Reichenbach Priory (Baden-Württemberg)

The monastery Reichenbach was a Benedictine monastery in Reichenbach, in the municipality of Baiersbronn in the Murg Valley.

History

The foundation dates back to a donation to the monastery Hirsau. The founder was a man named Bern, about which one knows nothing more. After Reichenbach book donation made ​​in May 1082 three monks and five lay brothers of the monastery Hirsau on their way to the northern Black Forest to the mouth of Reichenbach's in the Murg.

In 1085 the monastery church of Bishop Gebhard III of Constance was. inaugurated by Zahringen in honor of Saint Gregory. However, the local name Gregor cell could not prevail in the subsequent period. The church consists essentially of a single-nave Romanesque nave. In addition to the monastery church came other parts of the building such as: the Konventsbau, the hospital, a novice, a flour mill, a stockyard and a hostel. The last building work was carried out in the 16th century.

The monastery Reichenbach always remained a priory of the monastery Hirsau and remained dependent on this. The advocacies of the monastery lay with the Counts of Eberstein. Due to the priory of the monastery Hirsau the Counts of Württemberg ownership claims on monastery Reichenbach signed up. The conflict between Baden and Württemberg Eberstein the one hand and on the other hand was exacerbated when in 1535 the monastery was reformed and Hirsau 1595 Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg occupied the monastery. 1603 the monastery Reichenbach was reformed and used a Protestant pastor. Some parts of the monastery as mill and farms were sold. In the Thirty Years' War, the monastery was re-Catholicised and repopulated by monks from the Benedictine Abbey of St. Martin in Wiblingen. The monks had but after the Peace of Westphalia again pull off.

In the 19th century, the monastery was re-discovered as a historic and renovated according to former ideas. In the years 1965 to 1968, the church was made by the original Romanesque style of a monk church. The plan of the church is strongly reminiscent of the layout of the church of St. Aurelius in Hirsau. The municipality used one of the towers as a drunk tank and a former Fruchtkasten first as a hospital and then as a granary.

Today, the monastery buildings, the Protestant church. At the monastery land of evangelical Beate Paulus kindergarten was established in 1991, named after a daughter of Philipp Matthäus Hahn who served as pastor's wife in Kloster Reichenbach 1800-1810.

Possessions

The possessions of the monastery Reichenbach went to their origin back to the foundations of Hirsau. The possessions were in the first place on both sides of the Murg, Neckar at the top, at the top Nagold and partially float in the lower Rhine valley and the lower Neckar.