Weissenstein Monastery
The Weißenstein Monastery was a collegiate monastery founded around 1137 and later a nunnery near Kassel , on the site of today 's Wilhelmshöhe Castle .
founding
Canons from the Mainz archdeaconate Fritzlar founded the Augustinian Canons' Abbey of Weißenstein (Witzenstein), dedicated to “Our Lady” at the latest in 1137 , on the eastern slope of the Habichtswald , west above the village of Wahlershausen . The first provost , Bruno von Weißenstein, was probably a native of Fritzlar; In 1145 he founded a hospital in Fritzlar, from which the local Augustinian monastery developed. The name of the monastery came from the white limestone rock on which the facility was built. Archbishop Heinrich I of Mainz confirmed the monastery on December 14, 1143, placed it under his protection, and gave it the right to baptize, bury, and care for the sick. The Counts of Schauenburg were probably the bailiffs of the monastery until the early 13th century .
The immediate proximity of this Mainz monastery to the former royal court "Chassela" (Kassel), which was lent to the Ludowinger Landgraves of Thuringia , was viewed with suspicion by the Landgraves and immediately by the Ludowinger regent in Hessengau , Heinrich Raspe II , and his mother Hedwig von Gudensberg answered with the establishment of the Ahnaberg monastery in order to counter a further expansion of Mainz property in northern Hesse.
From 1184 the monastery was a double monastery for canons and choir women, but had already become a pure women's monastery in 1193, whose residents (at least from 1256) the "innocent daughters of the valley of St. Maria bei Weißenstein “.
The End
With the introduction of the Reformation in the Landgraviate of Hesse in 1526 by Landgrave Philip I, the end of the monastery was approaching. On October 15, 1527, the Hessian state parliament met in Kassel and decided, among other things, to secularize the monasteries and monasteries. The nuns from Weißenstein went to other monasteries or returned to worldly life with a settlement.
The complex was then used by the landgraves as a hunting lodge. On June 25, 1606, Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel laid the foundation stone for a new hunting and summer palace in the Renaissance style , which was built between 1606 and 1610 and to which the former monastery complex fell victim. Today the Wilhelmshöhe Palace , built between 1786 and 1798, stands in the same place .
Web links
- http://www.wilhelmshoehe.de/historisches.cfm
- Karl F. Haas, attempt at a Hessian church history of the old and middle times , Bayrhoffer, Marburg / Frankfurt / Leipzig, 1782 (p. 304-309: Kloster Weißenstein)
literature
- Johannes Schultze (ed.): Monasteries, donors and hospitals of the city of Kassel and Weißenstein monastery - registers and documents , (publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse and Waldeck, monastery archives second volume), Marburg, 1913
- Horst Becker, Michael Karkosch: Park Wilhelmshöhe: historical analysis, documentation, monument preservation objectives , Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg, 2007, ISBN 978-3-7954-1901-1
Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 54 " N , 9 ° 24 ′ 58" E