Oeventrop Monastery
The Oeventrop Monastery (officially Herz-Jesu-Missionshaus Oeventrop ) was a branch of the missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus . Between 1902 and 1969 it served as a starting point for the mission and as a theological training center for prospective priests.
history
The missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus had settled in Hiltrup near Munster after the end of the Kulturkampf . Soon the order needed another training facility. At the suggestion of dean Caspar Berens , pastor in Rumbeck and responsible for Oeventrop , the order sought the opportunity to settle in the vicinity of Arnsberg . The construction finally took place on the outskirts of Oeventrop. There the order acquired a plot of land that originally consisted of 5 hectares of arable land and 5 hectares of forest and erected an imposing building on it. The red brick building was inaugurated in 1902. An originally existing tower was not rebuilt after a fire in 1946.
The training center accepted high school graduates who first studied philosophy and then theology . After completing five years of study, they were ordained priests. In 1938 there were 93 students and 18 college professors. There were also 10 priests, 12 lay brothers, 6 nuns and some secular servants.
The institution established missions in what is now Papua New Guinea , China , Africa and Peru until 1969 .
With the beginning of the Second World War , the heyday of the facility ended in 1939. The building was confiscated and the priestly students moved to Kleve . Only a few fathers and lay brothers remained in the monastery outbuildings. The main building became a hospital. It served as a sanctuary and nursing home for soldiers with lung disease. 1300 of the patients died in the monastery. They are buried in the Oeventrop military cemetery.
After the war the house served as accommodation for old and sick people from Dortmund .
In addition, the rebuilding of teaching began after 1945. The associated “Thomas Academy” was able to attract important lecturers. Among them was Josef Ratzinger , who was teaching theology in Münster at the time. The library consisted of about 45,000 volumes. There was also a mission museum "Treasures of the South Seas."
The religious seminary was closed in 1969. The library of the seminar is now in the Archbishop's Academic Library in Paderborn. In 1975 a new order building was built in Oeventrop, which served as a retirement home for former missionaries and elderly fathers.
Use after the closure of the religious college
The “old monastery” became a home for difficult-to-educate children. An addiction clinic was later housed there. This ceased operations in October 2009. In July 2017 there was a possible fire in the roof truss due to arson.
Around 1990 the building was registered with the number 553 in the list of monuments of the city of Arnsberg.
literature
- Gerd Kessler: Stations of the "Old Monastery" - A university in Oeventrop . In: Sauerland. Journal of the Sauerländer Heimatbund , ISSN 0177-8110, year 2009, issue 1, pp. 25-27 ( online ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ www.weltkriegsopfer.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ www.sauerlaender-heimatbund.de ( Memento of the original from June 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Focus Arnsberg-Sundern July 13, 2017
- ↑ Uwe Haltaufderheide: The architectural monuments of the city of Arnsberg. Collection period 1980–1990. City of Arnsberg, Arnsberg 1990, ISBN 3-928394-01-0 , p. 278.
Coordinates: 51 ° 23 ′ 37.2 ″ N , 8 ° 8 ′ 35.1 ″ E