Mörickestift
The Mörickestift in Neuenstadt am Kocher in the Heilbronn district dates back to the country house of a Neuenstadt doctor around 1830 and was owned by the Möri (c) ke family of pharmacists from 1853, who were closely related to the poet Eduard Mörike . After the death of his cousin Carl Möricke, his widow Marie Mörike set up a monastery for unmarried or widowed Protestant women in 1874 , which in 1979 became the city's sponsorship. From the 1950s onwards, additional facilities were built on the monastery site. The old monastery building, which is still used today as a retirement home, is a cultural monument . Since 1860 it had its own water pipe from its own spring in the neighboring town of Bürg . The historical elevated water reservoir and the remains of a park laid out in the 19th century have been preserved.
history
Construction of the building as a country house for a doctor
The building was built from around 1828 by foreman Jakob Adam Grotz (1784–1843). Its creation is closely linked to the construction of the road from Neuenstadt to Bürg , which Grotz also directed. The new Lindenstrasse from Neuenstadt down into Kochertal crossed the former ducal linden garden behind the linden tree , which enabled Grotz to acquire a plot of the former palace gardens between Öhringer Strasse and Lindenstrasse. On the other hand, Grotz used the remaining building material from the dam and bridge that lead from Kochertal up to Bürg.
The building was built from the beginning for the subordinate doctor Christoph Friedrich Höring, who has been working in Neuenstadt since 1822 and who appears as the owner shortly after the building was completed around 1830. The generous, original building section with four large and three small rooms on each floor and a horse stable on the basement also suggests planning as a doctors' country house. By 1834, a shed , a barn with a stable, hayloft and servants' room and a shed were built right behind the house . This made the horse stable in the basement of the house superfluous. Until 1851, the post office also used a room in the basement.
In 1834, Höring gave up the doctor's position in Neuenstadt and sold the house to the young doctor Karl Ludwig Elsässer, who built a laboratory to the west of the outside staircase . At the same time, the pharmacist and councilor Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Mörike (1770-1859) owned the parcel of the former linden garden that was adjacent to the property to the east. The Mörike family of pharmacists had become prosperous by sending pills to the pharmacy on Marktplatz . The son of the court councilor was the doctor and pharmacist Carl Abraham Möricke (1806-1874), who joined his parents' pharmacy from 1831 to 1833 after a trip to North America. Since his marriage in 1837 he wrote his last name with ck and was a cousin of the poet and pastor Eduard Mörike (1804–1875), who in 1834 accepted a pastor's position in nearby Cleversulzbach and was one of Elsässer's patients. Elsässer wrote the illness report in 1843, with which Eduard Mörike was retired at the age of 39.
Acquisition and redesign by Carl Möricke
When Elsässer accepted a position as personal physician and medical advisor in Stuttgart in 1853 , Carl Möricke acquired the country house, combined the two adjacent garden parcels and had the country house rebuilt, the laboratory torn down again and a more representative staircase built instead of the one on the side. Möricke's father-in-law, the royal building and gardening director Ernst Seyffer (1781–1856), advised him on changes to the house and garden. At that time, Seyffer was already over 70 years old. The park that still exists today goes back to his plans, which both used the existing features of both gardens and created additional lines of sight with numerous exotic plants. In addition, an artificial ruin was created in the park. Further changes to the garden followed until Möricke's death in 1874. The old, probably only simple wooden outbuildings were replaced by more stable outbuildings at a greater distance from the house. It emerged u. a. a Chinese temple, an arbor, a lookout point and a bowling alley.
Möricke and his wife were childless. In 1865 he sold the pharmacy on Marktplatz to the previous tenant and then concentrated on his work as a family doctor and on the design of the country house. In the last years of Möricke's life, a hall was added to the building for companies.
Construction of Bürg's own water pipe
Since the house was built, there has only been a weak pump well in the yard. In search of a bubbling spring, attention was drawn to a spring already developed by foreman Grotz on the opposite side of the Kochertal in Bürg. The spring in Bürg was about ten meters higher than the highest point of the Mörike estate, so that the passage of the water without a pump was technically no obstacle. Möricke's prosperity also made funding possible. Since the community of Neuenstadt also claimed the source, the pipeline construction had to be applied for at first, which was a lengthy process. In 1858 Möricke acquired the source from Grotz's widow, and the line to Bürg was completed in 1860.
A tuff tower built on the remains of an old half-timbered lookout house with a 2,300 liter sheet metal box, which was provided with wooden cladding for insulation, served as the elevated water tank on the property in Neuenstadt. The elevated tank, which was covered by a flat, round roof, was crowned with a post on which a wagon wheel was attached, which served as the “nest” of a stork-shaped weather vane.
In addition to the country house, the water supply served some fountains, water features and the like. in the garden. A group of four life-size bronze figures was created to the east of the hall extension, one of which pours water from a jug into a small basin with a fountain. Four other life-size figures stood around a large basin to the east of the wine press (actually a glass or greenhouse). A bath house was moved from the former fish garden to the garden, which could be heated with an outside wood stove.
Foundation of the women's foundation
Carl Möricke died on June 1, 1874, when he was about to visit the Lautenbacher Hof. When he was buried in the Möricke crypt donated in 1868 in the Neuenstadt cemetery, the coffin tilted and opened so that the deceased could be seen who, contrary to local custom, was not wearing a white shroud but a black tailcoat. This caused an uproar, which particularly affected the widow Marie Mörike (who had only written k instead of ck since her husband's death ).
The widow Mörike inherited a fortune of around half a million marks as the sole heir, as well as the country house and the pharmacist building (the so-called Kavaliersbau ). During both lifetimes, the spouses had already discussed converting their assets into a foundation in a will. The widow sold the pharmacist building to the community, which was looking for an apartment for the mayor. On October 13, 1874, she converted her remaining property consisting of a country house with a garden, the spring in Bürg and a few fields and meadows into the women's monastery owned by Carl Möricke zu Neuenstadt an der Linde , which will be a house of seclusion for communal living in the country house evangelical women, widows and virgins should provide. She decreed that only 12 women between the ages of 45 and 65 should be admitted to the monastery, as previously mentioned, and that each of them had to pay 350 marks annually to cover maintenance or a higher sum adjusted to the depreciation of money. She also stipulated that the Mörike grave in the cemetery should be looked after and that the Mörike family pictures should remain hung in the monastery hall for eternity . She also wrote down a right to lifelong use of the right corner room and promised an investment of 10,000 marks to build the monastery. In the following, she wrote the statutes and detailed house rules, which concerned the life of the canonesses among themselves and the regulation of the administration of the monastery. The documents close with the rule that gentlemen can be brought to the table, but not accommodated. The deed of foundation was notarized on October 13, 1874, the date of handover was agreed on May 25, 1875, taking into account a deadline for renovating the country house.
The inauguration and handover of the monastery was carried out on May 25, 1875 by the Württemberg Queen Olga , for which the whole city was flagged and school children stood guard. The founder herself withdrew that afternoon and did not take part in all the celebrations. In November 1874 she moved to Stuttgart to her sister, where she lived until her death, but also came to visit Neuenstadt again and again. In 1891 she donated a new pulpit for the local Nikolauskirche , in 1899 she visited the monastery for the last time. She died in 1909 and in her will gave the Möricke women's foundation another 150,000 marks. However, the seat of the monastery administration remained in Stuttgart, which repeatedly proved impractical in the following decades.
Development of the pen
When the monastery was inaugurated, nine nuns and the first superior Hildegard Härplin had already moved in. Shortly after the inauguration, Clara Mörike (1816–1903), a sister of the poet, moved into the house as the tenth canon in July 1875. She had run the household for her brother and was left unsupervised after his brother's death. In 1919, Fanny Hildebrandt (1855–1930), a daughter of the poet, also moved into the monastery.
The monastery served around 50 women as a residence for about 40 years. The First World War had hardly any noticeable impact on the monastery business. The rationing of the late war period could be compensated by growing own vegetables on the monastery’s own soil. Only with the inflation after the end of the war did the hard times come when the monastery capital had become worthless. In 1922 the silver dishes had to be sold in order to be able to pay for firewood for the winter. With many restrictions, the pen survived the inflationary period and the global economic crisis. The monastery was mostly financed only from the income from its land and from benevolent gifts from the population. A 50th anniversary of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the monastery in 1924 or a 100th anniversary of house building, which could have been celebrated around 1930, did not take place in view of the circumstances.
Even the National Socialism from 1933 on did not change the location of the monastery. The pen was not brought into line in any way, nor did the tense financial situation improve. In 1937, due to lack of money, a plot of land on the monastery premises was sold to the doctor Hans Hegendörfer as a building site. In 1939 the city of Neuenstadt wanted to purchase the monastery in order to convert it into a hospital, but could not offer the women of the monastery adequate accommodation, so the plans were abandoned. During the Second World War , in which Neuenstadt was badly damaged, the monastery was saved from destruction.
In the post-war years it was unclear for a long time whether the regional council of Stuttgart , the Association of Protestant Women’s Foundations in Württemberg, the central management for the foundation and institutional system in Württemberg or the administrative board of the welfare organization for Baden-Württemberg were the superordinate authority of the monastery.
In the meantime the monastery management had decided to sell some arable and meadow land in order to get some money. But now the city of Neuenstadt stepped on the scene, which would have liked to purchase a building site in the monastery garden to build a new town hall, which the monastery refused. When the city asked for a building site to build a new hospital a little later, the city was offered the entire area for over DM 240,000, which the city did not want to raise. In addition, there were inconsistencies in the sale of meadows and fields via the Association for Protestant Women's Monasteries and in the settlement of accounts with the monastery administration.
In view of the confusion, people were happy to shift the responsibility on to one another. In 1956, the Association for Protestant Women’s Foundations returned the administration to the central management, which they were unable to achieve. With a new statute of July 1956, the facility was subordinated to the Landeswohlfahrtswerk , to which a local committee made up of a mayor, dean, superior, city caretaker and three citizens was attached. The old women's foundation of Carl Möricke zu Neuenstadt was dissolved and the foundation was renamed Dr. Möricke-Stift continued.
From 1955 to 1956, a small hospital with around 30 beds was built on the monastery grounds according to plans by the Heilbronn architect Alber. Alber planned to expand the facility to include a retirement home for 100 residents for the state welfare organization, but this was not implemented for financial reasons. Instead, the number of people in the monastery was increased from 12 to 23 through simple renovations. In 1958, the 28-bed hospital was completely overcrowded with 40 beds in the meantime. From 1963 to 1964, an extension was built according to Alber's plans, which increased the number of beds from 28 to 47. A staff dormitory was also built in the northwest corner of the facility by 1974. For the various newly added buildings, parts of the parking area were lost.
On December 4, 1978, the municipal council decided to take over the monastery from the city, which took effect on January 1, 1979. The seat of the administration and the monastery treasury came from Stuttgart to Neuenstadt. Instead of a superior appointed by the administration, the facility was in future run by a home manager. The previous term canon lady was replaced by the more contemporary form of address canon woman . In future, the local committee decided on admission to the monastery.
The buildings on the grounds of the Mörickestift have been modernized and expanded on various occasions. One of the largest extensions is the extension wing of the dementia center, built by the Evangelical Home Foundation in 2015, with 60 additional care places, integrated day care, two practices and 17 supervised apartments.
literature
- Evangelical parishes in the district of Neuenstadt am Kocher (ed.): Our home, the church. Home book of the district of Neuenstadt am Kocher. Pictures from the Neuenstadt district . Stuttgart 1959, pp. 25-27.
- Eugen Kreß: Dr. Carl Moericke. The history of the women's foundation in Neuenstadt am Kocher. Self-published by Eugen Kreß, Neuenstadt 2000.
- Julius Fekete : Art and cultural monuments in the city and district of Heilbronn. 2nd Edition. Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-8062-1662-2 , p. 261.
