Unterlinden monastery

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Unterlinden Abbey: now a museum

The Unterlinden monastery was a Dominican convent in Colmar in Alsace . The Unterlinden Museum has been located in the buildings from the 13th century, some of which still exist, since 1853 .

founding

Before 1232, the noble Colmar widows Agnes von Mittelheim and Agnes von Hergheim (Herenkheim) founded the monastery "Unter den Linden" ("sub tilia") with the support of Dominicans from Strasbourg, which was incorporated into the Dominican order in 1245. The name was taken over from the small chapel St. Johann unter den Linden . The monastery is one of the earliest Dominican convents; The monastery life was exemplary for other monasteries, miraculous signs are reported. In the course of the 13th century, an extensive monastery complex was built, the church of which, built from 1252 to 1269, was consecrated by Albertus Magnus . The other monastery buildings and the cloister had been completed by 1289; Shortly afterwards, the master builder Vollmar also died, as the entry in the monastery register shows: Brother Volmarus, conversus lapicida, qui claustrum nostrum construxit.

Monastery reform

In 1419 the General of the Order, Leonard de Florentina , and the Provincial for Germany, Giselbert von Maastricht , visited the Colmar monastery. The sisters already led an exemplary life, yet they wanted to be reformed in order to be in no way inferior to the sisters of the Schönensteinbach monastery . This request was granted and 13 sisters from Schönensteinbach met on the day of St. Maria Magdalena entered Unterlinden in 1419. Margareth von Maasmünster, one of the first Dominican sisters in Schönensteinbach and former prioress, became the first prioress of the observance in the Unterlinden monastery . The reform soon led to a new personal and spiritual growth in the monastery. As early as 1423, the stone monastery near Basel was reformed from Unterlinden . At the end of the “Golden Century” for the city of Colmar, the Lower Linden monastery had 65 nuns.

Monastery library

A major concern of the monastery reform of the 15th century was to provide the nuns with a rich, especially German-language literature. That is why in Unterlinden, as in other Reformed monasteries, there was an intensive expansion of the monastery library. Elisabeth Kempf (1415–1485, prioress since 1469) stood out as a writer and translator. A considerable number of these partly illuminated manuscripts is still available today, especially in the holdings of the Colmar City Library.

Sister book

The Vitae primarum sororum de Subtilia in Columbaria, probably written in Latin by Katharina von Gebersweiler († 1330/45) at the beginning of the 14th century, are significant in the history of religion and literature . This Unterlindener sister book is considered to be the oldest Latin collection of nuns' lives and precedes the similarly conceived German-language sister books. Influenced by mystical spirituality, it reports, hagiographically exaggerated, the striving for virtue, the harsh ascetic practice and the grace experiences of deceased nuns.

In the second half of the 15th century, the sisters' book was translated into German by the prioress Elisabeth Kempf (see above) in the spirit of the monastery reform in order to make the heroic founding time of the monastery and the edifying life of the first nuns accessible to sisters without knowledge of Latin.

The monastery from the 16th to the 19th centuries

In the centuries that followed, the history of the monastery was mainly determined by the often dramatic ups and downs of the fortunes of Colmar and Alsace. During the Peasants' War , the convention submitted to the protection of the city, but in doing so also gave up a substantial part of its autonomy, especially in economic terms, for the subsequent period. When the city joined the Protestant Reformation in 1575, the monastery remained Catholic and belonged to the Dominican Order. In the Thirty Years' War it then had to suffer hard under the Swedish occupation (1632). The annexation to France (1673) led to long-term conflicts in Colmar; Also in the convent of Unterlinden they wanted to stick to the use of the German language. However, the importance of the monastery was retained; In 1723 there were 43 nuns and 23 other members of the monastery, and it was expanded in the last quarter of the 18th century. But soon after the beginning of the French Revolution , the city questioned the existence of the monastery in order to quarter a garrison here. On July 31, 1792, the final cancellation order came; on August 29, the last nuns left the Unterlinden monastery.

Unterlinden Museum

When the monastery was closed in the French Revolution, the movable cultural property was brought to the Collège national (today Lycée Bartholdi) for safekeeping; the abandoned church served as a storage room. In 1792 the monastery buildings finally became the property of the city of Colmar; the 4th Lancers regiment with horse and carriage soon quartered here. The expansion of the city facilities and the construction of a theater (1840) led to the demolition of all farm buildings. In 1845, the local council decided to demolish all of the monastery buildings in order to better accentuate the facade of the newly built city theater. Courageous citizens could prevent this; the archivist and librarian Louis Hugot founded the Schongauer Society in 1847 , which primarily aimed to save the monastery. Already during the revolution, the librarian of the city of Colmar, Pierre Marquair, and the drawing teacher Jean-Jacques Karpff, tried to collect and catalog other objects of art that had survived the turmoil of the revolution, especially from the Isenheim monastery and the Marbach Monastery . Now a drawing school and a copper engraving cabinet were set up, including works by Martin Schongauer and his brother Ludwig Schongauer . The society succeeded in repairing the church and the existing convent buildings. With the help of patrons, such as the industrialist Frédéric Hartmann , the cloister was also renovated. In 1853 the Musée d'Unterlinden (Unterlinden Museum) opened in the convent's preserved buildings . In 1906 an architecturally impressive municipal bathing establishment was built on the former monastery grounds; it will now be incorporated into the overall complex in the expansion of the museum that began in 2012.

Since the cellar on the north side of the monastery, first mentioned in 1272 ( Cellarium sororum in Columbaria consummatum est, .. ) was often flooded by the mill stream, it was cleared of mud in 1955; since then it has also served as an exhibition space.

literature

  • Le Musée Unterlinden de Colmar , Sylvie Lecoq-Ramond & Pantxika Béguerie, Editions Albin Michel, Paris, 1991. ISBN 2-226-05411-1
  • Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache (Ed.): Les "Vitae Sororum" d'Unterlinden. Edition critique du manuscrit 508 de la bibliothèque de Colmar. In: Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littèraire du Moyen Age 5 (1930) pp. 317-513
  • Landolin Winterer : The Schönensteinbach Monastery. 1897.
  • Johann von Schlumberger (Ed.): Seraphin Dietler's Chronicle of the Schönensteinbach Monastery. 1897

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Ancelet-Hustache (see below: literature), p. 329f.
  2. ↑ Unterlinden Abbey. In: arch INFORM ; Retrieved March 1, 2010.
  3. ^ Pierre Schmitt: Das Unterlindenmuseum zu Colmar , 1973, p. 7
  4. ↑ Johann von Schlumberger (Ed.): Seraphin Dietler's Chronicle of the Schönensteinbach Monastery. 1897, p. 328
  5. ^ Emil A. Erdin: The Monastery of the Reuerinnen Sancta Maria Magdalena an den Steinen zu Basel from the beginnings to the Reformation (approx. 1230-1529) , Thèse lettres Friborg, 1955 p. 115
  6. ↑ See below web link: Unterlinden, Jardin clos de l'âme rhenane : Chronology
  7. ↑ See Karl-Ernst Geith: Kempf, Elisabeth . In: ²VL Vol. 4 (1983), col. 1115-1117 and Vol. 11 (2004), col. 836f; MM: Kempf, Elisabeth, OP . In: Wolfgang Achnitz (Ed.): Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon: Das Mittelalter , Vol. 2 (2011) Sp. 1087f. [1]
  8. ↑ See Bibliothèque Municipale de Colmar: Manuscrits Archived copy ( Memento of the original of November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bibliotheque.colmar.fr
  9. ↑ See Peter Dinzelbacher : Katharina von Gebersweiler. In: ²VL Vol. 4 (1983) Col. 1073-1075.
  10. ^ Sister books in Wikisource: Unterlindener sister book
  11. ↑ In the following essentially based on the Monastère Saint Jean Baptiste d'Unterlinden website , see below : Weblinks
  12. ^ Pierre Schmitt: The Unterlindenmuseum zu Colmar , 1973, p. 17

Web links

Coordinates: 48 ° 4 ′ 47 "  N , 7 ° 21 ′ 20"  E