St. Burchardi Monastery (Halberstadt)

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St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt
Gate of the monastery complex seen from the inner courtyard

The monastery of St. Burchardi (originally monastery of St. Jacobi ) is a former monastery of Cistercian nuns in Halberstadt in Saxony-Anhalt .

history

From foundation to dissolution

Bishop Burchard I. von Halberstadt is the founder and namesake of the monastery . In 1186 the Premonstratensians moved there. They were soon replaced by Templars who donated a commander here . In 1206 the Templars moved to the St. Thomae Monastery at the Breiten Tor, whereupon the Cistercian Sisters took over the monastery. Because of overcrowding, several nuns went to Adersleben monastery in the middle of the 13th century .

During the Thirty Years War the monastery was looted in 1631 and 1632, in one case the abbess and nuns were abducted by the Swedes. There were also three floods in the 18th century. Sometimes associated with major impairments, flooding of the buildings and courtyard, as well as the monastery church, started from the Holtemme even more often in the following years. Numerous fire disasters also occurred.

In the course of secularization , the monastery was abolished and sold on October 1, 1810 by decision of the authorities of the Kingdom of Westphalia .

Development after secularization

Since the sale of the monastery in 1810, its entire site and the associated buildings have had an eventful history.

If one speaks today of the monastery of St. Burchardi, of the Burchardi monastery, of St. Burchard, of the monastery, then mostly only the building complex grouped around the now disused courtyard with the church is thought of. It is the original center of the monastery and occupies only a small part of the originally much larger monastery grounds, which is located in the southwest corner. Located on the north side of the Holtemme, this narrower area appeared completely enclosed, to the west by the monastery building complex with the gate building and in its extension to the north and to the north and east within the large area by a solid wall made of field stones.

The entire terrain of the original monastery grounds can hardly be traced. It offered enough space for the cultivation of garden crops and field crops and the planting of fruit trees for the self-sufficiency of the monastery. It stretched from west to east on the north side of the Holtemme. To the west, in extension of the existing boundary to the north and towards the two other cardinal points, an equally solid wall was built. Peasants, craftsmen and the so-called "common people" eventually settled along the outer sides of this enclosure. Fixed to the current situation, the streets Am Burchardikloster and Burchardistraße in the west, Huystraße in the north and Gröperstraße in the east were built.

Whether the church building on the site of the monastery founded outside the city wall of Halberstadt on the north bank of the Holtemme was the replacement or the enlargement of the St. Thomas chapel built by Bishop Burchard I in the undergrowth of the Holtemme cannot be proven. The Romanesque church has a rarely found rectangular groin-vaulted ambulatory choir. It is said to have had a small tower tower and a roof covering made of copper sheet on the west side. The side aisles of the former three-aisled church are no longer completely preserved.

From 1850, the Gut St. Burchard sugar factory, initially run under private law, was built in the eastern area of ​​the monastery and linked to Gröperstrasse . During the period of its continued existence to their company name changed several times and finally was renamed after its founder, Ferdinand Heine I., named as a sugar factory Ferdinand Heine OHG Halberstadt . Up to 1945 it underwent extensive renovations and extensions and a high level of technical equipment that was possible at the time, had a correspondingly high level of efficiency and acted as an independent sugar industry company as a raw sugar producer. The factory continued to operate under the company name of the Halberstadt sugar factory for a few years after 1945 until it was closed .

The old house, a simple half-timbered building , last used as a choleral hospital in the wars of freedom against Napoleon, was destroyed by fire and soon replaced by a representative new building as a manor house. Towards the end of the 1920s, a staircase was added to its north side. The additional additions on its west (courtyard) and east (garden) sides were built in the mid-1930s. At the beginning of the 1940s, the roof covering , which had previously consisted of slate, was exchanged for one made of slate-colored beaver-tail shingles. In the course of a renovation measure towards the end of the 1980s, the building was given a roof covering made of curved roof tiles. It lost the old, made of sandstone and decorated chimneys.

Ferdinand Heine senior acquired the monastery together with his two brothers in October 1836 as a farm with approx. 90 hectares of fields and meadows. He later became the sole owner. The Heyne / Heine family, important for the region, owned u. a. Estate in Gröningen with the Vorwerk Heynburg , also in Hakeborn , also the Hedersleben monastery .

The bird collection compiled by Ferdinand Heine, consisting of around 7000 specimens, around 5000 bellows and a collection of birds' eggs, was housed in the room above the courtyard gate of the monastery. The founder of the collection, Ferdinand Heine senior , was a private nithologist who was highly recognized by the professional world and the author of many specialist books. As part of a foundation in 1907, the collection was handed over by his heir, Ferdinand Heine junior , to the city of Halberstadt and at that time, as one of the largest bird collections in Germany , it was housed in a side wing of the city museum, in the Heineanum Museum on Domplatz, and is still being expanded to be visited today in changing exhibitions.

Over time, the company was modernized in line with the current state of development. The agricultural area slowly increased to around 780 hectares. The company existed in the family for three generations until 1945, most recently under Otto Heine, as a private farm. The buildings of the former monastery grounds including the St. Burchardi Church were used for agricultural purposes as barns, storage sheds, stables, workshops and distilleries, and in smaller areas of the building also as administrative and living space.

The Burchardi Monastery was not affected by the bombing raid that the US Air Force flew on Halberstadt on April 8, 1945 towards the end of the Second World War . On the other hand, almost the entire inner city area, purely residential and commercial, was destroyed in the attack. After the monastery had already become home to some war refugees during the war, it now also served temporarily as a contact point for a number of bomb refugees who could not save more than their lives. Among other things, in the manor house and in the administration and living rooms of the manor employees, the initiative of the property manager family set up straw chutes with woolen blankets to accommodate the people and the provision of food according to the given possibilities.

The time after the Second World War

US combat troops occupied Halberstadt in mid-April 1945 and moved into the monastery grounds. The yard and garden were used to store transport and combat equipment, and the manor house was used for crew accommodation. At the beginning of July 1945, the US troops withdrew from the parts of the province of Saxony-Anhalt they had occupied.

The occupier demanded, among other things, the expropriation of the large landowners and their expulsion without compensation. This was quickly enforced by the German administration with the ordinance on land reform in the province of Saxony-Anhalt of September 1945. After the expropriation of his entire property without compensation (St. Burchard Monastery, shares in the Heineanum museum, private and company bank deposits and shares in the Ferdinand Heine OHG Halberstadt sugar factory), the owner left his estate at the end of November 1945. The agricultural operation was continued by the former estate manager after the owner was expropriated on behalf of the German administration.

With the implementation of the land reform, parts of the agricultural land were settled and the remnants were converted into a national estate after being merged with other agricultural areas. It existed as one of the few state-owned estates that were successfully managed in the GDR until the end of the 1970s. The courtyard previously located on the outskirts of Halberstadt became part of the city due to the urban development of Halberstadt. As a farm, it could no longer be run without annoying the residents. In addition, the journeys to the associated lands increased.

When the company was closed, the yard and the building stock were transferred from the Burchardi monastery to the city. During this period, the area was used, destroyed or abandoned to decay by the municipal authorities, a plant manufacturer, the manor house by technical schools as a boarding school and parts of the area by the adjacent heating power station. More extensive parts of the monastery complex and the majority of the enclosing walls that encompassed the entire original area of ​​the monastery, including the narrower monastery area, were demolished between 1945 and the reunification in 1990.

Development after German reunification

Organ assembly in the monastery church in August 2015

After the German reunification , the former monastery and manor grounds came back into the city's interest from the mid-1990s. As a first measure, the area of ​​the Burchardi monastery, which had previously been used as a gardening shop, was sold by the city to an investor and a kitchen garden was built on with terraced houses. In addition, the Romanesque church building has been cleaned, the masonry repaired, the building protected from wind and weather by a new roof covering, new windows installed and the church's substance at least secured. A Hüfken organ was also installed as part of the John Cage project . In the Romanesque, towerless basilica with the rare rectangular ambulatory choir, John Cage's organ piece As slow as possible has been performed since 2001 , the total duration of which will be 639 years.

On the north side of the church and in part of the aisle located there, a stonemason has set up shop since reunification.

Since 1995 the Kolping Education Center has been on the site with a vocational training center. This use, among other things, has resulted in the gradual restoration and use of large parts of the building and the courtyard.

On the site of the sugar factory, in the area of ​​the former coal storage area, and extended to part of the site of the monastery, a powerful coal-fired thermal power station was built to supply heat to old and newly created residential areas of the city. After the turning point in 1990, its days were numbered. Large parts of the factory buildings, outbuildings, beet storage facilities, sludge ponds, track systems and sheds have been demolished. A small gas-fired thermal power station has been built elsewhere. A hotel, companies and a sports center have settled with their buildings. The filter tower, boiler house and boiler house of the factory have been preserved externally and have been converted into a large cinema. The old office building, which also still exists, was built as a production facility in the early days of the factory, and now houses a restaurant. The office and following building built on Gröperstrasse in the mid-1930s is the headquarters of a company.

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Coordinates: 51 ° 54 ′ 5 ″  N , 11 ° 2 ′ 32 ″  E