Neresheim Abbey

Abbey History

The Augustinian monastery of Saints Ulrich and Afra was founded by Count Hartmann I von Dillingen and his wife Adelheida on Mount Ulrichsberg in 1095; in 1106, it was transformed into a Benedictine abbey, which joined the Hirsau reforms (see Hirsau Abbey ). The first Benedictine monks moved to Neresheim from the monasteries of Petershausen and Zwiphalten . Until the middle of the XIII century, the monastery of Saints Ulrich and Afra was double: in addition to the male community, a female community also existed in it.

With the suppression of the von Dillingen clan in 1258, a century-long dispute began about the status of the monastery, which the counts of Ettingen and the bishops of Augsburg claimed. In the 13th century, the Neresheim Abbey owned seven villages and 71 buildings throughout the region, including ten parishes . The monastery was repeatedly destroyed by fires and during wars. At the end of the XVI century, the conflict over the ownership of the abbey flared up with renewed vigor - in connection with the claims of the Principality of Ettingen-Wallerstein . The imperial commission in Munich in 1583 acted as a mediator in the conflict. In 1739, the parties again entered into an argument: this time over the sale of local wood; after more than two decades of litigation, they still agreed to resolve the conflict. In 1764, the abbey gained the right to vote in the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire (see Imperial estates ), but the abbot could exercise secular rule only on extremely insignificant territory.

The monastery was dissolved as a result of secularization in 1802, becoming the property of the princes of Thurn-i-Taxis , and in 1806 - of Bavaria ; in 1810 he finally retreated to the kingdom of Württemberg . Already at the end of the 20th century, in 1993, monastic values ​​were acquired by the free state of Bavaria from representatives of the Thurn-i-Taxis clan. Most of the monastery library remained in Neresheim, after the sale already planned in 1828 was not carried out: although library catalogs of the XVIII are still in Regensburg .

At the beginning of the 21st century, the monastery consisted of nine monks, seven of whom were permanently resident in the monastery; the community was a member of the Boyron Congregation . The monastery was used as a venue for conferences, retreats and religious courses. On February 13, 2004, Prior Albert Knebel founded the Knabenchor Abtei Neresheim Society, which offered free general musical and vocal education for first-graders; This choir, numbering about 40 people, performs every month in the church at the abbey and regularly gives concerts outside the monastery. Neresheim Abbey and the city are honorary members of the Royal Academy of Music in London ; Once a year, an Academy concert is held here. Since the end of October 2009, there has been a museum in the monastery building that tells about the history of the abbey and conducts excursions through its territory. After the death of the abbot Norbert Stoffels, who headed the monastery from August 23, 1977 to February 21, 2012, a scandal arose over the discovery of the priest's assets worth about 4.4 million euros ^[2] .

Church

In the period from 1747 to 1792, according to the plans of the architect Johann Balthazar Neumann , a new Baroque building was built on the site of the old church. The temple has a length of 83 meters and a width of 35; it is decorated with frescoes by Martin Knoller. Direct construction management in Neresheim was carried out by Leonard Stahl, who was a pupil of Neumann. The first stone in the foundation was laid on July 4, 1750; after the death of Neumann, on August 19, 1753, his successor Johann Baptist Wiedemann intended to continue working on the project of his predecessor, but in 1759 the plans were changed: the arches of the building and its dome were redesigned. According to the German art historian and historian Georg Dehio, the monastery church in Neresheim is a "masterpiece of European Baroque architecture " and only a few buildings in Europe can compete with it. The monastery church was depicted on the reverse side of a bill of 50 German marks in circulation from 1991 to 2002. At the same time, in 1965, the condition of the building caused alarm among specialists, who noted the subsidence of the main dome and cracks in the walls; in the period from 1969 to 1975, the church was completely restored .

The main organ of the church in Neresheim was built in 1794-1797 by the master Johann Nepomuk Holzhey from Ottoyuren; the prototype was the organ of St. Martin's Basilica in Weingarten . In 1979, the monastery body was restored by specialists from the Zurich company Orgelbau Kuhn AG.

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• Klosterbeuren Monastery
• Monastery Frauenzel

• Wolfgang Zimmermann (Hg.), Nicole Priesching (Hg.): Württembergisches Klosterbuch: Klöster, Stifte und Ordensgemeinschaften von den Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart, 2003, S. 531-538.
• 900 Jahre Benediktinerabtei Neresheim. Aalen 1995.

• Stoffels N. Benediktinerabtei Neresheim - Geschichte (German) . kloester-bw.de . Klöster in Baden-Württemberg. Date of treatment February 5, 2019.