Wendhusen Monastery
| Wendhusen cannon convent | |
|---|---|
| location | Germany Saxony-Anhalt |
| Coordinates: | 51 ° 45 '24 " N , 11 ° 2' 56.8" E |
| Patronage | St. Marien and Pusinna |
| founding year | around 825 |
| Year of dissolution / annulment |
1540 |
| Mother monastery | St. Marien and Pusinna, Herford |
The monastery Wendhusen also modernized Wendhausen in Thale is the oldest monastery in the area of present-day state of Saxony-Anhalt and is the start or end station of the Harz Monastery trail . It is the only Carolingian building and the oldest canonical monastery in the new federal states. After secularization around 1540, it became a manor.
History of the monastery
The monastery was founded around 825 by Gisela, the eldest daughter of Count Hessi from East Falia , who received the count's office from Charlemagne in 782 . As the wife of Count Unwan, she was widowed at an early age and became known as the builder of several monasteries, in addition to Wendhusen in Karsbach in Franconia. Her two daughters, Hruothild and Bilihilt, became the first abbesses of the Karsbach and Wendhusen monasteries. Liutbirg , who came from Solazburg and was closely related to the funders , received a cell at Altmichaelstein / Volkmarskeller , which belongs to Wendhusen , and where she lived for 30 years.
The Imperial Abbey of Herford , the oldest and at times most important Saxon women's monastery, acted as a model for later foundations and also exerted direct influence on a constitutional, personal and cultural level. Such an influence can be proven in Wendhusen and Gandersheim. The Wendhusen monastery received support from Herford soon after it was founded, perhaps also in terms of personnel. In the fragmentary necrology of the monastery from the 11th century, the Herford abbess Haduwy is in first place . Furthermore, the monastery carried the not very frequent patronage of St. Pusinna , the Herford patron saint. Relics of the female Pus came from Herford to the monastery.
Mathilde , the widow of Heinrich I , tried to move the convent to Quedlinburg in 936 . However, the complete relocation failed due to the resistance of the canonesses and the abbess Diemot and the monastery continued to exist depending on the Quedlinburg imperial monastery .
In 1180 the monastery was devastated in the dispute between Emperor Friedrich I and Duke Heinrich the Lion , but was rebuilt immediately afterwards. During the Peasants' War , the monastery was robbed, destroyed and burned down in 1525. In 1540 it was secularized . The convent buildings were probably dilapidated afterwards.
Buildings and plant
The large tower that exists today in Thale is the impressive remnant of a western building ( Saxon West Bar ), which was added to an older church by 1192/96 at the latest. However, the reconstruction or renewal after the devastation of 1180 is more likely. Archaeological excavations in 1993/94 uncovered the foundations of the outer walls of the formerly adjoining nave, so that the earlier opinion of some researchers who viewed the Wendhus Tower as a Carolingian-Ottonian residential tower , has been refuted. With a hall level and three (sleeping) chambers above it, including a lavatory , the west block has the character of a fortified and habitable castle tower and is likely to have fulfilled its functions.
The collegiate church adjoining the west building was a single-nave hall building with a horseshoe-shaped apse. The west building protruded beyond the nave to the north and south.
Saxon West Bar (around 1192)
Later additions in the area of the nave (from remains of the cannon gallery)
Graf Hessi monument in front of the Wendhusen monastery with the Andreas Church
History of the manor
The Thale manor, owned by the von Thal family in the Middle Ages , is listed in more recent chronicles as "Wendhusen I", the monastery estate that emerged from the monastery as "Wendhusen II".
After the secularization , the then territorial lord Count Ulrich XI. of Regenstein the pen in 1540 and the convent initially verlehnte to the noble families of Weddelsdorff and of Watzdorff before finally in the feudal possession of those of Steuben passed. The Counts of Regenstein and Blankenburg transferred it to their vassal Lorenz Steube - in recognition of his services in the war (1553) against Elector Moritz von Sachsen . Initially, there was only one entitlement; according to the loan deed of May 3, 1558, the property only became the sole property of Lorenz in 1562 after the previous owner Cunz von Watzdorff died in the same year without an heir.
In the following years Lorenz Steube took over several guarantees for the heavily indebted Grafenhaus Regenstein, which ultimately brought him into great financial difficulties. In the 17th century, his great-grandson Christoph Otto von Steuben pledged the monastery property to the von Wartensleben family in order to finance the Schnaditz Castle he had acquired . Otto Werner von Steuben, the youngest son of Christoph Otto, triggered Wendhusen again at the beginning of the 18th century, he wanted to bring the graves of his ancestors back into the Steuben family property. The price for this, a mortgage on the Gerbstedt manor and an additional loan of 10,000 thalers , led to the final loss: after Otto Werner's death - he left behind a mountain of debt of around 42,000 thalers - the Wendhusen estate was sequestered and on April 26, 1723 Taken over for 25,000 thalers by Franz Hartwig, a princely bailiff from Klostermansfeld . The pulpit of the Gutskirche St. Andreas bears the coats of arms of the Steuben and Löser families. In the manor's box there is a life-size marble statue of the former church patron Otto Werner von Steuben. The epitaphs of the first owner Lorenz Steube (1525–1585) and his two wives Genoveva von Thal and Anna von Stammer (died 1570), which were on the outer wall of the St. Andrew's Church for over 400 years, were moved to the left in 2001 Side of the nave offset.
The Hartwig heirs sold the estate in 1800 to the von dem Bussche-Streithorst family , who owned it until it was expropriated in 1945, last represented by the resistance fighter Baron Axel von dem Bussche .
present
Both the former monastery and the neighboring manor in Thale are now publicly owned and, after extensive restoration, have become a tourist attraction in the Eastern Harz Mountains. Its eventful history bears witness to the social, societal and political structure of the Middle Ages. In February 2007 the Nordharzer Altertumsgesellschaft e. V. under the former Mayor of Blankenburg, the local researcher Heinz A. Behrens from the city of Thale, the monastery complex. The company operates a monastery museum on the special topic of "Canonical pens" and a center for living history.
literature
- Walther Grosse : The Wendhausen Monastery, its donor family and its clergy. In: Saxony and Anhalt. 16, 1940, pp. 45-76.
- Martin Kroker: Emperors, Kings and Pious Women. The Reichsstift Herford in the Ottonian, Salian and Staufer times. In: Olaf Schirmeister (ed.): Pious women and religious men. Monasteries and monasteries in St. Herford. Bielefeld 2000, pp. 77-126.
- Annett Laube-Rosenpflanzer, Lutz Rosenpflanzer: churches, monasteries, royal courts. Pre-Romanesque architecture between the Weser and Elbe. Halle (Saale) 2007, pp. 60–61.
- Heinz A. Behrens , Birgit Behrens: Wendhusen Monastery. Volume 1: The first nobility foundation in Ostfalen and the life of the Klausnerin Liutbirg. Thale 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-029271-2 ; Volume 2: Building History . Thale 2013, ISBN 978-3-00-040847-2 .
swell
- ^ History of Karsbach
- ↑ Grosse 1940, p. 57f./Kroker 2000, p. 88f.
- ↑ Laube-Rosenpflanzer 2007, pp. 60f.
- ↑ Behrens, Wendhusen Monastery, Vol. 2, p. 19.
Web links
- Website of the Nordharzer Altertumsgesellschaft
- Steuben possessions
- Material on the Thale manor (PDF; 259 kB) in the Alexander Duncker collection