St. Benedict Priory (Damme)
The priory of St. Benedikt Damme was a Benedictine monastery in the Lower Saxony city of Damme in the Oldenburger Münsterland .
The monastery was founded in 1962 by monks from the Münsterschwarzach Abbey . It was built on the property of a former agricultural business that was donated to found a monastery. In 1966 a boarding school with ten students was opened in rented rooms . In 1971 the boarding school was able to move into newly constructed buildings on the site of the monastery. After only ten years, the boarding school was closed again due to lack of demand. The boarding school building was converted into a guest house, a larger chapel was built and the yard and the farm's land were leased.
In 2004 volunteers set up a labyrinth in a small forest in front of the monastery.
The Benedictines ran a guest house for courses and retreats as well as a monastery shop . The guest house recorded over 12,000 overnight stays per year and was the contact point for 4,000 visitors annually. In February 2016, the Benedictines announced that they would close the priory at the end of 2016. The personal situation of the order and the necessary costly renovation work led them to close the monastery and to order the six monks in Damme back to Münsterschwarzach.
In 2017 the former monastery was converted into a hotel with 70 rooms, ten conference rooms and a café and bistro. Artists, theme exhibitors and hobby painters regularly present their pictures in the café / bistro. A day care center and a kindergarten are integrated into the building complex of the former priory.
The Cardinal's Path began at the Hotel Kloster Damme on October 28, 2018 . This 24.1 km long pilgrimage route leads via Holdorf to Dinklage Castle , the birthplace of Cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen . The pilgrimage route was set up in memory of him. A few meters after the start of the Kardinalsweg, it meets the Pickerweg . This is u. a. a long-distance hiking trail in the network of the Way of St. James , so that you can make a pilgrimage from the Hotel Kloster Damme in two different directions (to Dinklage and to Santiago de Compostela ).
literature
- Missionsprokura of the Münsterschwarzach Abbey (ed.): Call to Time , February 2013 edition, p. 32/33 (for the 50th birthday of the monastery)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jörg-Ingolf Otte: The way to the middle - A trip to the forest labyrinth Kloster Damme . Autumn harvest. Senior newspaper for Oldenburg and around , issue 104, October / November 2013, p. 1
- ^ Walter Sauter: Benedictines close monastery in Damme . abtei-muensterschwarzach.de, February 4, 2016
- ↑ Homepage of the Hotel Kloster Damme
- ↑ Wolfgang Stelljes: On the way to oneself . nwzonline.de, May 11, 2019
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '46.8 " N , 8 ° 10' 36.7" E