Sonnefeld Monastery

The monastery Sonnenfeld is a former Cistercian convent in solar field in Bavaria. The monastery church is Lutheran parish church today.

History

Foundation

That the Holy Virgin Mary consecrated monastery was founded in 1260 by Henry II of Sonnenberg and his wife Gwendolyn. The abbey was initially located in Ebersdorf and was relocated after a fire in 1267 according to Hofstädten. Hofstädten took until 1889 as a sun box the name of the monastery or the Office. Landlord was at the beginning of the Bamberg bishop Berthold of Leiningen, who tried to prevent also the advance of the Counts of Henneberg with the founding of a monastery. Spiritual leader was the bishop of Würzburg. It was settled out of Maidbronn monastery. Facilities included the villages Frohnlach and Ebersdorf. 1262 visited the abbots of Ebrach and Bildhausen progress and provided for the recognition of the Order.

Further development

Monastery founder Henry II was 1279 among the witnesses at the foundation of the monastery Himmelcron. The sequence of the abbesses is shown in the list of the abbesses of Sonnenfeld. The monastery Sonnenfeld was hen bergisch. Under the Abbess Anna von Henneberg, whose epitaph has been preserved, it flourished. The decline took place in the 14th century. The number of nuns was risen above the economic base addition and had to be limited to 50 people. The supply for unmarried and widows of nobles and commoners was increasingly at the center of monastic life. Private property had become customary, contrary to the rules of the order, however, the number of converse sank. Under the Abbess Margaretha von Brandenstein ( um 1460 - 1503), the monastery came to a final flowering, because the abbess succeeded in reducing the debt and put more construction projects to. 1504, a large proportion of the nuns turned against the abbess, as they wanted to introduce the exam again, the abbot of the monastery George valley was used as a Visitor and imprisoned some of the nuns.

Possessions

Based on the former Bamberg fief Sonnenfeld, Frohnlach and Ebersdorf multiplied the monastery 's land by other goods of Bamberg, the monastery of the Benedictine abbey of Banz and Saalfeld. A papal protection of 1291 lists 34 towns and the monastery developed until the end of the Middle Ages one of the largest landowners in Coburg. A nearly closed dominion was to Weissenbrunn vorm Wald. There were foundations of local noble families, especially the family of Schaumberg and the marshals of Kunštát. Since 1331 the monastery had a right to live in a house on the open market Bamberg citizens and was the owner of some houses in Coburg. By Anna von Henneberg the monastery came into the possession of vineyards in Nudlingen and Nassach.

End of the monastery

1524 put the nuns against the will of the last Abbess Margaret of Zedtwitz a Lutheran preacher by. When the abbess died a year later appointed the councils of the Saxon Elector Johann's an administrator for the monastic property. Five of the 14 nuns left the convent in favor of a secular life, the last remaining nun died in 1572. Owning fell Coburg country rule as an official to. Anna of Saxony spent several years of her captivity in the former monastery and was buried in the monastery church.

Church and monastery buildings

The church was built according to the style of the Cistercian next choir and nave with an adjoining walk-in vault, about the nuns' gallery. The choir is a work of Heinrich Parler. Fires and transform this character was lost partially. Among other things, the typical roof turret was removed. Few tombs have survived from the monastery time, remind them of the Abbess Anna von Henneberg and Schaumberger knight. The monastery church was in 1540 a Protestant parish church. The previous local church is the present church cemetery.

1634 burned down the church and convent. 1856, the system was restored. From the monastery only a part of the east wing has been preserved. A keystone in the arch bears the arms of the Abbess Dorothea of ​​Kemmaten ( 1453 ). Remains of paintings from the second half of the 15th century can still be seen.

The monastery was a total of several buildings that were surrounded by a moat. The buildings served next to residential buildings mainly of agriculture and administration. Companies was a monastery mill. The buildings also scored an office building, a Fronfeste and a school.