Gnadenberg Monastery

The monastery in Gnadenberg became the first abode of the brigades in southern Germany : it was founded in 1422 by the palatine graph of Neuburg, Johann, and his wife Katharina, the daughter of Duke Vratislav VII of Pomerania , in a place known at the time as Eichelberg. Katarina knew the order, because she spent her youth in Sweden - not far from the Vadstensky monastery . In 1420, Pope Martin V gave his permission to build a monastery; The foundation document is dated February 3, 1426. In 1430, the first monks arrived in Gnadenberg from the Paradiso monastery in Florence , since the monastery itself was designed as a double monastery. After the construction of the monastery was completed, in 1435, the first nuns arrived here, together with their abbot Anna Svenson, from the monastery in Maribo .

The consecration of the temporary church took place on July 15, 1438, with the participation of Bishop Eichstätt Albrecht II. The construction of a full-fledged monastic church was begun only in 1451; the monastery itself was consecrated on July 11, 1451 by Bishop John III. Thanks to the rapid recruitment of young nuns, the Danish founders were able to return to their home monastery as early as 1438. Elizabeth Knipantlin from Munich was elected second abbess - she held the post from 1438 to 1451; in the second half of the 15th century, under the leadership of Abbot Elizabeth Volkenstaller (1451-1471), Gnadenberg became the leading monastery of the order.

The monastery church was built according to the rules of the order and covered with a roof in 1477-1479. All builders were from Nuremberg , including the master Jacob Grimm, responsible for the blueprints and construction management, the master Euchar Gassner, who worked in wood, and the master Hans Frommiller, who led the construction of the vaults; Albrecht Dürer participated in the design of the “complex” church roof. The monastery, whose residential buildings were located on both sides of the church, received wide support from middle-class families from the neighboring imperial city of Nuremberg; daughters from such families often became nuns here. Among such families was the aristocratic Führer von Heymendorf family - so in the 16th century Barbara Führer became an abbess.

When the Reformation took place in Nuremberg in 1524, the monastery found itself in a difficult position; in 1556 with the Elector of the Palatinate Otto Heinrich, the monastery gradually disintegrated; Ursula Breunina (1533-1358) became the last superior. The property of the monastery was secularized in 1563, and the formal dissolution occurred in 1570. From 1577 the property of the monastery was sold or transferred to private (feudal) ownership. During the Thirty Years War , April 23, 1635, Swedish troops burned down the church and parts of the former monastery; since then Gnadenberg is a ruin.

In 1671 the monastery was handed over to the order of businesswomen who arrived here from their first German branch, the monastery of St. Anne in Munich, but did not restore the church. With secularization in Bavaria, which occurred at the beginning of the XIX century, according to the monastery, the successor was also dissolved. After that, the monastic lands and the ruins themselves were privately owned until they were acquired by Bavaria in 1898.

• Monastery of Hohenwarth
• Monastery of birklingen
• Monastery of christgarten

• Svensk uppslagsbok, Malmö 1932.
• Backmund, Norbert: Die kleineren Orden in Bayern, Windberg 1974, S. 34 ff.
• Binder, Georg: Gnadenberg in der Oberpfalz. Geschichte des Birgittenklosters. Größtenteils nach archivalis Quellen, in: Verhandlungen des historischen Vereins für Oberpfalz and Regensburg 48 (1896), S. 1-112.
• Ide, Richard: Das ehemalige Birgittenkloster Gnadenberg in. Josef Breinl (Hg.), Chronik der Großgemeine Berg, Berg 1996, S. 175-182.
• Montag, Ulrich: Das Werk der Heiligen Birgitta von Schweden in oberdeutscher Überlieferung (= Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, Bd. 18), München 1968.
• Morsbach, Peter: Das Birgittenkloster Gnadenberg in der Oberpfalz. Vision und Realität in der mittelalterlichen Architektur, in: Die Oberpfalz. Mittler zwischen den Zeiten (= Festschrift zum 33. Bayerischen Nordgautag in Berching), Regensburg 2000, S. 95.
• Nyberg, Tore: Birgittinische Klostergründungen des Mittelalters (Bibliotheca Historica Lundesis, Bd. XV), Lund 1965.
  • Nyberg, Tore: Dokumente und Untersuchungen zur inneren Geschichte der drei Birgittenklöster Bayerns 1420–1570 (= Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte Bd. 26), München 1972/1974.
• Wentzel, Gunnel: Birgittiner, in: Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Bd. II, Sp. 750-767.
• Frauenknecht, Sandra: Europa im Fürstentum der Oberen Pfalz: das Birgittenkloster Gnadenberg, in: Appl, Tobias / Knedlik, Manfred: Oberpfälzer Klosterlandschaft. Die Stifte, Klöster und Kollegien der Oberen Pfalz, Regensburg 2016 (Beiträge zur Geschichte und Kultur der Oberpfalz 2), S. 207–213.

• Peter Morsbach. Die Birgitten am Gnadenberg (him) . hdbg.eu. Klöster in Bayern, Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte . The appeal date is April 22, 2019.