Mauritius Monastery (Magdeburg)

Certificate of Otto I of September 21, 937 for the foundation and endowment of the Mauritius monastery.

Certificate of Otto the Great for the Mauritius Monastery in Magdeburg, issued on April 23, 961.

The St. Mauritius Monastery , also Moritzkloster , was a Benedictine monastery in Magdeburg . It existed as a monastery from 937 to 963 at the latest. It existed as a building until around 1207, roughly where Magdeburg Cathedral and Domplatz are today .

It was founded on September 21, 937 by the then 25-year-old King Otto I and thus on the eve of the corresponding day of remembrance. The deed of foundation is now kept in the State Archive of Saxony-Anhalt . The monastery , which Otto also intended to be used as the future family burial site, was given rich gifts from the very beginning and given many privileges. At the end of January 946 Otto's first wife Editha , a princess from the Kingdom of Wessex and granddaughter of Alfred the Great , found her final resting place in the monastery basilica. The sarcophagus in the later cathedral was not erected until 1510 by Archbishop Ernst von Sachsen . In 2008, archaeologists found a lead coffin containing remains that, after extensive investigation, turned out to be Edgitha's.

Since the victory over the Hungarians in 955 Otto I pursued the goal of establishing an archbishopric in Magdeburg. On April 23, 961 Otto transferred the tithe that the Slavs resident in Magdeburg, Frohse , Barby and Calbe had to pay.

The first brothers to fill the foundation with spiritual life were Benedictines from the imperial abbey of St. Maximin in Trier . In 963 at the latest, the monks left the monastery and settled about two kilometers south in the Berge monastery , as the construction of the first Magdeburg cathedral had begun in the immediate vicinity of the old monastery and the monastery complex was needed as the provisional headquarters of the Magdeburg archbishopric, which was founded soon thereafter . It is highly likely that extensive parts of the Ottonian foundation from September 937 continued to exist until the great city fire of April 20, 1207 and were only removed by Archbishop Albrecht I von Käfernburg (in office 1205 to 1232) to clear the building for the new Gothic cathedral. The south wing of today's cathedral cloister dates from around 1160 and is therefore still a relic of the old monastery and also of the Ottonian cathedral.

The last structural remnants of the original monastery can be seen as the masonry structures of the crypt that probably belonged to the old monastery church, excavated by Alfred Koch (architect in Halle) in 1926, southeast of and immediately next to the high choir (ambulatory) . The anteroom of the crypt can be reached from the cloister via a staircase. In the excavation itself there is an antique tile covering, which probably belongs to the spoils that Otto had brought to Magdeburg from northern Italy in the 10th century. The Magdeburg Cathedral as we know it today stands exactly on the site of the Ottonian founding in 937, the cathedral from the 10th to the early 13th century was a few dozen meters north, at least partially occupying the area of ​​the Domplatz. Today's Magdeburg Cathedral, used as a bishop's and parish church, is still consecrated to Saint Mauritius . The relics of Saint Mauritius (skull bones etc.) were transferred from the Mauritius monastery to the cathedral in Magdeburg in the 13th century . Otto I had it from King Konrad III after his marriage to the Burgundian king's daughter Adelheid in 951 . received from Burgundy at Christmas 960. Within the new cathedral there are more than two dozen representations and images of the saint. The most famous is the sandstone sculpture from the middle of the 13th century in the high choir. For the first time in northern Alpine art, it shows a realistic-looking African. In the early 13th century, St. Catherine of Alexandria was placed alongside the name saint . From the "escape monastery" of the Benedictines - it was about in the area of the 19th century after Schinkel -plans of Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff built society house on Klosterbergegarten (for DDR -time known as Pioneer Park ) - there are no architectural remains visible longer.

literature

• Elisabeth Schwarze-Neuss : Property history and territorial policy of the Magdeburg Moritzkloster and the Archbishops of Magdeburg (937-1024). In: Saxony and Anhalt. Vol. 22 (1999/2000), pp. 81-134.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Magdeburg, Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Rep. U 1, Tit. I, No. 2 ( MGH DD OI , No. 14, pp. 101-102).
2. ↑ Magdeburg, Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Rep. U 1, Tit. I, No. 14 ( MGH DD OI , No. 222, pp. 304-307).
3. ↑ Jürgen Schrader: The Patch Calvörde - A 1200-year history. Göttingen 2011, p. 71.
4. ^ Thietmar von Merseburg , Chronicle II, 17.
5. ↑ Thietmar von Merseburg Chronicle II, 3; Widukind von Corvey , Res gestae Saxonicae II, 41.
6. ↑ Harald Meller , Wolfgang Schenkluhn , Boje E. Hans Schmuhl (ed.): Revealed II. Research excavations at Magdeburg Cathedral 2006–2009. Hall 2009.
7. ^ Elisabeth Schwarze-Neuss: History of ownership and territorial policy of the Magdeburg Moritzkloster and the Archbishops of Magdeburg (937-1024). In: Saxony and Anhalt. Vol. 22 (1999/2000), pp. 81-134, here: p. 92.
8. ^ Thietmar von Merseburg, Chronicle II, 17.

Coordinates: 52 ° 7 ′ 28.9 ″  N , 11 ° 38 ′ 4.2 ″  E