Mariensee Monastery

Mariensee Cistercian Abbey
Location:	Germany Lower Saxony
Order number (according to Janauschek ) :
Patronage :
Founding year:	1206
Reformation:	1543
Mother Monastery:
Daughter monasteries:	no

Mariensee Monastery

The Mariensee Monastery is a Protestant women's monastery in Mariensee , a district of Neustadt am Rübenberge not far from Hanover . It is one of the five Calenberg monasteries administered by the Hannover Monastery Chamber.

Site plan of the monastery complex in 1742

history

The Mariensee Monastery was founded as a Cistercian monastery by Count Bernhard II von Wölpe around 1207 and was given a large amount of land. The nuns lived secluded from the world. The agricultural products produced by the monastery could be sold more easily through possessions in the fortified old town of Hanover . The proceeds made it possible to build a brick hall church. After the von Wölpe family died out around 1300, their inheritance was purchased by the Welfs . This worsened the economic situation of the monastery. The strict rules of the order were also less observed. Attempts at reforming the moral decline by Duke Wilhelm von Calenberg and his monastery reformer Johannes Busch in 1430 were initially opposed by the nuns.

In the course of the Reformation , the monastery was not dissolved in 1543, but continued in the Protestant sense. The monastery property was administered separately. During the Thirty Years War the monastery complex was looted and partially destroyed. In 1720 there was a major fire that completely destroyed the medieval monastery building. This made the church the only building from the time it was founded. During the reign of King George II , the convent building was rebuilt as a four-wing complex in the style of the North German Baroque. At the same time, the furnishings of the church were redesigned in Baroque style - as was their roof turret, which in Cistercian monasteries replaces the bell tower. The floor plan of the new building corresponded to the Cistercian building regulations, but individual residential units now enabled the nuns to manage their own households.

Since 2017, Mariensee Monastery has been one of the women's places in Lower Saxony in honor of Abbess Odilie von Ahlden, whose prayer book is still kept in the monastery.

Monastery complex

The monastery complex consists of the monumental hall church and a uniformly structured two-storey four-wing complex, which was built in the years 1726–1729 in place of the medieval monastery buildings damaged in the Thirty Years War. The 13 canons' apartments are accessible from a corridor that runs like a cloister along the inner courtyard side of the four wings. Separated from this by arcades is the representative baroque staircase to the west gallery. To the south of the four-wing complex, two half-timbered buildings with hipped roofs are symmetrically arranged, the east of which is built on an arched substructure for the passage of a stream and connected to the monastery by a covered corridor.

St. Marien Monastery Church

architecture

Mariensee Monastery seen from the local road

Western part of the monastery church

Interior of the monastery church

Entrance area

Cloister in the monastery

Monastery garden

The monastery church is a three-bay brick building from the middle of the 13th century with a choir polygon. The western yoke was added at the beginning of the 14th century. In the 18th century, the north wall was supported by a massive buttress. In the years 1867/1868 a comprehensive restoration was carried out under Conrad Wilhelm Hase , during which a west bar with a turret was put in place, the buttresses were reinforced, the eaves, the arched friezes and the north-west portal were carefully renewed. In addition, another portal was created, a sacristy was added and the interior was redesigned, with a stone organ gallery with wooden parapets being built in and a breakthrough in the south wall to the newly furnished ladies' gallery.

The remarkable building is characterized by the simultaneous architecture of the Cistercians and also shows influences of the West French Plantagenet style and typical elements of the North German brick Gothic .

The clearly structured exterior is characterized by a profiled sandstone base with brick wall surfaces and originally pilaster- like flat buttresses as well as a final cross-arched frieze (similar to the church in Mandelsloh ) and very slender pointed arched windows with glaze stone decorations. The windows of the eastern nave yoke are arranged in a staggered group of three, similar to that of the monastery church in Riddagshausen . In the changed today outer wall of the central yoke the window group was by two oculi crowned with passport filling and a central Blend Rose; the window of the west yoke shows a tracery-like structure of three staggered lancet windows , which are framed by a pointed arch, as is typical for the late medieval brick architecture of northern Germany.

The interior is characterized by domical vaults , which are structured by delicate ribs. Instead of keystones, the east yoke shows a bulging ring around the intersection of the ribs. In chorus polygon of the polygonal is ⁵ / ₉ -Schluss with an eight-part combined vault whose Western pair of ribs abutting against the transverse arches. In the apse and in the east yoke, the ribs and the bead-like profiled belt arches are decorated by shaft rings, while the shield arches and arches are simply designed as wall strips. In the middle yoke, round bars are used to structure the shield arches and the western arches to adapt to the rib shape . The younger west yoke is finished off with a flatter ribbed vault on protruding pillars.

Furnishing

Medieval furnishings

The main piece of equipment is an artistically valuable, larger-than-life wooden crucifix from the middle of the 13th century, which originally served as a triumphal cross , but has been hung on the north wall opposite the ladies' gallery since 1913. On the ladies' gallery there is a small crucifix from a lecture cross from the 15th century and a finely crafted Madonna and Child from the end of the 15th century, which probably comes from the former high altar. A small late Gothic carved altar from the end of the 15th century shows Anna herself three flanked by two relief panels with the Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Magi as well as eight individual figures of saints, remains of paintings are preserved on the outside.

Modern equipment

A round baptismal font was created in 1545. Under the west gallery there is a magnificent baptismal angel from the 18th century. The rest of the furnishings come from the restoration of 1867/1868. These include a neo-Gothic wooden altar with a relief from the Last Supper by R. Engelhardt and a crucifixion by Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Oesterley , a wooden pulpit with evangelist figures, the lectern, the clergy's seat, the altar cabinets, the organ front, the stalls and the parapets of the ladies' and west galleries. The organ is a work by Eduard Meyer from 1869 with 16 stops on two manuals and pedal .

Tapestry "The Last Judgment"

In the church of the monastery there is a tapestry “ The Last Judgment ”. The embroidery, 2.70 m high and 2.30 m wide, is a replica of the oldest panel in the Vatican Pinakothek . The tapestry was made in 1994 and 1995 by Abbess Insea Hohlt-Sahm (1990–1997) and handed over to the monastery church in Hanover on March 5, 1997 on Hohlt-Sahm's 70th birthday .

The pictures of the tapestry are arranged in five levels. At the very top, Christ is enthroned with the globe and the cross in his hands as the ruler . On the level below, Christ shows himself with the nail marks in his raised hands as the crucified . In front of him are the instruments of suffering in a chest and next to him the archangels Gabriel and Michael as well as left and right of them six apostles each as a college of judges. On the middle level, the apostle Paul leads a crowd of the redeemed from the left , the thief to the right of Christ on the cross and Mary , the Mother of God , follow to the center of the picture. Central are a row of martyrs with palm fronds and a scroll in hand and the archdeacon Stephen . To the right of this, the pictures show three works of mercy : caring for the hungry, the sick and prisoners, and clothing for the naked. In the second picture bar from the bottom, the wild animals, birds and fish restore those they devoured, the sea and earth return the dead, and two angels with trumpets indicate that the graves are opening. In the middle of this level between sea and earth a view opens into paradise, the perfect world. Up to this point the images are shown in a circle - the lowest level is shown as a square. On the left, Maria blesses Domina Benedicta and Abbess Constanze. On the right, three angels push the damned into hellfire .

use

As they have done for 800 years, women live in a spiritual community in the Mariensee Monastery. Abbess Bärbel Görcke has been running the monastery since 2003. A guest area offers monastic hospitality. There are guided tours, concerts, exhibitions, retreats and seminars. The monastery museum has been documenting the history of the Protestant convents in Lower Saxony since 2007.

literature

Eberhard Doll: Mariensee Monastery, personal lists and biographical notes . Rasch Verlag, Bramsche 2008, ISBN 978-3-89946-122-0 .
Eberhard Doll: Indulgence certificates for the Mariensee monastery . In: Yearbook of the Society for Lower Saxony Church History , ISSN 0072-4238 , vol. 105 (2007), pp. 11–32.
Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Mariensee Monastery. In: Ernst Andreas Friedrich: If stones could talk. Volume 4. Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-7842-0558-5 , pp. 128-130.
Bärbel Görcke: Mariensee Monastery. In: Klosterkammer Hannover (ed.): Evangelical monasteries in Lower Saxony. Hinstorff, Rostock 2008, ISBN 978-3-356-01249-1 , pp. 35-39.
Bärbel Görcke: "Hear daughter, and bow your ear ..." (Ps 49,11a). Mariensee Monastery. In: Anna-Maria from the Wiesche, Frank Lilie (ed.): Kloster auf Evangelisch. Reports from life together . Vier-Türme-Verlag, Münsterschwarzach 2016, ISBN 978-3-89680-904-9 , pp. 74-79.
Wilhelm von Hodenberg (Ed.): Archives of the Mariensee Monastery (= Calenberg document book. 5th department). Jänecke, Hanover 1858 ( uni-goettingen.de )