Wöltingerode Monastery
Wöltingerode Monastery | |
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![]() Wöltingerode Monastery |
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location |
![]() Lower Saxony Goslar |
Lies in the diocese | Hildesheim Monastery |
Coordinates: | 51 ° 57 '35 " N , 10 ° 32' 22" E |
Patronage | St. Mary |
founding year | 1174 by Benedictines |
Cistercian since | 1216 |
Year of dissolution / annulment |
1809 |
Daughter monasteries |
The Wöltingerode monastery is located in Goslar ( Lower Saxony ) in the northwestern Harz foreland and is part of the Vienenburg district . The monastery was founded as a Benedictine monastery in 1174 and existed until 1188. It then became a monastery for Cistercian women . During this time the foundation stone was laid for the monastery, the dimensions of which can still be found today. In 1809 the monastery was closed.
Today the monastery is used as a monastery hotel with restaurants and a distillery . It is a station on the Harzer Klosterwanderweg . The monastery is administered by the Hannover Monastery Chamber. Wöltingerode was incorporated into the city of Vienenburg in 1929 , and Vienenburg has been a district of Goslar since January 1, 2014.
history
The Benedictine monastery was founded in 1174 by Counts Ludolf II, Hogerus and Borchardus von Wohldenberg. They provided the monastery with plenty of 1,500 acres of land, forest, pond, tithes and mills. On October 19, 1174, Bishop Adelog von Hildesheim confirmed the foundation of the monastery according to the rule of St. Benedict and granted it immunity and free election of abbots . The Counts of Wohldenberg received the bailiwick and the umbrella right. This allowed them to choose their final resting place in the monastery.
Soon after the monastery was founded, the monastery was converted into a nunnery. According to the certificate of confirmation from Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa in 1188, the monastery was occupied by nuns of the Cistercian order . On October 3, 1216, Pope Honorius III. the monastery of St. Maria in Wöltingerode under his protection, confirmed the property ownership and the rights of the monastery.
The Wöltingerode church was first mentioned in a document in 1208. At the beginning of the 13th century the church and monastery building had to be expanded and rebuilt. In 1244 the monastery was consecrated by Bishop Konrad von Hildesheim . He confirmed the provisions previously made by Bishop Adelog. During this time, enjoyed the monastery Wöltingerode great reputation - for several other monasteries such as the monastery Althaldensleben , Wienhausen Abbey and Derneburg , it became the mother monastery. During the first heyday of the monastery in the 13th century, book illumination was practiced here. Several manuscripts from the Wöltingerode monastery are kept in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel .
In the 13th century the monastery was expanded. In 1279 the infirmary, in 1293 the new dormitory and in 1305 the "Altar in the northern part of the monastery" were mentioned. At the end of the 13th and 14th centuries, the family of the Wohldenberg counts became impoverished (the male line died out in 1383), who founded the monastery and gave it rich gifts in later times. As a result, bad times came for the monastery as well. Goods had to be sold as early as 1290. In 1337, Bishop Heinrich von Hildesheim intervened and called for general support.
In the 15th century the monastery experienced its second heyday. After the Hildesheim collegiate feud , the Wöltingerode monastery came under the sovereignty of Duke Heinrich the Younger of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . When the duke was expelled from his country by the troops of the Schmalkaldic League , the nuns were supposed to accept the Lutheran doctrine or leave the monastery. After the duke's return, the Catholic cult prevailed again until 1568. Then in 1568 his son and successor, Duke Julius , reintroduced Lutheran teaching. The abbess and nuns were still hostile to the new teaching. It was only when the Duke had the Lutheran Anna von Haus elected abbess that Wöltingerode could become a Lutheran women's foundation.
After the edict of restitution, Cistercian women from Bavaria were reintroduced to Wöltingerode in 1630 under Provost Heinrich Götze. After the Jesuits had settled in Goslar in the imperial palace, they tried to get possession of Wöltingerode on the basis of an imperial rescript . Prince-Bishop Ferdinand gave his consent to this. The nuns could only be removed from the monastery by force. They were driven to the Frankenberg monastery in Goslar and sent back to their homeland with travel money.
When the Swedes moved into Goslar in 1632, the Jesuits from Wöltingerode had to give way. By 1643 the monastery became Lutheran.
With the “ great Hildesheim Abbey ”, the Wöltingerode monastery came back to the Hildesheim diocese in 1643. Now Cistercian women from Teistungen came to Wöltingerode, who in 1650 placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Altenberg near Cologne.
On May 25, 1676, a great fire struck the monastery.
The half-timbered upper floor of the cloister is almost completely surrounded by a Latin inscription in golden capitals , which consists of comforting and admonishing words from the Bible and requests for blessings; in between is the note on the west wing:
- REAEDIFICATUM SUB ACHA ET AFP DIE 12 AUGUSTI ANNO DOMINI 1679
- "Rebuilt under ACHA and AFP, August 12, 1679";
the note on the south wing:
- AEDIFICATUM SUB LUCIA ROSA ABBATISSA ET FRE ANTONIO ECK PRAEPOSITO WOLTING: PROF VET: MONT: AO 1694
- "Built under Abbess Lucia Rosa and Friedrich Anton Eck, Provost von Wöltingerode, Professus von Altenberg , in 1694".
In 1802 the Wöltingerode Monastery and the Diocese of Hildesheim came to Prussia , and in 1807 to the Kingdom of Westphalia , which by decree on May 13, 1809 abolished the Wöltingerode, Dorstadt and Heiningen nunneries. The monastery was bought by Israel Jacobson , appointed by Jérôme Bonaparte as a secret finance councilor for 200,000 francs. It is not known where the treasures of the monastery have gone. When the Diocese of Hildesheim came to Hanover after Jérôme's fall , Jacobson Wöltingerode had to cede to the Hanover government; under Hanover law, no Jew was allowed to own property.
The Wöltingerode monastery property was merged with the General Hanover Monastery Fund in 1818.
From 1830 the Wöltingerode office existed in the monastery. Together with three other administrative parts, today's district of Goslar was formed. From 1918 to 1993 the monastery was home to a rural women’s school run by the Reifenstein Association . In 1976 the monastery was renovated and in 1979 the gallery of the church interior was converted into a concert hall.
The complex is currently occupied by a monastery hotel including catering and conference facilities, a distillery, a liqueur factory and an agricultural business. There is also a monastery bakery and the monastery office, where regional specialties are sold.
Monastery church
The former monastery church only got its present appearance through multiple modifications and additions in different construction periods and consists of two parts. The eastern part now serves as a church. It is an old Romanesque cruciform basilica in the bound system from the end of the 12th century. The second choir quadrant dates from the 18th century. The western part consists of a Romanesque crypt-like lower church, probably the original crypt of Count von Wohldenberg, and the Gothic upper church with the nuns' gallery. In the past, this part of the estate was used as a warehouse, today it is a concert and event space for around 250 people. The adjoining west tower is baroque .
The baroque interior, created after the recatholization around 1700, consists of the high altar with the image of Mary and figures of saints, the pulpit with evangelists, a confessional, the ceiling painting (angels with Christ's instruments of torture in the choir), a holy water basin in the shape of a shell and wooden galleries. A side altar of the monastery church, twelve images of the apostles and a confessional were transferred to the Catholic Church of the Holy Family in Vienenburg , which was newly built between 1826 and 1829 . The altar of the nun's gallery has served as the high altar of the catholic church since the 1830s. Church of St. Andreas in Sottrum (Holle) .
The cloister with one side facing the church to the south encloses a large rectangular courtyard with the adjacent rooms. The buildings are massive on the ground floor with arched windows, and on the upper floor made of half-timbering .
Monastery distillery
Since 1682 grain from its own cultivation has been distilled in Wöltingerode and processed into fine grain and liqueurs. According to old monastery tradition, a mash is made from clear well water, barley malt and wheat from the monastery lands and fermented in an alcoholic fermentation . After that, a raw fire is first made in copper firing devices and then the second fire takes place in the monastery still. The result is a 96 percent fine brandy which, in addition to ethanol, only contains the grain aromas. This raw material is diluted to 38 percent alcohol with spring water from the monastery fountain ("spindled"). The grain is then stored in oak barrels in the old crypt for at least a year . Various liqueurs are made from the high-percentage base material by adding plant, fruit and herbal extracts, sometimes according to old recipes. In winter, production is supported by a steam engine that is over a hundred years old.
Monastery brewery
Brewing took place in the monastery estate until 1803. In 2004 this tradition was resumed with the production of the naturally cloudy Wölti-Bräu in the Altenauer brewery , which was taken over by the Klostergutsbrauerei Wöltingerode GmbH with effect from August 1, 2012 .
Salmon information center
Since 1994 the Oker has been stocked with salmon hatchlings near Wöltingerode. Under the project name Okerlachs 2000 , an amalgamation of fishing clubs , water maintenance associations and other organizations with the support of the states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt has been pursuing the project of reintroducing Atlantic salmon and sea trout in Aller , Oker and the backwaters.
In September 2011, with the support of the Hanover Monastery Chamber and other sponsors, a salmon information center was opened in the old mill building of the Wöltingerode Monastery, which shows an "interactive exhibition about salmon and other local fish species" and is regularly open to visitors.
literature
- Archives of the Historical Association for Lower Saxony, New Series , ed. under the direction of the association committee, born 1847, Hanover, in the Hahn'schen Hofbuchhandlung 1847, p. 63 f. (Document 4)
- Kirsten Poneß: The Wöltingerode Monastery Estate (DKV Art Guide No. 650). Berlin, Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH, 2011. - 1st edition - ISBN 978-3-422-02160-0
Web links
- Entry by Stefan Eismann on Wöltingerode in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Website of the monastery
- Noble drops from Wöltingerode , contribution on the NDR websitefrom April 4, 2012
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans Mosler: The Cistercian Abbey Altenberg. (= Germania Sacra; New Series 2. ) Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1965, p. 86f. Digitized
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://woeltingerode.de/shopmodul/index.php?id=11&type=1&tt_products%5Bcat%5D=16
- ↑ http://altenauer-brauerei.de/impressum.html
- ↑ Aller-Oker-Salmon Community: The AOLG introduces itself , May 2012, accessed on March 17, 2013 under Archived Copy ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://lachs-infocenter.de/index.html Information page of the salmon information center in Wöltingerode