Weissenau Monastery

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Convent building
Monastery complex in the landscape
View from the front
Monastery church of St. Peter and Paul

The Weissenau Abbey (historically also Minderau , lat. Augia Minor ) was an imperial immediacy canons of Premonstratensian few kilometers south of the former imperial city of Ravensburg in Upper Swabia. It existed from 1145 until secularization in 1802/1803. Today it is in the Ravensburg district of Eschach .

history

The monastery was founded in 1145 by Gebizo von Ravensburg , a ministerial of the Welfs . Settlement under Provost Hermann I took place with canons from the Rot an der Rot monastery . The foundation stone of the church was laid in 1152 and the provisional consecration took place in 1163. This high Romanesque complex had the shape of a three-aisled basilica. After the provost's office was elevated to an abbey in 1257, it received a Holy Blood relic from Rudolf von Habsburg in 1283, which improved the economic situation. The monastery also owes a mention in the Lohengrin to the relic . It is also still the focus of the traditional Magdalene Festival.

At the beginning of the 18th century the decision was made to rebuild the monastery. Commissioned by Imperial Prelate Mauch and planned by the Constance builder Franz Beer von Blaichten , the abbey church was also rebuilt in a baroque style, which was completed in 1724.

Like the Schussenried monastery , Weißenau initially fell to the house of the imperial counts of Sternberg-Manderscheid during the secularization , whose heirs sold the lords of Schussenried and Weißenau for one million guilders to the Württemberg royal family in 1835 . As a result of the mediatization , the area had belonged to the Kingdom of Württemberg since 1806 .

The monastery buildings that have been preserved are now in the area of ​​the residential area Weißenau in the village of Eschach in the city of Ravensburg. The territorial and manorial rule of the monastery extended primarily to individual villages and hamlets of today's town of Eschach such as Oberhofen and Untereschach. The parishes of St. Christina, whose church is near Ravensburg (today Veitsburg ) in Ravensburg, and Bodnegg also belonged to the Weißenau monastery.

Later use

The former convent building was converted into a sanatorium in 1892. During the Third Reich , the state institution in Württemberg became an intermediate institution for patients and residents from Göppingen, Rottenmünster and Winnental. As part of “ Aktion T4 ” in 1940, a total of 691 women, men, young people and children were transported to the Grafeneck Castle killing center for destruction by the so-called “ gray buses ” operated by the non-profit sick transport GmbH (Gekrat) . During this time, inmates were also admitted there for political reasons, including Theodor Roller .

There, in a few other former monastery buildings and in the surrounding new buildings, the Center for Psychiatry Weissenau (public law institution under the guarantee of the state of Baden-Württemberg) is now housed. In the nearby Rahlenhof, the former summer residence of the Weißenau abbots, an associated specialist clinic for men with addiction, and later for young people, was operated until a few years ago. Today the Rahlenhof is used by the Adolf Aich vocational training center of the Liebenau Foundation , which operates an outdoor living group there.

The richly stuccoed ballroom in the convent building is used as a concert hall (300 seats).

A bleaching and finishing factory, initially set up in the monastery in the 19th century, existed until 2006 in extensive industrial buildings in the immediate vicinity of the monastery. Production operations were discontinued in 2006, but administrative areas are still based in Weißenau.

Monastery church

Interior view, view from the gallery to the east

The baroque monastery church of St. Peter and Paul is used as the parish church of the local Roman Catholic parish. The church with its opulent painting and the valuable baroque choir stalls is a sight on the Upper Swabian Baroque Road .

Holzhey organ

The organ of the monastery church was built in 1787 by the organ builder Johann Nepomuk Holzhey . The listed instrument was last extensively restored in 1989 by the organ building company Sandtner (Dillingen / Donau). The late baroque organ has 41  stops on three manuals and a pedal . She has the following disposition

I main work C – f 3
Praestant 16 ′
Principal 8th'
Copel 8th'
Quintadena 8th'
Gamba 8th'
viola 8th'
Octav 4 ′
Whistle 4 ′
Nazard II 2 ′
Super octave 2 ′
Sex tormentors III – IV 3 ′
Cornet III 3 ′
Mixture VI 2 ′
Trumpet 8th'
Claron 4 ′
II Positive C – f 3
Principal 8th'
Reed flutes 8th'
Salicional 8th'
Undamaris 8th'
Flautravers 8th'
Octav 4 ′
Wooden flutes 4 ′
Fugari 4 ′
Quint 3 ′
Hörnle II 2 ′ + 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′
Cimbal V 2 ′
Bassoon (B) 8th'
Hautbois (D) 8th'
III echo C – f 3
Night horn 8th'
Dulciana 8th'
Spizflutes 4 ′
Flageolet 2 ′
Cornet Resit IV 4 ′
Vox humana (B, D) 8th'
Cromorn (B) 8th'
Shawm (D) 8th'
Tremulant (D)
Pedal C – a 0
Sub-bass 16 ′
Octave bass 8th'
Violonbass 8th'
Cornetbass IV 4 ′
Bompard 16 ′
Trumpet 8th'
Claron 4 ′
  • Coupling : positive cup (II – I), echo cup (III – I), tuttibass (I – pedal).
  • Remarks:
  1. ↑ beat.
  2. ↑ a b c d ab g 0 .
  3. ↑ to f sharp 0 .
  4. ↑ C – f sharp 0 / g 0 –f 3 .

  • Interior view, view to the west Interior view, view from the choir to the west

  • Holzhey organ of the Weissenau monastery church

  • The organ console in Weißenau

See also

literature

  • Hubert Krins: ballroom and abbey of the Weißenau monastery . In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg , 6th year 1977, issue 4, pp. 153–165. ( PDF )
  • Peter Eitel (Ed.): Weissenau in past and present. Festschrift for the 700th anniversary of the handover of the Holy Blood relic by Rudolf von Habsburg to the Premonstratensian Abbey of Weissenau . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1983, ISBN 3-7995-4020-2 .
  • Ursula Riechert: Upper Swabian imperial monasteries in the network of relationships with royalty, nobility and cities (12th to 15th centuries). Shown using Weingarten, Weissenau and Baindt as an example . Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1986, ISBN 3-8204-8617-8 (also dissertation, FU Berlin 1984)
  • Helmut Binder (Ed.): 850 Years of Premonstratensian Abbey Weissenau. 1145-1995 . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1995, ISBN 3-7995-0414-1 . ( Review )
  • Siegfried Heim: Our mother parish in Weißenau . In: Siegfried Heim (ed.), Heimatkundekreis Wolfurt (ed.): Heimat Wolfurt. Journal of the local history circle . No. 17 (March 1996), Wolfurt 1996, pp. 4-8. - Full text online (PDF; 4.75 MB) .
  • St. Peter and Paul, Weißenau. Schnell Art Guide No. 151. Schnell & Steiner publishing house, Regensburg 2004, ISBN 3-7954-4158-7 .
  • Franz Schwarzbauer, Andreas Schmauder, Paul-Otto Schmidt-Michel (eds.): Remembrance and commemoration. The Weißenau memorial and the culture of remembrance in Ravensburg . 2007, ISBN 978-3-89669-625-0
  • Elke Wenzel: The medieval library of the Abbey of Weißenau . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1998, ISBN 3-631-32206-2

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ State Parliament in Ravensburg commemorates the Nazi victims in the Schwäbische Zeitung of January 27, 2009 (only headline)
  2. ↑ Information about the organ on the Weißenau website.
  3. ^ Franz Lüthi: The Holzhey organ in the former Weissenau abbey church. In: Bulletin der Orgelfreunde St. Gallen , 12, No. 3, 1994. P. 64ff. Online (PDF file; 6.4 MB)

Web links

Commons : Weissenau Abbey  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Weissenau Monastery  - Sources and full texts

Coordinates: 47 ° 45 ′ 46.8 "  N , 9 ° 35 ′ 45.6"  E