Zehden Monastery
Coordinates: 52 ° 52 ′ 41.84 ″ N , 14 ° 12 ′ 29.05 ″ E The former Cistercian convent Zehden is located in the village of Cedynia ( Zehden in der Neumark ) in the Polish West Pomeranian Voivodeship , a few kilometers east of the Oder between Bad Freienwalde (Oder) ( Federal Republic of Germany ) and Chojna ( Königsberg in the Neumark ).
The foundation of the Cistercian monastery is dated to the year 1266. The closely with the monastery Chorin connected on the western side or monastery was consecrated 1278th Initially relatively insignificant, Zehden Monastery quickly gained influence and prosperity. It had large land holdings after all. Zehden Monastery played an important role in the development of the area around Zehden and in the Christianization of Neumark and Western Pomerania . In the 15th century the monastery belonged to the Knights' State of the Teutonic Order , later to the Electorate of Brandenburg .
The decline of the Zehden monastery began with the Reformation in Brandenburg. In 1555 the monastery was secularized . Although the nuns were initially able to stay in the monastery, when the monastery and its lands passed into the possession of the Brandenburg Elector Johann Sigismund in 1611 , the last Cistercian women had to leave the monastery. During the Thirty Years' War , King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden took up quarters in the former monastery. During the fighting of this war the place and monastery were badly destroyed in 1637. During the Thirty Years' War, Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg had the west wing of the monastery (the former dining room) rebuilt as a hunting lodge (the elector's house ). In 1699 the monastery church and large parts of the village were destroyed by fire.
With the establishment of the Kingdom of Prussia , Zehden became Prussian in 1701. In 1850 the west wing of the former monastery was converted into a royal Prussian post office . After the Second World War , the west wing with the post office burned down in 1946. The place Zehden and the ruins of the monastery came as a result of the Second World War to the territory of the then People's Republic of Poland, Zehden received the Polish name Cedynia .
Only in 1997, a private investor acquired the monastery grounds and began extensive restoration work on the ruins of the west wing and the still existing remains of walls of the monastery in close cooperation with the curator of the province . In October 2005 the hotel and restaurant “Kloster Zehden” opened in the former west wing, the only structurally preserved monastery building . Further restoration work and the restoration of the spring at the foot of the hill on which the monastery stood are planned.
literature
- Franz Winter : The Cistercians of north-eastern Germany. A contribution to the church and cultural history of the German Middle Ages . Volume 2: From the appearance of the mendicant orders to the end of the 13th century . Gotha 1871, p. 116.
