St. Andreas Monastery (Altenbeken)
The St. Andreas monastery in Altenbeken - Buke , district of Paderborn in East Westphalia , was a monastery of the Eastern Church . It was created in 1946 and existed with interruptions and changing convents until 2004. Today the monastery building houses a restaurant.
Monastery
The house in Altenbeken-Buke was built in the 19th century. The Stiens family ran a small restaurant there. Since the Stiens couple remained childless, in 1946 they bequeathed the entire property to twelve persecuted Studite monks who came to Germany from Ukraine after the Second World War . They belonged to the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Lviv and converted the house into a monastery to. The apostle Andrew was chosen to be their patron. The priest monk Juvenalyj (Mokrickyj) painted icons that can still be found in the house today. The only monk priests of German descent were Father Joann and Father Antonij (Seidel), who was almost 100 years old and was later revered as "the benevolent person of St. Andreas am Walde" in Altenbeken. The monks gave up the house as early as 1949 and emigrated to Canada . In 1953 Olivetan fathers of the Byzantine rite lived in the monastery for a year .
Nunnery
In 1954 nuns came to the Altenbeken monastery. Student sisters from the Mariä-Schutz monastery in Krefeld-Traar founded a home for the elderly here. The final decision to settle was made in 1961 under Sister Sophia, who from then on took over the management of the monastery. At the same time, she began setting up a mail order book trade . In 1964, the monastery became the seat of the "Haus St. Andreas Association" with the aim of making it an "Eastern Church Prayer and Information Center". Jurisdiction carrier of the chapel was the Ukrainian Bishop Kyr Plato (Kornyljak) . The German monk Father Antonij celebrated church services here every Sunday.
In the following years the house was repeatedly renovated, expanded and rebuilt. The former stables became the monastery chapel. The altar was consecrated in 1967. The Hanoverian icon painter Wolfgang Becker furnished the iconostasis , which was ceremoniously consecrated in 1969. You can still see it today.
From 1971 conferences and seminars took place in the monastery. At the end of the 1980s, the “Eastern Church Center of the Community of Basilian Sisters of the Most Holy Redeemer ” ( Melkite-Greek Church ) was founded. In 1997 a renovation concept was worked out with the help of the Order of St. Martin, through which the fire protection measures were renewed and the house was connected to the Altenbeken sewer network in 2001. In 2004 the nuns also gave up the house to return to the mother house .
restaurant
The house stood empty for two years before it was sold to a private individual who converted and renovated it for commercial purposes. Today there is a restaurant again. The former iconostasis was integrated into the so-called "monastery parlor" in a slightly different form.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 45 ′ 6.4 ″ N , 8 ° 57 ′ 6 ″ E