This one was a chance find. My father and I returned from a longer tour, hit a diversion route which confused the GPS until I got out the good old road map and brought us back on track. We drove through several villages west of the Weser river in the fading light of an autumn evening and came across this beauty.
The chapter church St.Peter and Paul in Gehrden / Brakel near Höxter at the Weser dates back to the 12th century, though the Romanesque apse has been replaced with a larger rectangular choir in the 17th century, and the interior is Baroque, which may be the reason that it is less well known than the Weser abbeys of Bursfelde and Lippoldsberg which were built at the same time and retained their architecture unaltered.
We don't know much about the early history of the church. A date confirmed is the gift of land and obviously some material goods as well, which the Lord Heinrich of Gehrden made to the Benedictine nuns who lived on the Iburg. The foundation of the monastery was sanctioned by Bishop Bernhard I of Oesede, and in 1142, the nuns moved into the new monastery.
The monastery flourished in the centuries to come; in 1474 it joined the Congregation of Bursfelde, a congregation of west- and central German benedictine monasteries of both genders who reformed the somewhat diluted Benedictine practice. The congregation became a considerable political power in the 15th-16th centuries.
The monastery got a Baroque makeover between 1693- 1711 (for alterations in the architecture of the church see below). The monastery was secularised in 1810 and came into possession of Jérome, one of Napoleon's brothers, who sold it to his Master of Ceremony, Count Wilhelm of Bocholz. Bocholz had the cloister and living quarters dismantled and built a three winged palace in the classicistic style in its place, together with a park. Today, the palace buildings are used as hotel.
The church was built about 1180 which means that the nuns must have used another church during the years between their arrival and the completion of the present building; probably some village church now lost, or an interim timber building.
The building was constructed with irregular ashlars of locally quarried limestone. It is a three naved basilica with a transept; the side naves are half the height and width of the main nave. The ceiling is constructed of groined vaults. Originally, all three naves ended in a semicircular apse; but today only the ones of the side naves remain.
The pillars are in the Lower Saxon style, rectangular with small round columns in the corners that share the plinth, but got each their own, individual capital.
The western tower was added in the beginning of the 13th century, some 50 years after the church itself. The stapled gable and the windows already show elements of the Gothic style.
The Romanesque apse of the main nave was broken down and replaced with a rectangular, much larger choir in 1667. A gallery for the nuns was added in 1675 (now the organ loft) – obviously the church was not only used by the nuns but also by the inhabitants of Gehrden at the time, so that a separation proved neccesary. There was a direct connection between the gallery and the nuns' dormitory.
The choir windows and those of the transept have been replaced with larger windows with a pseudo-Gothic tracery, to allow more light to illuminate the Baroque altar.
The coloured windows in the side nave date to 1920; at the time the church underwent some repairs like stabilisation of the vaults and some of the pillars.
In the 1960ies, remains of Romanesque frescoes have been discovered, but those are mostly hiding behind the organ; and it was too dark to look for them anyway.
The church must have had problems with groundwater at some point. During a renovation in the 1950ies it turned out that the floor had been filled up with debris up to 70 centimetres (though I could not find out at which time during the church's history) so that the plinths of the pillars were no longer visible. The rubble has been removed, which also improved the acoustics of the church – those Mediaeval masons knew what they did even in that respect.
The area around the church and the palace – the former cloister, refectory, dormitory etc. – once had been a garden for vegetables and herbs, including an orchard and a bleach green, as well as a fish pond; fish being an important part of the nuns' diet.
Count Wilhelm of Bocholz turned the site into a park in the English style in the early 19th century. This park still exists.
We came home after dark and pretty hungry, but that detour was worth it.
Fein, was Ihr alles so entdeckt. Da sieht man mal wieder, dass sich mitunter auch Umwege lohnen.
ReplyDeleteEinen lieben Gruß von der Silberdistel
Liebe Gabriele,
ReplyDeletedein Blog ist eine wahre Fundgrube an geschichtlichem Wissen...
Leben in einem Kloster... auf Dauer, nein danke, doch soweit ich weiß, war das eine beliebte Methode für wohlhabende Frauen, unliebsamen Ehe-Arrangements zu entkommen...
Mal eine Woche in einem Kloster zu verbringen, ohne Kontakt zu Außenwelt, ohne Internet und Telefon, Fernsehen und Gespräche. Das würde mich reizen. Würde ich es als angenehm und beruhigend empfinden? Oder wird mich das Fehlen an äußeren Reizen in den Wahnsinn und in die Rastlosigkeit treiben? Mal sehen, vielleicht mache ich das mal... :-)
Liebe Grüße
Kasia
Liebe Kasia,
ReplyDeletevielen Dank für das nette Kompliment.
Das Leben im Kloster war sicher für viele Frauen eine Alternative, zumal es zum einen moderne Konzepte wie Selbsbestimmung im Mittelalter nicht gab und zum anderen die Frömmigkeit insgesamt weit größer war als heute. Aber es wurden viele auch schon als Mädchen ins Kloster gegeben und hatten nie die Chance, eine andere Welt und ein anderes Lebenskonzept kennenzulernen. Waren sie unglücklich? Die meisten wohl nicht, da es die ihnen von Gott vorgegebene Rolle war, aber ich denke schon, dass einige der Mädchen später anders entschieden hätten.
Wenn man im Kloster aufstieg, war das durchaus eine Karriereoption; übrigens auch für Männer, jüngere Söhne beispielsweise. Mathilde (Tochter Kaisers Otto I), die erste Äbtissin von Quedlinburg, die als Elfjährige geweiht wurde und während der Abwesenheit des Vaters in Italien später die Reichsgeschäfte führte (967), hatte durch ihre Position eine Macht, die sie als Ehefrau eines Herrschers eines anderen Landes (die Gruppe, aus der die Heiratskandidaten gestammt hätten) wohl nicht gehabt hätte.
Es gibt Klöster, die solche Aufenthalte anbieten, aber meist mit Einbindung in das religiöse Leben und Gruppenveranstaltungen (z.B. Drübeck). Das evangelische Kloster Bursfelde beispielsweise bietet von April bis Oktober Übernachtungen im Rahmen von Pilgerreisen an, auch für Einzelpersonen und ohne Gruppenveranstaltungen (aber an den Gottesdiensten sollte man schon teilnehmen als Pilfer ;) ). Als totale, selbstbestimmte Auszeit könnten sich ein paar Übernachtungen in belgischen Beginenhöfen anbieten, etwas, das es in Deutschland nicht gibt.
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English version about the part of women in monasteries:
Life in a convent was certainly an alternative for many women, especially since modern concepts such as self-determination did not exist in the Middle Ages and piety as a whole was far greater than it is today. But many were also given to the convent as girls and never had the chance to get to know a different world and a different concept of life. Were they unhappy? Most of them probably not, since it was the role given to them by God, but I do think that some of the girls would have chosen differently later.
If you rose in the convent, it was definitely a career option; for men as well, younger sons for example. Mathilde (daughter of Emperor Otto I), the first abbess of Quedlinburg, who was consecrated at age of eleven and later ran the imperial affairs during her father's absence in Italy (967), had a power by virtue of her position that she probably would not have had as the wife of a ruler of another country (the group from which the marriage candidates would have been chosen).