St. Ludgeri Monastery (Helmstedt)

Monastery building and pigeon house (center) in Helmstedt

Parish Church of St. Ludgeri

Romanesque crypt

The Sankt Ludgeri monastery ( Latin St. Ludgerus ) was a Benedictine abbey in the Lower Saxony district town of Helmstedt in Germany . Founded around 800, it ruled the city of Helmstedt until the 15th century and remained Roman Catholic until its dissolution in 1802 .

Today there is, among other things, the parish church of St. Ludgeri , whose parish of the same name belongs to the Wolfsburg-Helmstedt deanery of the Hildesheim diocese .

history

Around the year 800 the missionary Liudger came to the Helmstedt area in the course of the Saxon War with Charlemagne in order to Christianize the Saxons . On the former trade route between the Brunswick and Magdeburg settlement areas, St. Liudger founded the monastery on the site of an old Germanic spring shrine. The location of the monastery on this important trade route in the Middle Ages was extremely advantageous at that time, as it brought great economic advantages with the traders. Until the 15th century, the abbots of the monastery ruled over Helmstedt. The importance of the monastery for the city is also confirmed by the city coat of arms, which shows St. Liudger.

The Helmstedt Ludgeri Monastery has been a sister monastery of Werden Abbey since it was founded . Both monasteries were always run in personal union, which is why both monasteries had the double abbot staff in their coats of arms. The monastery resisted all the Reformation movements of the 16th century and up until its dissolution in 1802 represented the Roman Catholic doctrine.

With the exception of the Romanesque double chapel (above St. John the Baptist, below St. Peter) in the inner courtyard, the monastery complex was rebuilt in Baroque style after the Thirty Years War . The Turkish gate and the pigeon house were added later .

In December 1802 the monastery was secularized after the Napoleonic wars . The property fell to the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg . The monastery was then run as an agricultural state domain , which existed on the monastery grounds until 1977 and has been continued south of Helmstedt ever since. In the same year, the traffic management of the Helmstedt city ring was completed with the construction of a new road through the former domain area.

In June 1942 the church was destroyed by arson and was rebuilt from 1947 to 1949. In 1972 the chancel was redesigned by Claus Kilian . In August 1983 the organ building company was Franz Breil built organ inaugurated.

In 1980 the Diocese of Hildesheim acquired the convent building for the Catholic parish of St. Ludgeri in Helmstedt. The monastery building has been used as a Catholic meeting place since 1986 and was given its new purpose on June 4, 1986.

With over 1000 years of monastery history, 175 years of use as a state property and today's use as a Catholic meeting place and Catholic parish church, the St. Ludgeri Monastery is the oldest still existing ecclesiastical institution in the Braunschweig region .

On March 1, 1998, the Helmstedt deanery, to which the church belonged, merged with the Wolfenbüttel deanery to form the new Helmstedt-Wolfenbüttel deanery. Since November 1, 2006, the church has belonged to the then newly founded dean's office in Wolfsburg-Helmstedt, which arose out of the dean's offices in Wolfsburg and the Helmstedt part of the dean's office in Helmstedt-Wolfenbüttel. Since September 1, 2008, the Catholic parish of St. Ludgeri has also included the churches of St. Norbert in Grasleben , St. Mary's Assumption in Königslutter , St. Bonifatius in Süpplingen and St. Joseph in Wolsdorf . The St. Ludgeri Church is today the oldest church in the Wolfsburg-Helmstedt deanery and has almost 300 seats.

Monastery building and church
Chronicle of St. Ludgeri
Turkish Gate
Double chapel in the courtyard of the monastery building

literature

Christof Römer : St. Ludgeri Helmstedt , DKV art guide No. 329/9
City of Helmstedt: St. Ludgerus Monastery , Helmstedt 2003 (leaflet in various editions)
Christof Römer: Sankt Ludgeri zu Helmstedt in the baroque period. Bernward Verlag Hildesheim, 1987, ISBN 3-87065-440-6 .
Parish of St. Ludgeri (ed.): The church fire of St. Ludgeri zu Helmstedt 1942–1992. Documentation of the fire based on its previous history and with consideration of its processing. Helmstedt 1992.