Zarnowitz Monastery

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The Zarnowitz Monastery is a former Cistercian and later Benedictine nunnery in Zarnowitz (Polish: Żarnowiec ) in the historical region of West Prussia .

Monastery church in Zarnowitz
Zarnowitz west of the Danzig Bay , northwest of the cities of Danzig and Neustadt in West Prussia and east of the northern tip of the Zarnowitz Lake on the Baltic Sea , on a map from 1910
Star vault and organ (1889) of the monastery church
Wall decorations in the monastery church

history

The village of Zarnowitz (now Żarnowiec in Polish ) east of Lake Zarnowitz, northwest of Danzig, was owned by the Oliva Monastery between 1215 and 1220 . The Pomerellian prince Subislaus (also Subislaw ), a son of Sambor I , had given it to the monastery in 1215 next to the village Rumna (later Rahmel ) and other goods. Before 1235, the Oliva monastery established a branch for nuns of the Cistercian order here . This emerges from a document issued by Duke Swantopolk II in 1235, with which he confirmed all of its properties to the Oliva Monastery, including the nunnery in Sarnowitz. The village of Sarnowitz was given to the nunnery as equipment. Since 1257, the nunnery also owned the village of Wierschutzin ( Wierzchucino ), located in the neighboring Duchy of Pomerania , on the western side of Lake Zarnowitz ; it had been given to it in Belgard by Swantopolk II with the consent of the Duke Ratibor von Pomerellen. Swantopolk had at the same time exempted the village from all customs duties on people, things and ships and also granted the villagers the right to fish in the Baltic Sea . In the documents of the Oliva monastery, three other villages appear, which are referred to as "villages of the nuns". In 1276 the Pomeranian Duke Mestwin II confirmed the possession of the village of Dirschau to the Zarnowitz monastery; In 1277 he confirmed the ownership of the village of Zarnowitz to the monastery and also gave him the village of Odargau.

According to oral tradition, the nuns and monks of the monastery placed themselves under the protection of the city of Danzig in 1433 because of the threat from the Hussite hordes who fought on the Polish side against the Teutonic Order . In the same year the monks of the Oliva monastery , which was also besieged by the Hussites, sought refuge in Gdansk. In 1486 Abbot Nicholas of the Oliva Monastery was the head of the Zarnowitz Monastery. In 1440, eleven nuns died of the plague. In 1462 the monastery was affected during the battle of Schwetzin between the Teutonic Knights and a Polish army.

In 1583 the nunnery already owned seven villages, Lake Zarnowitz and meadows on the Baltic Sea . Until 1590 the monastery remained under the supervision of the Oliva Monastery. During the Reformation the monastery was dissolved; At the end of the 16th century, only three nuns lived in the monastery.

The monastery was then bought by nuns of the Benedictine order in Kulm, converted into an independent Benedictine nunnery and filled with new life. In the convent school, young girls learned handicrafts, including the art of embroidery . An active abbess around 1762 was Hedwig von Kalkstein , under whom the monastery building was expanded. The monastery was considered rich.

As part of the Prussian Kulturkampf towards the end of the 19th century, the monastery was closed again. The land was taken over by a trustee. The monastery with its farm buildings was used as a farm, a state that lasted until 1945. Soon afterwards the monastery was re-established by the Benedictine Order. The inventory was preserved.

The beginnings of the monastery church, which has only one nave, go back to the 14th to 15th centuries. Alterations were made in the 17th century and renovations in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the last renovation, which took place in 1898, the previously existing baroque helmet was removed and replaced with a simple roof. During the renovation in 1850, the choir room for the nuns was made smaller.

The monastery and the monastery church have been surrounded by a monastery wall since the 17th century. Outside the monastery walls there is a stone house belonging to the monastery from 1409, which was rebuilt several times and which has served various purposes.

Until the end of the First World War , the village and monastery of Zarnowitz, located in West Prussia , bordered on the western part of the district of Lauenburg in the Pomeranian province . The border river was the Piasnitz flowing from the Zarnowitz Lake in a northerly direction into the Baltic Sea . The western border of the Polish Corridor ran here since 1919 .

Interior

A Gothic star vault adorns the interior of the monastery church. The organ from 1889 comes from Elbing . The church contains works of art from different eras including:

  • a Pietà carved from polychrome wood from 1430
  • a Gothic sculpture from 1415 depicting St. Catherine represents
  • Hand-printed missals from the 15th to 18th centuries, some of which were handwritten by the nuns themselves
  • a wooden sculpture of Christ from the first half of the 16th century
  • six baroque altars from the 17th to 18th centuries
  • a baroque baptismal bowl from the first half of the 18th century
  • a Rococo style pulpit from the second half of the 18th century
  • a baroque stele from 1719
  • an illustrated high altar from 1700 with silver cladding made by Danzig goldsmiths
  • two art-historically valuable side altars from the 17th century

In the middle of the nave is the grave of the knight Fritz Raveneck († 1462), who fell during the battle of Schwetzin. and whose corpse his warriors brought here. His grave is adorned with a marble epitaph showing the knight in life size. In the church there is also a tombstone of the grave of Anna Gruduel († 1512) from Putzig. Further sculptures from the 15th to 18th centuries can be found in the cloister of the monastery. Numerous vestments and vestments from the 17th and 18th centuries have been preserved; they are comparable to those that were found walled in in a niche in Gdańsk's Marienkirche at the beginning of the 1930s .

In the treasury of the monastery there is a silver-plated and gold-plated reliquary bust of St. Ursula from the second quarter of the 15th century. Textile samples are kept in the treasury of the monastery, documenting the variety of patterns of the Kashubian embroidery art taught in the monastery school . The treasury also contains measuring utensils such as goblets, a valuable chorale book from 1458 and other splendid hymn books from the same period.

literature

  • Franz Winter : The Cistercians of northeast Germany . Volume 2, Gotha 1871, p. 118 ( full text ).
  • Hans Prutz: History of the Neustadt district in West Prussia . Danzig 1872, pp. 209-210 .

Web links

Commons : Monastery in Żarnowiec  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Prutz: History of the Neustadt district in West Prussia . Danzig 1872, p. 16 .
  2. ^ Max Toeppen : Historisch-comparative geography of Prussia . Gotha 1858, p. 244 .
  3. ↑ L. Quandt: East Pomerania, its princes, princely Landestheilungen and districts . In: Baltic Studies , 16th year, 1st issue, Stettin 1856, pp. 97–156, especially p. 135
  4. ^ E. Strehlke: Documents of Duke Mestwin II. From the Graflich Krockow'schen family archives in Krockow . In: Neue Preußische Provinzial-Blätter , Volume 74, Königsberg 1871, pp. 633–642, especially p. 634.
  5. ↑ Max Töppen : History of the Prussian Historiography by P. v. Dusburg to K. Schütz . Berlin 1853, p. 122
  6. ^ Heinrich Friedrich Jacobson : Contribution to the history of the Prussian monasteries . In: New general archive for the history of the Prussian state . Volume 2, Berlin Posen Bromberg 1836, p. 33 ff. In particular p. 336
  7. ^ Heinrich Friedrich Jacobson : Contribution to the history of the Prussian monasteries . In: New general archive for the history of the Prussian state . Volume 2, Berlin Posen Bromberg 1836, p. 33 ff. In particular p. 345
  8. ↑ a b The Cistercian Way in Poland
  9. ↑ a b c d e f Georg Sokolk: Pomerania - In the mirror of its more than 2000 years of history, especially of the Lauenburg-Bütow countries . Edited by Gunter Sölkk and Michael Sölkk. Self-published by Georg Sölkk, Eberbach 1997; Printing: Druckhaus Darmstadt. Pp. 312-313.
  10. ↑ A Cosel of the parish church to Zarnowitz . In: Organ für Christian Kunst , Volume 17, No. 21, Cologne 1867, pp. 244–245.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / book.s.google.de  
  11. ^ A b Michael Antoni and Georg Dehio: East and West Prussia . Volume 17, 1993, p. 670.
  12. ^ Johann Karl Kretzschmer : History and description of the monasteries in Pommerellen . Volume 1: The Cistercian Abbey of Oliva , Danzig 1847, p. 130 .

Coordinates: 54 ° 47 ′ 14.8 "  N , 18 ° 4 ′ 54.4"  E