Philipp Jakob Steyrer

Philipp Jakob Steyrer (baptized February 10, 1715 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † November 7, 1795 in St. Peter (Upper Black Forest) ) was the penultimate abbot of the St. Peter monastery in the Black Forest and the abbot, under which the monastery church and convent building is its current one Received form.

Portrait of Steyrer in the monastery library

Life

He was the son of Franz Anton Steyrer from Herbolzheim , secretary of the Basel cathedral chapter , and his wife Maria Ursula geb. Leimbacher from the time the Bishopric of Basel , today the canton of Jura belonging Porrentruy . The Basel cathedral chapter had moved from Freiburg im Breisgau to Arlesheim near Basel in 1678 , but had left behind properties in Freiburg and the surrounding area that were administered by Franz Anton Steyrer. The son was christened Antonius Erasmus in the Freiburg Minster. He first began studying at the University of Freiburg, but entered the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter , headed by Abbot Ulrich Bürgi (1671 to 1739; Abbot from 1719 to 1739) as a novice in 1731 . On May 1, 1732 he took the religious vows and took the names of the day saints according to the then valid martyrology , the apostles Philip and James the Younger , as the religious name . In 1739 he was ordained a priest in Constance. In the same year Abbot Ulrich Bürgi died, and Benedikt Wülberz (1697 to 1749) was his successor (Abbot from 1739 to 1749). He appointed Steyrer as professor of theology in 1739, in 1744 also as cellar , who was responsible for the economy, and in 1746 as his deputy in the priory of St. Ulrich in the Black Forest .

After Wülberz's death, Steyrer was elected his successor on December 9, 1749. When he died in 1795 after a long illness, he had held the office for almost 46 years. It was the longest reign of all 55 Sanpetrine abbots. He was buried in the choir of the monastery church. On November 23, 1795, Ignaz Speckle was elected as his successor.

His nephew was Franz Steyrer (1749–1831), a Benedictine monastery in St. Peter, pastor in Eschbach from 1790 to 1799 and then in Neukirch, author and local history researcher; He wrote a treatise on watchmaking in the Black Forest, which appeared in print in 1796: History of the Black Forest Watchmakers Guild, together with an appendix on the watch trade of the same. A supplement to the history of the Black Forest. Freyburg im Breisgau. Printed with Felner's writings. 1796.

plant

Client

Under Abbot Bürgi, a new monastery church was built from 1724 to 1727 with Peter Thumb as the architect . The subsequent reconstruction of the convent building was not completed, and all construction activity ceased under Abbot Wülberz. As soon as he was elected, namely in the spring of 1750, Steyrer began with the construction of the library, of which the walls only stood. Peter Thumb was called up again. Like Bürgi, Steyrer was also able to attract outstanding artists, namely as plasterer Johann Georg Gigl , as painter Benedikt Gambs and Franz Ludwig Herrmann , as sculptor Johann Christian Wentzinger and Matthias Faller . They made the library the “most beautiful rococo room in Breisgau ... It has none of the wealth of the libraries in St. Gallen or Wiblingen , but it is fascinating in the free, floating expanse of the room design and the maturity of the decoration.” Steyrer cared for visitors First lead them there to let them admire the work of art.

This was followed by the construction of the remaining convent buildings, also under the direction of Peter Thumbs. The staircase with Gigls stucco and the so-called Fürstensaal with ceiling frescos by Simon Göser (1735 to 1816) are particularly well-known. The interior of the church was renovated and further adorned. Matthias Faller created a new high altar tabernacle , the Rückpositiv of the main organ and the case of the choir organ. In 1768, Steyrer had the sculptor Joseph Hörr (or Hör) and the plasterer Franz Anton Vogel make new tombs in the choir for the Zähringer buried here , the founders of the St. Peter monastery. The entire complex was completed around 1770, around 35 years before the monastery was abolished by secularization in 1806. The complex has been preserved in its original substance to this day.

Steyrer as builder of the Maria Lindenberg chapel . In the background his monastery

Steyrer's coat of arms above the current main entrance of the Peterhof

Steyrer's construction activities extended beyond St. Peter to the monastery properties outside of Germany. Peter Thumb gave the church of the St. Ulrich priory in the Black Forest a new tower and was expanded and completely refurbished inside. The church of the Sölden priory was renovated and also refurbished, including a ceiling fresco by Franz Ludwig Herrmann and a high altar by Matthias Faller. Waldau, which today belongs to Titisee-Neustadt , received its own church. A new chapel was built on the Lindenberg near St. Peter, a place of pilgrimage . Completed in 1761, it had to be demolished in 1786 in the course of Josephinism by decree of the Upper Austrian government. With the demolition material, the monastery had to build a new church and a new rectory in Eschbach near Stegen . The pulpit and altars that Matthias Faller created for the Lindenberg are now in Eschbach. The Peterhof in Freiburg was partly repaired and partly rebuilt. Apart from church buildings, the monastery contributed - to which it was not obliged to - the costs of road and bridge construction. Franz Kern from Sölden (* 1925), Steyrer's biographer, sums up: “In St. Peter and in the st. Petrine rulers no house of worship and hardly a building that did not owe the construction, completion or design to Abbot Steyrer. "

Book collector

After the monastery had been cremated for the last time in 1678, the rebuilding of the book collection began under Abbot Ulrich Bürgi, at the same time as the new building of the library room. When Bürgi's death in 1739 there were around 1,000 volumes. They were not increased under Abbot Wülberz. “But the library was promoted in a unique way under the prelate, Abbot Philipp Jakob Steyrer, who ruled the longest of all the abbots in the history of St. Peter.” He acquired manuscripts, incunabula and newer prints while traveling and through booksellers . All of the 200 or so surviving medieval manuscripts, except for two, stem from his collecting activities. He entered purchase notes in many volumes. Most were works of theology, including all of Martin Luther's works . There was also historical, legal, natural science, books on horticulture and surveying technology. At Steyrer's death the inventory was around 20,000 volumes.

Abbot Speckle could not continue Steyrer's explosive acquisition policy, but looked after the library to the best of his ability, had registers made and bookshelves made. During the secularization of 1806 the holdings were split up. Of the 20,000 or so volumes, around 1400 went to the library of the Grand Duke of Baden in Karlsruhe, including almost all medieval manuscripts. These 1,400 volumes belong to the Baden State Library today, as far as they have been preserved . The University of Freiburg was allowed to choose from the rest, collecting around 1,000 volumes. Only a few, second-rate items are still on the shelves in the former monastery library.

writer

“During his official business he never stopped reading and writing. This is revealed in the books and writings, the number of which exceeds 50, with the exception of the diary, which consists of many volumes. ”That is what an obituary for Steyrer said. Steyrer wrote or compiled historical, legal, contemporary political and polemical works, but above all edifying and spiritual works, including the following.

He wrote his first work as a young monk: Heylbringender Lindenbaum, that is a historical report of the origin and reception of the ancient Gnadenorth and pilgrimage ... Mariä Lindenberg. It was printed in 1000 copies in 1741.

Just one year later, Favus mellis, composita verba ... ex omnibus operibus Venerabilis Ludovici Blosii ... Sumptibus - honeycomb, selected works by the venerable Ludwig Blosius , a French Benedictine from the 17th century , appeared in print . The book, written in Latin, contains reflections and piety exercises.

In 1749 as priory administrator in Ortisei, Steyrer wrote Annales Prioratus S. Ulrici in nigra Sylva ... conscripti a Philippo Jacobo Steyrer OSB - Annals of the Priory St. Ulrich in the Black Forest, ... written by Philipp Jakob Steyrer OSB. The work is in manuscript in the parish archive of Ortisei.

In the 1780s four volumes of a magazine Der Freymüthige by the professor of the law faculty Johann Kaspar Ruef appeared in Freiburg . In it, institutions and dogmas of the church, not least monasticism, in the spirit of Josephinism, were attacked, sometimes quite challenging. Steyrer replied in 1785 and 1786 with three writings Nöthige Notes (on the magazine 'Der Freymüthige') , partly also polemically. In a pamphlet from 1787 he defended celibacy “with ravishing words; you can feel that this is his real subject, about which he ... often spoke to his spiritual sons ”.

He also had a lot of correspondence, for example with Martin Gerbert , prince abbot of the St. Blasien monastery .

Steyrer's diary, eight volumes in fluent Latin, only available as a manuscript in the General State Archives in Karlsruhe , begins with his election as abbot in 1749 and ends on December 31, 1792. The last note describes the inclusion of Steyrer's later successor Speckle among the novices.

Spiritual leader

As abbot, Steyrer headed the grammar school founded by Abbot Wülberz in the monastery. He introduced teaching in oriental languages ​​such as Hebrew, mathematics, natural sciences and occasionally French. The maximum number of students should have been 20. Secularization abolished the school.

Every year five to six novices entered the monastery. Since there was no actual novice master , Steyrer was directly responsible for them. 34 novices took religious vows under him. As with Steyrer himself, the preparation for ordination took place in the monastery until 1794. Under the influence of Josephinism, this in-house study was restricted.

About 20 consecrated monks lived in St. Peter during Steyrer's time. The abbot arranged further studies for talented people, such as the later Freiburg mathematics professor, Father Thaddäus Rinderle in Salzburg.

Champion for the preservation of the monastery

In 1744 Steyrer experienced the devastation in Breisgau caused by the War of the Austrian Succession . The monastery itself was spared, but the provosts of Sölden and St. Ulrich were looted. Since the beginning of the First Coalition War in 1792, a military hospital for Austrian soldiers was set up in the monastery.

But the general zeitgeist was more threatening for the monastery than the wars. Since the beginning of the 18th century, criticism of orders and monasteries became more and more noticeable. This was especially true for Austria under Empress Maria Theresa and her successor Emperor Joseph II . Monasteries were considered places of superstition and religious fanaticism. They evaded a central state administration and were ultimately "useless". One of the first measures was the abolition of the privilege of extensive tax exemption. With the other Breisgau monasteries and the Breisgau knighthood, Steyrer resisted, but unsuccessfully despite a trip to Vienna in 1763. In 1767 eight different taxes were payable: Abbot election tax , Turkish tax , Dominical tax , rustical tax, parish tax , war debt tax , inheritance tax and personal tax .

In 1772 Steyrer learned that monasteries were already intended to be abolished. In 1773 the Jesuit college in Freiburg was closed. In 1782 a decree of the abolition of the monastery was issued, from which it was initially not known whether it applied to all monasteries or only to some. St. Peter survived. The redeeming letter from Vienna began: "His imperial-royal majesty deigned to affirm the abbot and the convent of the Order of St. Benedict of the House of God St. Peter in the Black Forest on their most subservient request of the same previous freedoms ... most graciously." But the concern stayed.

At this time, St. Peter found himself threatened not only from Vienna, but also from Karlsruhe, i.e. from the Margrave of Baden , on whose territory the monastery was located. Margrave Karl-Friedrich planned to dissolve the monastery in 1784. Steyrer tried to secure the benevolence of the sovereign by going back to history. The Margraves of Baden were derived from a Zähringer, namely Hermann, Margrave of Verona , the eldest son of Berthold I of Zähringen , brother of Berthold II of Zähringen and father of a Hermann who was the first to call himself “Margrave of Baden”. Hermann von Verona had retired to the Cluny monastery a year before his death and had died there as a shepherd after an ascetic life. Steyrer tried to make this genealogy, which had hitherto little noticed, public. The margraves of Baden should be persuaded to consider and protect the house monastery of the Zähringer as well as their own house monastery. In 1762, probably by Franz Ludwig Hermann, he had fourteen pictures of the Zähringen family of founders painted for today's Fürstensaal. Contrary to older customs, Hermann von Verona was not depicted as a monk, but as a secular prince in military armor - a portrait as a cattle herdsman turned away from the world would not have been fitting for the ancestor of the margraves. When new tombs for the Zähringers were erected in the church choir in 1768, Steyrer had them inscribed so that Hermann, who was buried in Cluny, also appeared; Here, as the inscription reads, rest "BERTHOLDUS II, Dux Zaringiae, Filius Bertholdi I, Frater Hermanni I Satoris Marchionum Badensium" - Berthold II., Duke of Zähringen, son of Berthold I, brother of Hermann I, the progenitor of the Margraves of To bathe. Finally, Steyrer succeeded in introducing a festival in the diocese of Constance , to which St. Peter belongs, to honor the blessed Bernhard von Baden . In August 1777 a relic of Bernhard was given public veneration.

Of course, Steyrer could not prevent the secularization of 1806. On September 28, 1806, the convention received the fatal blow in the form of a dry "resolution" from the sovereign from whose hands he had hoped for salvation.

literature

• Hans-Otto Mühleisen (Ed.): Philipp Jakob Steyrer (1749–1795). From the world of a Black Forest Benedictine abbot between the Enlightenment and secularization . Catholic Academy, Freiburg im Breisgau 1996, ISBN 3-928698-10-9 .
• Albert Raffelt (Ed.): Involuntary funding: Abbot Philipp Jakob Steyrer and the Freiburg University Library , writings of the Freiburg University Library in Breisgau (19), Freiburg in Breisgau 2002, ISBN 3-928969-04-8 , digitized

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d e} Franz Kern: Philipp Jakob Steyrer, 1749–1795 abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter in the Black Forest. In: Freiburg Diocesan Archive. Volume 79, 1959, pp. 1-234 (PDF; 16 MB).
2. ^ ^{A b c} Franz Kern: Philipp Jakob Steyrer - Abbot and Scientist. In: Hans-Otto Mühleisen (Ed.): The legacy of the abbey. 900 years of St. Peter in the Black Forest. Karlsruhe, Badenia-Verlag 1993, here pp. 39–55.
3. ^ Gerhard Kaller:  Steyrer, Philipp Jakob. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 10, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-062-X , Sp. 1440-1442.
4. ^ History of Stegen-Dreisamtal .
5. ^ Hans-Otto Mühleisen: St. Peter in the Black Forest. 2nd Edition. Munich, Verlag Schnell & Steiner 1976, ISBN 3-7954-0568-8 .
6. ^ Hermann Ginter: St. Peter in the Black Forest. 8th edition. Munich, Verlag Schnell & Steiner 1968.
7. ^ Hans Martin Gubler: The Vorarlberg baroque master builder Peter Thumb. Sigmaringen, Jan Thorbecke Verlag 1972, here pages 32–43, ISBN 3-7995-5016-X .
8. ^ Albert Raffelt: The monastery library of St. Peter and its medieval manuscripts. In: Hans-Otto Mühleisen (Ed.): The legacy of the abbey. 900 years of St. Peter in the Black Forest. Karlsruhe, Badenia-Verlag 1993, here pages 393-414.
9. ↑ Steyrer, Philipp Jakob. In: Freiburg historical holdings - digital. Website of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg .
10. ↑ Volkhard Huth: Appelative donor commemoration, or: Self-defense with artistic means. In: Karl Schmid (Hrsg.): The Zähringer - a tradition and its research. Sigmaringen, Thorbecke Verlag 1986, ISBN 3-7995-7040-3 .
11. ↑ Hans-Otto Mühleisen: The Zähringer portraits of the 18th century in St. Peter. In: Karl Schmid (Hrsg.): The Zähringer - a tradition and its research. Sigmaringen, Thorbecke Verlag 1986, ISBN 3-7995-7040-3 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Benedikt Wülberz	Abbot of St. Peter 1749–1795	Ignaz Speckle