Wormeln Monastery

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Ink drawing by Franz Josef Brand (1822)
Wormeln, Klostergut (2020)

The monastery Wormeln goes back to a 1246 founded, former nunnery. It is located in the village of Wormeln , three kilometers south of Warburg in North Rhine-Westphalia . Today only the monastery church is owned by the Catholic Church , while the estate and other buildings are privately owned.

history

Monastery church with convent building
Humbelina Rosenmeyer, abbess 1783–1797
Sheepfold, Twztealstrasse 11 (2020)
The "Zum Stern" house in Warburg, acquired in 1748 (2010)

According to the founding document received, the monastery was on May 11, 1246 by the four sons of Count Albrecht III. Donated by Everstein . The monastery did not initially belong to the Cistercian order , but followed its rules. During this time there were not a few foundations of the Cistercians, but only very few nunneries were officially integrated into the order. In many cases, this only succeeded much later, so that the founding document only mentions a convent of the “gray order” that lives according to the rule of St. Benedict and additional regulations that were adopted from the monasteries the nuns came. The latter is understood as an implicit reference to the two central texts Exordium and Carta caritatis of the Cistercians. This view is also supported by other documents from the 13th century, which indirectly allow the conclusion that the abbess and the convent belonged to the order of the Cistercians. A connection to Hardehausen Monastery , which is only twelve kilometers northwest, could not be proven for the 13th century.

In contrast to various other convents of the Cistercian women, Wormeln cannot be proven to be a member of the high nobility . According to the traditional family names, the nuns came mainly from ministerial families and middle-class families who paid endowments to the monastery when their daughters joined.

Since no construction activities from the 13th century have survived, it is assumed that at the beginning the parish church and other existing buildings within Wormeln fell to the nuns or were used by them. It was not until the beginning of the 14th century that a single-nave church was built, which was consecrated in 1315 by the auxiliary bishop of Mainz . The church bears the patronage of the apostles Simon and Judah.

Even after it was founded, further foundations were made by the Counts of Everstein, through which further churches came into the possession of the monastery. In 1250 Heddinghausen (to Canstein , today part of the city of Marsberg ) was added, in 1252 Wettesingen and in the course of the 14th century Calenberg . In 1307 the monastery bought a quarter of the Salzkotten saltworks and in 1373 the same monastery received a second quarter as a gift. The monastery was the largest landowner in the village. The monastery had rent and tithe right as main sources of income .

At the beginning of the 16th century, mismanagement led to an economic crisis in the monastery. The ruin could be averted by a reform carried out by Abbot Heinrich von Marienfeld on behalf of the General Chapter . Between 1500 and 1618 there were repeated disputes between the monastery and the nobility of the region, such as with the lords of Calenberg, von Canstein , von der Malsburg , von Spiegel and von Haxthausen over the use of the forest, rights of the Fishing and other easements.

Until 1505 the monastery belonged to the diocese of Mainz , but in 1516 at the latest it came under the jurisdiction of the Paderborn archbishopric . This was apparently done so that the monastery could remain Catholic during the Reformation . During the Thirty Years' War , Wormeln was set on fire on the instructions of Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , which severely damaged the church and its buildings. Reconstruction took place in the 17th century. The high altar, for example, was rededicated in 1683. At the beginning of the 18th century, after a new period of prosperity, the convent building was rebuilt, which, apart from the north wing, which was demolished in 1887, has been preserved to this day. In 1748 the monastery owned a house with a barn and a garden on Wollenweberstrasse in the old town of Warburg . The monastery, represented by its abbess Victoria Weymann, exchanged this for the house "Zum Stern" in the Warburg Neustadt with an additional payment of 860 thalers . The subsequent renovation of the "Stern" was completed in 1755.

The Seven Years' War was also catastrophic for the monastery, during which there was a battle near Warburg in July 1760 . After the defeat of the French troops, the city of Warburg and its surroundings were released for sacking. This led to the lasting impoverishment of the entire rural population, so that the monastery got into economic difficulties and got into high debt and in 1787 had to sell the "Stern" in Warburg again. The farmers, who were exposed to stricter monitoring of the tithe deliveries, sued the monastery and were defeated after a legal dispute lasting almost 30 years. As a result of this defeat there was an uprising, which caused the abbess Humbelina Rosemeyer to call troops from Paderborn for help. The "Wormeln Monastery War" escalated with the dispute over the tithe in September 1797, when fighting and looting of the monastery resulted in a total of three deaths. The monastery was then ready to make concessions to the farmers.

The monastery was initially unaffected by the secularization , but by Jérôme Bonaparte , King of the newly created Kingdom of Westphalia , the monastery was closed on September 16, 1810. The church became the property of the Catholic parish and the property was sold together with the other buildings for 220,000 francs .

The property has been owned by the Ritgen family from Kettenbach (Aarbergen) in Hesse, who built it up as a farm and expanded it to the east and south with farm buildings and, from 1885, with a two-storey villa with a park. In 1877 the north wing was demolished. From 1949 to 1998 the estate was managed by Gerd Ritgen (1910–1998), who also became known as a politician nationwide. After his death, his son, the Canadian farmer Werner Ritgen (born October 11, 1951), inherited the monastery property.

The Church of St. Simon and Jude

The Gothic monastery church from 1315 has been preserved to this day and is used as a parish church. On May 8, 1985, it was entered as an individual monument in the list of architectural monuments in Warburg and has remarkable features:

The Bode-Museum zu Berlin keeps the panel painting “Maria as Throne Solomos” from the monastery from the early 14th century. It is one of the most important and substantial paintings of the early "Westphalian School" from the late Middle Ages.

A portrait of Abbess Humbelina Rosemeyer, who was in office from 1783 to 1797, a niece of Warburg mayor Balthasar Philipp Rosenmeyer , is on display in the “Stern” museum in Warburg.

Current condition of the monastery property

On November 3, 1983, the former monastery property was entered as a complete complex in the list of architectural monuments in Warburg . In 1990 there were plans to convert and refurbish the abbot's house as a retirement home, but these were given up in 1992.

In 1997 the abbot's house and the Villa Ritgen with the park were entered as individual monuments in the list of architectural monuments.

In 2015, the monastery wall, the sheepfold and the pigeon tower were recognized as worthy of a monument , and they were included in the topography of the Federal Republic of Germany .

In autumn 2019, Werner Ritgen had the roof of the listed sheep pen covered. The roof structure has been open since then. In this regard, he said that a reconstruction of the roof in accordance with the listed buildings with new beams and tiles would not be economically viable. In addition, a wall had shifted to the west, which would have to be rebuilt if it was rebuilt.

literature

  • F. Piper: Mary as Solomon's throne and her virtues at the Annunciation, in a medieval picture circle, especially in a painting in the Christian Museum of the University of Berlin . In: Yearbooks for Art History . tape 5 , no. 2 , 1873, p. 97-137 ( online [accessed March 27, 2015]).
  • Gabriele Maria Hock: The Westphalian Cistercian convents in the 13th century: Founding circumstances and early development . Dissertation at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster, 1994 ( Münster information and archive system for multimedia content (MIAMI) - a detailed description of the early history of this monastery can be found here on pages 481 to 496).
  • Peter Pfister (Ed.): Guide to all Cistercian monasteries in German-speaking countries . 2nd Edition. Éditions du Signe, Strasbourg 1998, ISBN 2-87718-596-6 (An entry for this monastery can be found here on pages 388 and 389.).
  • Mürmann, Franz: The golden star (=  series of publications by the Warburg Museum Association . Volume 1 ). Warburg 1988.
  • Bockelkamp, ​​Wilhelm (1996): Wormeln: from the history of monastery and village , ISBN 3-922032-15-X .
  • Edited by Helmut Müller (ed.): Documents of the Wormeln Monastery (=  Westphalian documents (texts and registers) . Volume 10 ). Aschendorff-Verlag, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-402-15291-1 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ According to the information from Hock's dissertation (first footnote on page 481) http://miami.uni-muenster.de/Record/c17cc0ca-da9d-4968-9501-cb7e647e94f7 , the document is in the Münster State Archives : WUB 4 n.364.
  2. ↑ See, for example, the essay by Sally Thompson: Why English Nunneries Had No History: A Study of the Problems of the English Nunneries Founded after the Conquest from the volume Distant Echoes: Medieval Religious Women , Volume 1, Cistercian Publications, 1984, ISBN 0 -87907-971-1 . According to this, there were 27 nunneries in England in the Middle Ages, which belonged to the Cistercians. However, only two of these were officially accepted by the Cistercians. And from the book by Terryl N. Kinder: Die Welt der Zisterzienser , Echter, 1997, ISBN 3-429-01920-6 , page 37: Therefore, the General Chapter in 1228 issued a prohibition on joining the order to other women's convents or allowing them to do so in its name establish. If a convent wanted to live according to the Cistercian customs, the general chapter could not forbid it, but the order would not assume any duty of visitation and spiritual guidance. The problem, as will be further explained here, was the enormous number of new foundations at the beginning of the 13th century, so that the order was unable to look after all of them.
  3. ↑ See section 5.1.3 on page 482 of Hock's dissertation, footnote 9 on page 2 of the same work and section 5.1.4.2 on page 483.
  4. ↑ See Pfister, page 388. The name Johannes Messerer is also mentioned elsewhere, but the tradition is not regarded as secure: http://kamps-toechter.de/index.php?wormeln-bis-zur-aufstieg
  5. ↑ See Peter Pfister, page 388.
  6. ↑ See http://www.wormeln.de/geschichte-zeittafel/
  7. ↑ The term "Wormelner Klosterkriegs" was adopted from http://www.calenberg.info/geschichte.html .
  8. ↑ See page 389 with Peter Pfister.
  9. ↑ See page 97 from the essay by F. Piper.
  10. ↑ See http://kamps-toechter.de/index.php?wormeln-nach-der-aufstieg
  11. ↑ Westfalenblatt from October 15, 2019

Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 23.8 "  N , 9 ° 7 ′ 56.3"  E