Tiefenthal Abbey

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Tiefenthal Abbey, new building from 1946

Kloster Tiefenthal is an education and retreat house for the poor servants of Jesus Christ , the Dernbacher Sisters, in the Diocese of Limburg . It is located on Bundesstraße 260 near Eltville - Martinsthal in the Rheingau in Hesse, but belongs to the Rauenthal district .

history

Grainger tomb in the Martinsthal cemetery

Tiefenthal Abbey was founded in the middle of the 12th century and was first inhabited by Premonstratensian women. Around 1237, the convent went over to the rule of the Cistercian women and has been subordinate to the abbot of Eberbach monastery since 1242 . A robe of Saint Elizabeth was kept in the monastery as a relic . The monastery burned down in a fire in 1572, but was rebuilt in the following years.

In the course of secularization , the order was expropriated on January 27, 1803. At the time of secularization in 1803, the abbess, 7 women choirs and 1 lay sister lived there. The monastery buildings were henceforth used as an asylum for the poor until 1825, later by various entrepreneurs. In the following years, Baron John Sutton , an English nobleman, wanted to open a seminary in the former monastery, but his plans failed. Instead, the Irish aristocrat Anna Maria Grainger (1814-1897) and her daughter Johanna Philomena Grainger (1847-1904) bought the monastery in 1881 and had it rebuilt in the style of an English manor house. Ambulance nurses from Eltville, who belonged to the poor servants of Jesus Christ, were brought in to look after the women suffering from consumption . After the mother's death, on April 23, 1898, a branch for poor servants was opened in Tiefenthal. Johanna Philomena Grainger was considered a benefactress of Martinsthal, where she founded the first kindergarten in 1902. In her will, she bequeathed the monastery to the Dernbach sisters.

From the end of the 19th century until 1933 the monastery had a stop on the Eltville – Schlangenbad railway .

Shortly before the start of the Second World War in 1939, the monastery buildings were again confiscated and used as a school until an espionage department with a radio station of the SS was quartered there in 1943 . On February 13, 1945, the monastery was bombed and burned to the ground. On August 22, 1946, the ruins were handed back to the Dernbach sisters, who rebuilt the monastery in the following years. From 1952 the monastery served as a provincial house for one of the then three German order provinces . In 1990 it became the training and retreat house for the poor servants of Jesus Christ.

On June 18, 2020, after a three-day visit , the provincial leadership of the order announced the closure of the Tiefenthal monastery on January 1, 2021. The reasons given for the decision were not only the high average age of the religious order but also the necessary high investments in the building fabric and fire protection. The 10 nuns will return to the mother house in Dernbach by June 30, 2021 at the latest, while the 14 civilian employees will lose their jobs.

Only a few relics of the original monastery have survived today, such as a keystone of Abbess Franziska Cronberg from 1765, a lintel dated 1755 and a sandstone portal from the 18th century. Some old trees from the landscape park from the 19th century still exist in the park.

Web links

Commons : Kloster Tiefenthal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ dernbacher.de: The beginnings in the Tiefenthal Abbey ( Memento from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Karl Rolf Seufert : The spiritual currents have never dried up . In: The Hessian Minister for Agriculture and Forests , Freundeskreis Kloster Eberbach (Hrsg.): Eberbach im Rheingau . Cistercian - Culture - Wine. The Hessian Minister for Agriculture and Forests, Wiesbaden / Eltville 1986, p. 9-40 .
  3. ↑ dernbacher.de: Ownership of the monastery until 1803 ( Memento from February 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ dernbacher.de: Fate of the monastery buildings after 1803 ( Memento from February 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ kloster-tiefenthal.com: The former monastery as the seat of noble ladies
  6. ↑ dernbacher.de: Renewed expropriation and destruction of the monastery ( Memento from February 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ kloster-tiefenthal.com: The monastery lives on
  8. ↑ kloster-tiefenthal.com Education Kloster Tiefenthal
  9. ↑ Rheingau Echo / Volume 51 / No. 27 / July 2, 2020 - Rheingau Echo Verlag GmbH / 65366 Geisenheim
  10. ↑ Dagmar Söder: Rheingau-Taunus District I.1 Altkreis Rheingau , p. 390. Ed .: State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen , Theiss-Verlag , Darmstadt 2014, ISBN 978-3806229875

Coordinates: 50 ° 3 ′ 40 ″  N , 8 ° 7 ′ 10 ″  E