Sankt Walburga Monastery (Walbourg)
The Benedictines - Monastery Sankt Walburga in Alsace Walbourg was founded on change of the 11th and 12th centuries and dissolved 1790th
history
The origin of a hermitage as the forerunner of the monastery on the edge of the Heiligens Forst is ascribed to the year 1074 and Dietrich von Mousson († 1102/1105), who had extensive possessions in the region. He is said to have allowed two monks to found a community here that was to be consecrated to Saints Philip, James and Walburga . The Walburga patronage suggests that the monks came from Bavaria, probably even Eichstätt , where the Walburga relics have been since the 9th century.
The founders of the abbey are Duke Friedrich I of Swabia and Peter von Lützelburg, who apparently made the necessary preparations at the end of the 11th century. Friedrich's brother Otto , Bishop of Strasbourg until his death in 1100 , may have given his support, so that as early as 1102 Pope Paschal II was able to confirm the decrees made in favor of the convention. From 1105 the convent was transformed into an abbey, a church and monastery buildings were erected, the founders placed it under their military protection and directly under the jurisdiction of the Holy See , and the Staufers provided it with numerous goods. King Henry V granted the abbey further privileges in 1106.
In 1119 the monastery received the places Dürrenbach (in the northwest) and Hinterfeld (district of Walbourg in the west), later Biblisheim (in the north) and Laubach (west of Hinterfeld). In 1133, Bishop Gebhard von Straßburg summarized all donations to the abbey from the time before him in a document. Duke Friedrich II of Swabia , who died in 1147, wanted to be buried in Sankt Walburga, which is indicated by a document from his son Friedrich Barbarossa from 1159 as part of a confirmation of privileges. However, neither Walbourg nor the Lorch Monastery, which Friedrich's father Friedrich I founded for this purpose, was able to establish itself as the burial place of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. The grave of Duke Friedrich II and his second wife Agnes no longer exists today.
The 12th and 13th centuries were the heyday of the abbey, with the 14th century the decline began. In 1349 17 bishops signed a letter of indulgence , which issued forty days of purgatory to the faithful who made a pilgrimage to Sankt Walburga and attended church services in the abbey. But it was not until Abbot Sigmund Krieg (1415–1430) that the situation consolidated again, so that his successor Burkhard von Müllenheim (1430–1479) was able to renovate the monastery church with a new choir and an enlarged nave. His successor Peter Schwarz (from 1479) was able to continue the renovation.
During the Peasants' War (1525) the abbey itself was not touched, but the property was devastated, so that the decline began again. 1546 was Sankt-Walburga by order of Pope Paul III. incorporated into the Bailiwick of St. Peter and Paul in Weißenburg , which in turn was subordinate to the cathedral chapter of Speyer . After the Thirty Years' War , which caused severe damage to the abbey, the Conseil souverain d'Alsace created by Louis XIV revoked the incorporation in 1685 and instructed the Bishop of Strasbourg to subordinate the abbey to the newly created Grand Seminary of Strasbourg.
Jesuits moved into Sankt Walburga, they renovated the church and the residential buildings and created a park. After the suppression of the order in 1764, the abbey remained in possession of the seminary. The French Revolution dissolved the abbey in 1790 and sold it in 1796. After several changes of ownership, the church was donated to the community in 1805, which was now only called Walbourg. The remaining buildings and the park remained in the possession of the Saglio family, who had a house built north of the church in the second half of the 19th century and sold the entire property in 1890 to the industrialist Richard Haniel , who built the new house that exists today in 1912. In 1946 the Small Seminary of Strasbourg moved here after the diocese bought the building. Since then, a number of school buildings and a chapel have been built in the park.
The church received a new organ in 1835, which was built in 1832 by Martin Wetzel (1794–1887) for the Strasbourg cathedral , but was rejected there. From 1841 to 1844, consideration was given to selling the remains of the stained glass windows in order to finance the restoration of the church. Previously, these windows from the choir and the nave had already been combined into two side windows of the choir. In 1862 the paintings of the apostles and the church fathers from 1465 were uncovered and restored. In the same year the stained glass windows were classified as a monument historique and the entire church was placed under monument protection on December 6, 1898.
architecture
Nothing has survived from the original Hermitage. From the church of the early 12th century the walls of the nave, made of quarry sandstone and without a visible foundation, with windows that were bricked up for a long time and were only exposed again in 1967, as well as the remains of two carved pillars of a door in the south of these walls still stand . Using dendrochronology , the impact of the wood in a window frame, which is now in the museum in Hagenau, was dated to the year 1100.
Abbot Burkhard von Müllenheim had the choir rebuilt from bricks in 1456 (the year is engraved on one of the pillars), the walls of the nave were also raised with bricks, the window openings on the western side reopened and the angel's chapel was built (Chapelle des Anges) which now serves as a sacristy ; As a master builder for this work, Hans Böblinger testified by markings around stone. The year 1461 engraved in the windows of the choir marks the completion of the work in this area, the roof structure was dendrochronologically dated to the same year. The rood screen , presumably from the same time, was torn down in 1725, two statues (Mary and John), which were probably also created in this phase, are now on the facade of the former presbytery, today's Mairie.
War damage from air raids from 1945 could be repaired from 1949.
literature
- Dictionnaire des églises de France, Volume Va, Alsace, Lorraine, Franche-Comté (1969) p. 204.
- Philippe Lorentz: Walbourg, les vitraux de l'église Sainte-Walburge, in: Congrès archéologique de France. Session 162, Strasbourg et Basse-Alsace, 2004, Société Française d'Archéologie (2006), pp. 271-282.
- Bulletin de la Société pour la Conservation des monuments historiques d'Alsace (1868) online
Web links
- Monastery church Sankt Walburga in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- Sankt Walburga Abbey in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bulletin (1868)
- ^ Peter Koblank: Staufer graves. Only a few of the most prominent Hohenstaufen are buried in Germany. on stauferstelen.net. Retrieved July 6, 2014.
Coordinates: 48 ° 53 ′ 15 ″ N , 7 ° 47 ′ 24 ″ E