St. Norberti Church and St. Elisabeth Monastery (Calbe)
The St. Norberti Church dates from the 19th century and has been the first and only Catholic church in Calbe (Saale) again since 1872 . Right next door is the St. Elisabeth monastery , which was also built during this period .
prehistory
Since the 1840s, the Catholic Church in Germany, especially in Prussia , began to set up social associations and foundations as well as new communities as a counter-movement to the growing political Protestantism under the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . The contradiction found its climax in Prussia in the so-called Kulturkampf between the state and the Catholic clergy .
Calbe had been a Protestant stronghold since 1542 , and Johann Heinrich Hävecker had co-founded Pietism here , a contemporary further development of Lutheran teachings.
Re-entry of Catholic communities
In 1863 a Catholic "mission parish " (" Parish Calbe"), the size of which largely coincided with the outlines of the Calbe district, and in 1867 a Catholic private school in Calbe, initially in various rented rooms for its educational and worship activities had to stay.
In the finished in autumn 1867 the new hospital in today Hospitalstraße evangelical took deaconess sisters from Bethany (Berlin) on their activities, for 1905 , a nurses home at the south end of Magdeburg (today Wilhelm-Loewe - Pharmacy ) was built. In return came in 1868 " Gray Sisters " from the Breslauer Congregation "St. Elisabeth “came here to work in outpatient nursing across denominations and in the care of orphaned and needy children. The patron saint of the order, Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia , was a model for the German Beguine movement and was herself connected to it. In Calbe, the beguines had worked in the Holy Spirit Hospital . In this tradition, the “gray sisters” were also active in the parish of Calbe. The growth of the population, partly due to immigration, and the increasing number of Polish and Silesian seasonal workers who worked on the Calbe domain made it necessary to build a Catholic church.
St. Norberti Church
Ascension Day ( May 26th) In 1870 the foundation stone for a Catholic church was laid at the north end of the former "Alten Sorge" on the west side of Magdeburg - Leipziger Chaussee . The construction plans came from the Paderborn diocesan and cathedral master builder Arnold Güldenpfennig . The construction cost 12,000 thalers. The consecration of the neo-Gothic brick church was carried out on July 9, 1872 by the responsible bishop of Paderborn , Konrad Martin , who, as a conservative opponent of the Prussian government, was arrested in 1874 and removed from office in 1875 . He consecrated the church to the founder of the Premonstratensian Order , St. Norbert [us] , on whose emphatic initiative the Premonstratensian monastery “God's grace” (“Gratia Dei”) was founded near Calbe. Before the consecration, the first service in the church took place on Palm Sunday ( April 2nd ) 1871 .
The Catholic school was initially housed in the transverse structure of the cross-shaped "St. Norberti Church".
During the First World War , the services were well attended by French and Belgian prisoners of war .
The relief of St. Mauritius and the coat of arms of Cardinal Albrecht from the Calbe castle ruins, which were demolished in 1951, were placed on the south wall of the church.
St. Elisabeth's monastery
In 1893 , after the Prussian state had "made peace" with the Catholic clergy, the politically moderate Bishop of Paderborn , Hubert Theophil Simar , laid the foundation stone for a Catholic home for orphaned and needy children, which was opened in 1894 under the name of St. Elisabeth Patron saint was opened. Now the Catholic private school also moved there, and the Gray Sisters got their apartments in the home building.
The “St. Elisabeth Stift”, or simply: Elisabethstift, as it was commonly called, still fulfills its self-imposed charitable obligations as the “St. Elisabeth Children's Home”.
literature
- Dietrich, Max: Our homeland - local history of the city of Calbe , (Calbe) 1909.
- Hertel, Gustav: History of the city of Calbe on the Saale , Berlin / Leipzig 1904.
- Rocke, Gotthelf Moritz: History and description of the town of Calbe on the Saale , 1874.
- Steinmetz, Dieter H .: In search of historical traces - a city tour in Calbe an der Saale (see web link).
Coordinates: 51 ° 54 ′ 29.3 " N , 11 ° 46 ′ 24.3" E