Good Shepherd Monastery (Aachen)
The Monastery of the Good Shepherd in Aachen is a former Christian institution in the area of the Süsterfeld corridor on the edge of Aachen West Station . The monastery complex, built by Hermann Josef Hürth in the neo-Gothic style in 1887 , was commissioned by the branch of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd , which had existed in Aachen since 1848 and used it for their purposes until 1982. The city of Aachen then took over the complex, had parts of it torn down and placed the former pupil's house, wash house and the somewhat secluded priest's house under monument protection . In a further step, the areas and existing buildings were and will be redesigned step by step for high-quality residential development and for the development of the planned “Campus West”.
history
Helene Henriette Fey (1804–1880), daughter of the Aachen merchant Joseph Andreas Fey (1780–1823) and Luise Beissel (1778–1842) and the cousin of Clara Fey joined in 1843 on the recommendation of the pastor and avowed ultramontanist Leonhard Aloys Joseph Nellessen , a Friend of the family, joined the Order of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd founded in 1829 in Angers . After her novitiate and profession she returned to Aachen and founded the first branch of the order on Prussian soil in 1848 together with her sister Marie Louise Fey (1806-1889) and with the support of the doctor Heinrich Hahn in a former factory on Bergstrasse . The aim of the monastery was, in accordance with the strict moral standards of the time, to accommodate and train young girls from socially difficult backgrounds as well as to care for girls who were "difficult to educate" and girls who had attracted attention through prostitution or "immoral" behavior. Under her religious name “Maria von der St. Euphrasia ”, Helene Fey was appointed the first superior of the branch, who initially took up the religious work with only a few sisters and around 20 so-called fallen girls . These had previously been looked after by Franziska Schervier and her poor sisters from St. Francis , who, however, were mainly devoted to cholera and plague patients as well as social and educational tasks in the following period. According to the specifications from the French mother house, the contemplative branch of the order of the "Magdalene" was also set up in Aachen , which was mainly composed of the "fallen girls" and willing female pupils and existed within the order as a separate group with its own rules and habit . It got its name based on the order of the Magdalenerinnen , which was formed from penitent prostitutes and women at risk.
The establishment of the branch obviously corresponded to a great public need, because the number of pupils grew from the beginning of 20 to over a hundred in 1853 to well over 600 in 1866. After Queen Augusta visited the monastery several times in the 1860s and this Having considered the institution to be sensible and worthy of funding, she later, like Heinrich Hahn again, campaigned for the branch to be spared the restrictions of the Kulturkampf and to be supported in its work by funding.
Since the monastery rooms in Bergstrasse could no longer meet the demand, the sisters acquired a plot of land on Süsterfeld, on which they had a new monastery built between 1886 and 1887 according to plans by the Aachen architect Hermann Josef Hürth.
During the Second World War , the buildings suffered considerable damage and most of them had to be restored and renovated. The after-effects of the war years also had an impact on the occupancy rate, and in its anniversary year 1948 the branch had only 170 pupils, 32 Magdalene and 59 sisters. Due to the improved social and educational conditions in society in the upswing years after the war, the number of residents in the monastery remained at a low level. In addition, there were initially rumors, which were confirmed in later years after the closure by testimony, that an environment of fear and oppression prevailed within the monastery walls through questionable educational methods and punishments and that the pupils had to produce in piece for large mail-order companies such as Quelle , Schwab and Neckermann . Likewise, the laundry had to work well beyond the company's own needs for public contracts. This situation was set up in parts of society as a threatening backdrop for uncomfortable children who were put under pressure with the words “if you are not good, you will come to the Good Shepherd”. After these conditions led to increased attempts to escape, one of which had ended fatally in 1957, registrations for admissions or transfers by the youth welfare office to the monastery continued to decline. The reduction of the age of majority to 18 in 1975 also had a lowering effect on the occupancy figures, as many pupils over the age of 18 had to be released.
The branch wanted to counter this trend at the beginning of the 1970s by converting to an old people's home, but as this was not profitable either, the Order gave up the facility in 1980 and sold it to the city of Aachen. This had the monastery complex demolished except for the pupil's house, the wash house and the priest's house in order to gradually redesign the buildings and areas.
Monastery complex
The entire monastery complex consisted of the nurses' house, the Magdalene home and the pupil's house, as well as a work block with a large laundry, sewing and ironing room. The priest's house was built a little apart, and the monastery church in the middle between the two wings. In addition, a monastery garden and a monastery cemetery for the nuns belonged to the complex.
The massive Zöglingshaus with its red brick façade stands out from the preserved and listed buildings . It consists of five storeys, the top one being formed by the expanded mansard roof , as well as thirteen axes that are separated from each other by prominent buttresses . The western weather side of the block with its stepped corner gable was completely covered with sheet zinc checks. Several staircase entrances are distributed in the basement in such a way that it was possible to admit and accommodate children separately in different groups. You can also see the two-storey passageways that once led separately to the church and to the Magdalenenhaus and the sister house. Inside the building, the restored groin vaulted corridors, the original tiled floors and the original staircases are impressive .
After the order moved away, the Zöglingshaus served for many years initially as an asylum seekers' home for mostly Central European asylum seekers and from 1996 to 2016 as the “Atelierhaus Aachen” for around 30 artists in the fields of painting, object art, photography, video, installation and kinetics.
To the north of the Zöglingshaus is the three-storey, nine-axis laundry and workhouse with the attached heating plant and its imposing chimney. In the wash house, the broad central axis with its stepped gable structure protrudes above the roof ridge. Here, too, parts of the west side are clad with sheet zinc checks.
Somewhat apart from the monastery buildings is the three-storey priest building, built at the same time and in the same style, which has an oppressive charisma due to its angled construction, the high floors and the dark facades.
An architectural peculiarity adapted to the special task of the monastery, as was often the case in other monasteries of the order, was the no longer existing monastery church, which stood between the pupil's house and the priest building. She was with three naves provided that an acute angle and are separated on the hexagonal choir zuliefen so that both the pupils and the Magdalen and the sisters over the two-story walkways had direct access from their living quarters to the church and there at the same time not looking or voice contact was possible with each other.
When building the church, however, there were some organizational and material problems that led to the fact that until 1913 there was only a single-storey building that served as an emergency church for the monastery. Later the construction of the church was continued according to a new design by the Cologne architect Jakob Kerschgens, which was not completed until 1926 due to the First World War and the subsequent global economic crisis .
In the rear of the monastery complex there was a spacious monastery garden at the time of the order, in which, among other things, local fruit and vegetables as well as herbs for personal use were grown. After the sisters moved out, the area overgrown into an ecological biotope for native birds and insects and is currently no longer accessible.
In the immediate vicinity is the small monastery cemetery for the nuns, equipped with mighty poplars, which served as their final resting place after their move to Süsterfeld and which reminds of about 70 grave tablets still in existence. Before that, the sisters found their final resting place in a burial ground in Aachen's Ostfriedhof . The extent to which the monastery garden and the monastery cemetery will be taken into account in the current and planned development has not yet been conclusively clarified.
literature
- Ingeborg Schild , Elisabeth Janssen: The Aachen East Cemetery. Mayersche Buchhandlung , Aachen 1991, pp. 234-235, ISBN 3-87519-116-1 .
- Annette Lützke: Public education and home education for girls 1945 to 1975 - pictures of 'morally neglected' girls and young women , dissertation at the University of Essen 2002
- Ecology Center Aachen eV: The monastery of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Aachen , in: Aachener Umweltrundbrief No. 78, June 2016 ( pdf )
Web links
- Thomas Kreft: Good Shepherd is threatened with demolition , in Grenz-Echo from April 27, 2009
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heiner Hautermans: 800 new apartments at the Good Shepherd , in: Aachener Nachrichten of October 1, 2018
- ↑ The "Good Shepherd" should not be torn down , in: Aachener Nachrichten of March 12, 2009
- ↑ Homepage of the Atelierhaus Aachen
Coordinates: 50 ° 47 ′ 14.5 " N , 6 ° 3 ′ 42.3" E