St. Raphael Monastery

The former monastery chapel of St. Raphael in Aachen

The St. Raphael Monastery in Aachen is a former monastery of the Order of the Daughters of the Holy Cross , which was consecrated in 1903. It served as a welfare home for 70 years and later for elderly care. In 2003 the monastery was given up by the religious order and sold in 2007 for a conversion. A residential construction project was awarded the contract. In autumn 2009, renovation work began on the former monastery and chapel. Together with the attached new buildings, the Raphaelhöfe Soers residential area was created.

location

The former St. Raphael monastery is located in the Aachen- Laurensberg district between Strüver Weg and Lindenallee, at the foot of the Lousberg and right next to the current Aachen landscape protection area of Gut Müsch (also called "Mützhof" in some sources). Aachen Cathedral is only about 1.5 kilometers away.

prehistory

As early as 1686, Gut Müsch was laid out on the slope of the Lousberg, with extensive use and parkland. In 1802, the Secretary General of the French Administration, Wilhelm Körfgen, expanded the estate into his summer residence - the Müschpark , a feudal park landscape with a summer house and greenhouses, was created. In 1831 the Johann Heinrich Kesselkaul family (1791–1858), owners of the Aachen cloth factory Kesselkaul , bought the estate. In the period that followed, the property had constantly changing owners from the Aachen industrial dynasties. The last private buyer was Eduard van Gülpen, who had the park designed in the style of the time in 1866 by the Düsseldorf court gardener Joseph Clemens Weyhe , son of Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe , who had already built the Lousberg complex.

In 1867 the van Gülpen family branched off part of the grounds from Gut Müsch for the construction of the van Gülpen cloth factory. This building, built in the industrial architecture of the 19th century, was the first building construction in the Soers , a district of the Aachen-Laurensberg district. Fabrics were made behind the red brick façades for almost 30 years. In 1901 the entire area was bequeathed to the cloth manufacturer Carl Delius , President of the Aachen Chamber of Commerce. After the death of the widow Delius, the Müsch estate passed to Hans van Gülpen.

history

In 1903 a new era began: the order of the daughters of the Holy Cross acquired the area of the van Gülpen cloth factory, which had been vacant for six years at the time, in order to create a welfare home for girls there at the request of the government ("Home for girls who have left school and are at risk") ) in the Aachen district. The old textile factory was dedicated to the Archangel Raphael , who is considered the patron saint of the sick. The statue of St. Raphael, erected in 1916, is still on the site today.

When the number of young people accommodated in the care home grew beyond the previously estimated 60 people, the building complex was expanded in 1906 to include another monastery building and the monastery chapel with its bell tower that can be seen from afar. Both buildings are now a listed building. Until around 40 years ago, the chapel was also the spiritual center of the Soers Parish Rectorate. In 1921 the welfare home was looking after more than 200 girls. In 1929, the Order also acquired the neighboring Gut Müsch in order to prevent the intended establishment of an "establishment of dubious reputation" in one of the former farm buildings of Gut Müsch. Behind the monastery walls, young girls received a home and an education for more than 70 years.

In both world wars, the St. Raphael Monastery also served as a hospital and refuge for citizens who had become homeless. Probably the most famous visitor was housed in the area in February 1945: the later US President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the St. Raphael Monastery, which at the time had been converted into an American barracks.

After the war, care for the elderly was expanded on the monastery grounds. An extension was built with a towering bed elevator. In 1977 the Töchter vom Heiligen Kreuz congregation decided to dissolve the youth home and developed a concept to expand the home for the elderly. In 1994 the daughters of the Holy Cross handed over the responsibility for the old people's home to the Deutsche-Ordens-Hospital-Werk GmbH. Since then, this building is no longer part of the monastery grounds. In 2003, the order's leadership decided to give up the St. Raphael Monastery and sell the site.

Raphaelhöfe Soers: Supervision of the former cloister courtyard

Todays use

In 2007 the entire area was acquired by the Interboden Group. In 2008, the new owner Interboden signed the 107,000 m² of the Müsch Park with its old paths and the sometimes centuries-old trees to the city of Aachen. As in the time of the monastery, the area is available to the public as a leisure and recreational area. The park, registered as a garden monument since 2010, is now part of the Lousberg Landscape Park. From the beech avenue there along the northern slope, the White Trail, which was laid out as part of the Euregionale 2008 in the triangle of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, leads through the Müsch Park to the Aachen- Herzogenrath - Kerkrade horse park .

In autumn 2009, the Ratingen company Interboden began with the renovation work on the former monastery and the chapel and the construction of the attached new buildings. The listed structures were incorporated into the building. A total of 65 listed and new apartments with around 8,500 square meters of living space were created in the Raphaelhöfe Soers building project. The center of the quarter is the old cloister courtyard. The two other attached courtyards (Lindenhof and Torhof) are the namesake of the Raphaelhöfe Soers in addition to the old patron saint of the monastery (St. Raphael).

Award

In 2014, the Raphaelhöfe Soers Aachen was awarded the FIABCI Prix d´Excellence Germany in gold in the "Living" category. The FIABCI Prix d´Excellence is an international prize for outstanding project developments, which in 2014 was presented for the first time in Germany as a nationwide award in the categories “Residential” and “Commercial”.

Web links

literature

Monastery flair in Aachen. A living environment with historical and modern values. In: Lebenswelten, Edition 2, 2010 year, pp. 24–25.
Aachen: History of a project development. In: Lebenswelten, Edition 3, year 2008, pp. 4–5.

50.791901 6.083237Coordinates: 50 ° 47 ′ 31 ″ N , 6 ° 5 ′ 0 ″ E