eifel), the Marienkirche in Zülpich-Hoven, which was to become the center of a new branch of their order. The possessions of the order were divided between the mother house and the new founding of the monastery. Details of this division are recorded in the Cologne shrine documents . Accordingly, the new monastery received the properties located in the Archdiocese of Cologne , while those in the Archdiocese of Trier remained for the mother house .
The patronage of the Marienkirche in Hoven had been in the hands of the Zülpich Priestly Society of the Holy Spirit , to which Dietrich I von Hengebach and the Archbishop of Cologne himself belonged. In favor of the new monastery, the brotherhood renounced this privilege in 1190 and transferred many of their possessions to the monastery, including an estate in Kessenich (Euskirchen) and the nuns mill in Linzenich . Equipped in this way, the monastery settlement received confirmation from Pope Celestine III in 1191 . . Lothar von Hochstaden , the father of the later Archbishop of Cologne, Konrad von Hochstaden , added other possessions .
Two further branches of the order were founded from Marienborn Abbey. 1197 the Walberberg Monastery near Bornheim in the Rhineland and 1218 the Fröndenberg Monastery in Unna in Westphalia .
A special event in the history of the monastery is the presence of the Steinfeld canon and later Saint Hermann Joseph von Steinfeld , who was sent to Hoven by his abbot as fasting preacher at the request of the Marienborn convent in the spring of 1246 . The Premonstratensian , who was already highly admired during his lifetime, died shortly after his arrival in Hoven on April 7, 1246 and was buried in the Marienborn monastery. This led to a dispute with Steinfeld Monastery. Only after mediation by the Archbishop of Cologne were the women religious of Hoven ready to agree to the transfer of the body to Steinfeld. The Staufer decorative elements of the apse , such as the typical columns, pilasters and capitals, date from this period .
In 1466 the monastery building was badly damaged by fire. Later war riots led to further considerable losses of income, so that the convent could no longer support itself. In order to improve the economic situation, in 1525 the Marienkirche, which was in the monastery district and had been an independent parish church until then, was incorporated into the monastery . The convent thus benefited from the rich benefices of the Marienkirche, to which the Spitz house in Zülpich and some houses near the monastery, as well as the hamlet of Floren near Hoven and the villages of Schwerfen and Oberelvenich belonged. The monastery church was equipped with a nuns gallery and a cloister was added.
During the Thirty Years' War it was plundered and cremated by Hessian mercenaries in 1642, as was the town of Zülpich and the Hovener parish church of St. Margaretha. The nuns moved their residence to Cologne.
After another serious fire, the reconstruction of the monastery complex began in 1722 under Abbess Leonora von Bönninghausen zu Waldeck. This was completed in 1777.
Since the 13th century the monastery was under the supervision of the abbot von Heisterbach , later the abbot von Altenberg . His primary task - the reception and upbringing of the unmarried daughters of the Rhenish nobility - brought about an increasing secularization of monastic life. In the visitation reports of 17./18. In the 19th century, monastery breeding was criticized several times and strict measures were taken to promote it. Abbot Henning von Altenberg gave the nuns a charter with rules of conduct in 1710 , but they did not follow them. In 1765 Abbot Hoerdt reported to the general chapter of the order: "You are and will remain ungrateful to the order and hardly to be kept in discipline." In 1793, the abbess Gertrudis von Brackel was suspended from her office for 12 years because of misconduct against monastic discipline .
In the course of the French occupation of the Rhineland, the monastery was subject to secularization in 1802 and it was sold to a Bonn businessman for 28,000 francs . The church was also profaned and used as a barn.
In 1525 the Marienkirche in Zülpich-Hoven became the monastery church of the Marienborn Cistercians.
Here today's monastery church from the northwest.
The "Hovener Madonna" from the 12th century in the Marienborn monastery church is one of the most important cultural treasures of the Rhineland
“ Pietà ” from the 16th century in the Marienborn monastery church
Triptych with a wood-carved crucifixion group in the Marienborn monastery church
Marienborn hospitals
In 1888, the up-and-coming Cologne religious order of the Cellitinnen acquired according to the rule of St. Augustine bought the neglected monastery complex for 48,000 DM in order to set up a private sanatorium and nursing home for incurably mentally ill Catholic women. For this purpose the monastery complex was repaired and rebuilt.
The church with the north wing of the cloister , the sacristy and the Hermann-Josef-Chapel, as well as larger parts of the former enclosure , were preserved from the historical structure . The monastery church was restored by the Cologne architect Theodor Kremer and consecrated as an institution church in 1891 , and the cloister building was set up to accommodate the sick.
In the first year, 50 patients in need of care were accommodated in one wing. At the beginning of 1891, 250 women in need of care were already in the care of the new care facility. As the number of patients increased, so did the nursing staff. In 1937, 702 women were cared for by 99 nuns. Most were long-term patients with epilepsy , intellectual disability, or manic depression . They came to the facility on a private initiative and paid a monthly pension or a one-off severance payment.
Since 1926 a prison doctor has been in charge of medical and therapeutic care. In 1930 he was provided with an assistant doctor. The doctors trained the nursing staff with regard to the special needs of mentally ill patients and paid attention to proper care. The principle of bed treatment for restless patients , which was common in the 1920s, was replaced by an activating treatment for the sick , in which the doctors assigned the patients to various jobs in the household and agriculture according to their degree of disability. Drug treatment was rare.
The facility run by the Cellitinnen had a good reputation in the Euskirchen district, which was confirmed by regular visitations by the provincial administration of the Rhine Province .
During the Nazi era , the Hovener hospital was particularly hard hit by the Nazi legislation on racial hygiene and its implementation.
From 1933, the Reich Arbeitsgemeinschaft Heil- und Pflegeeanstalten visited the facility and after 1940 these visitations were carried out by the Gestapo . The senior prison doctor had to create registration forms for patients who were no longer able to work and who were supposed to be "relocated" from the Hovener institute to other facilities. The Gestapo later selected these victims themselves.
The removal took place from February 1941 onwards by the NS company Gekrat as part of the T4 campaign . Some of the named patients were brought to the Nazi euthanasia center in Hadamar with temporary accommodation , where they were killed by gassing , lethal injections or overdosing on medication. The nuns sometimes accompanied the transports to the Andernach interim camp . Residents of the home were also released early to protect them from being evacuated.
From February 1941 to January 1943, a total of 490 patients from the Hovener hospital were transported and murdered in eight transports.
The rooms that were vacated were occupied by the Cologne-Riehler Anstalten, a Cologne old people's home with elderly women in need of care. In the last years of the war, these patients had to leave the rooms because they were used as a hospital or baby ward. After the bombing of the Zülpich hospital, local sick and injured people were also given medical care here.
On March 3, 1945, the Americans occupied Marienborn Abbey.
literature
- Heribert van der Broek: The history of the old Cistercian monastery in Zülpich-Hoven. In: District of Euskirchen. Yearbook 1976. Euskirchen 1975
- Heribert van der Broek: The Marienborn monastery church - a Romanesque work of art. In: District of Euskirchen. Yearbook 1977. Euskirchen 1976
- Paul Clemen (Hrsg.): The art monuments of the Rhine province. Vol. 1. District of Euskirchen. Düsseldorf, Schwann 1900.
- Paul Heusgens: History of the village and monastery Hoven near Zülpich. Euskirchen 1931
- Paul Heusgens: The Deanery Zülpich. (History of the parishes of the Archdiocese of Cologne, edited by Robert Haaß. 2.3). Siegburg 1958
- Harald Herzog and Norbert Nussbaum (arrangement): Monuments in the Rhineland. 9.5. City of Zuelpich. Cologne 1988
- Harry Seipolt: Forced sterilization and Nazi "euthanasia" in the Aachen region . Aachen 1995. ISBN 3-89399-217-0 .
- Gabriele Rünger: The victims of racial hygiene - forced sterilization, euthanasia and racial madness. In: History Association of the District of Euskirchen eV (Ed.): National Socialism in the District of Euskirchen - The brown past of a region. Euskirchen 2006, ISBN 3-935221-72-X
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Harald Herzog and Norbert Nussbaum (arr.): Monuments in the Rhineland. 9.5. City of Zuelpich. Cologne 1988, p. 164
- ^ Juergen Kaiser: Romanesque in the Rhineland . Ed .: Grevenbroich Verlag Koeln.
- ↑ Illustration based on: Heribert van der Broek: The history of the old Cistercian monastery in Zülpich-Hoven. In: District of Euskirchen. Yearbook 1976. Euskirchen 1975, p. 56 ff
- ^ Robert Hoeniger : Cologne shrine documents of the 12th century. Bonn 1884
- ↑ Karl Koch u. a .: The vita of the Premonstratensian Hermann Joseph von Steinfeld. , Cologne 1958
- ^ Hans Mosler: The Cistercian Abbey Altenberg. (= Germania Sacra; new episode 2. ) Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1965, p. 86. Digitized
- ↑ Gabriele Rünger: The Victims of Racial Hygiene - Forced Sterilization, Euthanasia and Racial Madness. Euskirchen 2006, p. 723f.
- ↑ Gabriele Rünger: The Victims of Racial Hygiene - Forced Sterilization, Euthanasia and Racial Madness. Euskirchen 2006, p. 727ff.
- ^ Harry Seipolt: Forced sterilization and Nazi "euthanasia" in the Aachen region . Aachen 1995, p. 97f.
Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′ 1.9 ″ N , 6 ° 38 ′ 40 ″ E