Werl Monastery

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Werl Monastery
Cloister gate
Monastery around 1880, drawing by Adolf Stampfer

The Monastery Werl was from 1645 to 1834, a Capuchin monastery and from 1848 to 2019 a convent of the Franciscan Order in Werl , Soest district .

history

Early modern age

The original Capuchin monastery was founded in 1645 by Elector Ferdinand to strengthen Catholic life. In 1661, his successor Maximilian Heinrich gave the order the miraculous image of the Comforter of the Sorrowful from the Soest Wiesenkirche , which attracted pilgrims and brought a lot of money to the city. A number of medical miracles are also attested.

The monastery buildings were east of the market. In 1786/89 the monastery church was rebuilt according to plans by Arnold Boner . The Capuchins made their living through alms. In 1802 the convent consisted of 28 people. Among them were some French who had fled the French Revolution .

19th and 20th centuries

When the Hessian takeover of the Duchy of Westphalia , the monastery initially remained. In 1804 religious from the dissolved Capuchin monastery Rüthen , in 1813 from the abolished Capuchin monastery Marsberg . The Werl monastery was then dissolved in 1834 under the Prussian government. The last Capuchins left the monastery in 1836.

In 1848 the Franciscans re-established the monastery. The monastery and church were owned by the parish, which according to an agreement from 1872 allowed the Franciscan order to use it without paying a rent; the Franciscans had to maintain the facility at their own expense. The brothers were expelled in 1875 due to the monastery legislation during the so-called Kulturkampf and returned in 1887. The miraculous image and the pilgrimage basilica are looked after by them to this day.

The monastery building was rebuilt by 1904, as the previous monastery (the Capuchin and later the Franciscan) had to give way to the new building of the pilgrimage basilica.

During the time of National Socialism , pilgrimages were increasingly restricted and ultimately forbidden. The pilgrimage director at the time, Father Lambert Fester, nevertheless tried to keep the "pilgrimage" going. He succeeded time and again despite his limitations. Since large pilgrimages were forbidden, the participants in the foot pilgrimage from Werne came to Werl in a roundabout way and were stopped by the Gestapo shortly before the city and sent home.

The ashes of the Franciscan Father Kilian Kirchhoff , who was beheaded on April 24, 1944 in Brandenburg-Görden as a victim of the Nazi regime, are buried in the crypt of the Franciscan monastery in the Werler Parkfriedhof . He had been denounced by a woman from Kassel, arrested and charged in Dortmund. Roland Freisler sentenced Kirchhoff to death on March 7, 1944 before the People's Court .

Takeover by the Archdiocese of Paderborn

In 2015 the Franciscans announced that they would give up the monastery and the pilgrimage pastoral care in Werl in 2019. The early announcement should help the Archdiocese of Paderborn to find a solution for the pilgrimage pastoral care in Werl. In 2017 the archbishopric bought the monastery. The archbishopric plans to set up a pilgrimage center in the monastery building and also to accommodate the administration of church institutions.

The Franciscans left Werl on September 1, 2019.

Simultaneum of the monastery church

About 100 Protestants lived in Werl around 1828; Werl had around 3350 inhabitants. These Protestant fellow citizens, mostly members of the Prussian civil service, had previously held their services in a chapel on the Gänsevöhde. From 1831 the monastery church - today an old pilgrimage church - was intended for simultaneous use. There were repeated difficulties between the two parishes because of the use of the church. On March 6, 1851, the Simultaneum was contractually repealed. The evangelical believers celebrated their services until the completion of their own church in 1854 in the meeting room of what was then Werler's town hall.

literature

  • Didakus Falke: History of the former Capuchin and current Franciscan monastery in Werl . Schöningh, Paderborn 1911 ( digitized version )
  • Heinrich Josef Deisting: "... miserable alleys do not suggest the prosperity ... that really reigns here". Werl in the period of secularization. In: Ingrid Reissland (ed.): From the Kurkölnischer Krummstab over the Hessian lion to the Prussian eagle. Secularization and its consequences in the Duchy of Westphalia 1803-2003. Sauerland-Museum, Arnsberg 2003, ISBN 3-930264-46-3 , pp. 185–197.
  • Helmuth Euler : Werl under the swastika. Brown everyday life in pictures, texts, documents. Self-published, Werl 1983.
  • Gisela Fleckenstein and Engelhard Kutzner: Franciscans in Werl. Ed .: Franziskanerkloster Werl, printed by Dietrich Coelde Verlag, Werl 1999, ISBN 3-87163-241-4 .
  • Waltram Schürmann (Ed.): 300 years of pilgrimage to Werl. 1661-1961. Franciscan monastery, Werl 1961.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Georg Aschoff : From the Kulturkampf to the First World War. In: Joachim Schmiedl (Ed.): From Kulturkampf to the beginning of the 21st century. Paderborn 2010, pp. 23–287, here p. 141, based on: Gisela Fleckenstein: Vom Kulturkapmpf until the end of the Weimar Republic. In: Gisela Fleckenstein and Engelhard Kutzner: Franziskaner in Werl. Werl 1999, p. 26.
  2. ↑ Press release of the Archdiocese of Paderborn: Archdiocese buys Werler monastery and plans the future of the pilgrimage , July 14, 2017, accessed on August 2, 2017.
  3. ^ Farewell to Werl , accessed on September 4, 2019.
  4. ^ Franciscans in Werl. ISBN 3-87163-241-4 , p. 13.

Coordinates: 51 ° 33 ′ 13.4 "  N , 7 ° 54 ′ 56.3"  E