Schussenried Monastery
Kloster Schussenried Schussenried Abbey Schussenried Convent

The jewel in the crown of this monastery, is the library, built around 1748, when the entire monastery underwent a comprehensive rebuilding. At the time of the great building project the monastery was already about 600 years old. It had been founded in 1183. It belonged to a group called the Premonstratensian community. The "monks" of Schussenired ("Chorherren" in German) were not actually monks, but "canon regulars" in English: they were priests who chose to live together in a community of like-minded men. And these men treasured learning.

The monastery acquired substantial endowments and built up considerable territory and financial means during the 1400's. In 1440 it was declared an Imperial Abbey which meant that it was territorially independent. Many great buildings were built and the monastery became a center of study and learning.

Support for Learning

With the advent of movable type, churchmen, particularly those who are interested in classical literature, took the lead in supporting the press. Schussenried Monastery was one of the first organizations in Germany to have a printing press (1478). The monastery at Schussenried welcomed printers into their midst and the monks even did some printing. The clergy's enthusiasm for printing appears to have been general, and the author of the Chronicle of Koelhoff wrote, on seeing the work of the first printers: "What an ascent towards God! What ecstatic devotion must we feel on reading the many books which printing has given us!" And one monk wrote in Fasciculus Temporum, "printing is the art of arts, the science of sciences thanks to its rapid spread the world is endowed with a treasure house of wisdom and knowledge, until now hidden from view. An infinite number of works which very few students could have consulted in Paris or Athens or in the libraries of other great university towns, are now translated into all languages and scattered abroad among all the nations of the earth."

Destruction

This life of scholarly ease was put to an end during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), when the monastery suffered terrible damage. Swedish troops laid the abbey's lands to waste and burned down most of the buildings. It took nearly a hundred years for the community to recover. But the abbey's focus on learning was not lost.

Intellectual Vitality

Some of the first works of literature written in the Swabian dialect of German, were plays performed at the Schussenried monastery, pioneering the transcription of the dialect. Sebastian Sailer, a Premonstratensian monk from the nearby Abbey at Marchtal, was famous for his plays, written for elite audiences, which treated religious subjects by transposing them into the idiom of Swabian daily life. In his verse play The Creation, which was first performed in 1744 at Schussenried, God the Father checks the almanac just like a peasant to see when is the best time to sow the first seeds. Eve grumbles about her housework, including the making of Spätzle (Swabian noodles). Sailer's dramas are populated with all the stock figures of village life, the apparently stupid but cunning peasant farmer, the boisterous youths - all described with gentle sympathetic humor. The author's works were attacked at the time for their apparent irreverence, and were never published during his lifetime, his work circulated only in manuscript and was seen by a select few at performances such as those at Schussenried.

The Great Rebuilding

In 1748 Dominikus Zimmermann drew up the plans for an entirely new monastery, including a wooden model which we still have today. The present name of the monastery Neues Kloster ("New Monastery") refers to the baroque rebuilding from 1752. The buildings were to be modeled on Wiblingen monastery. Both of these monasteries were marked out by their incredibly ornate baroque libraries. Schussenried monastery also had a very ornate assembly room in the east wing, which however was torn down in the 19th century. The entire plans for rebuilding the monastery called for four wings with an integrated church, but they were not completed due to lack of funds. The present day three wing construction consists of the north wing plus stumps of the intended east and west wings, and represents about a third of the planned building project. The St. Magnus Church (Sanktmagnuskirche) stems from a time shortly before the rebuilding of the monastery also in the baroque style. Today it is the local parish church. It has elements of the Romanesque Gothic and baroque architecture. It has a choir stall designed and carved by Georg Anton Machein and ceiling frescoes by Johannes Zick that illustrate the life of Nobert of Xanten, the founder of the Premonstratensian order. The original building plans would have replaced his church but they were not completed.

The Library

The grandious plans of the great monastery were never completed, but the brightly sunlit library was built nevertheless. The collection is housed in closed bookcases on two levels, with a continuous gallery around the upper floor. The doors of the cases are painted to resemble the spines of books. Apart from the volumes, they contain folding tables and chairs for those wishing to use the library. The appointment of this interior pursues one of the richest and most detailed artistic programs of the 18th century. The monks refered to the library in Latin as the "sedes sapientiae" - the "seat of wisdom".

In 1757 Franz Georg Hermann of Kempton finished the ceiling fresco which illustrates and glorifies divine wisdom in bewildering abundance, displaying the Apocalypse, the sciences, arts and technology. It takes time to appreciate this severely geometrical work in its full complexity, with its vertical axes and horizontal tiers of hierarchy. Abbott Nikolaus Cloos (1756 -- 1775) adopted an almost encyclopedic iconography which is also reflected in the sculptural features.

Many visitors to Schussenried monastery in the 18th century were shocked to see that there were triumphant statues of prophets and evangelists lining one side, and on the other, in order to depict "freethinking, false politics, erroneous teaching", statues of writers such as Luther, Calvin, Machiavelli, Voltaire and Rousseau. These were the most recent sculptures created for the room: eight groups of False Church Teachers opposite eight large statues of the True Church Teachers. This final touch was created by Fidelis Sporer of Weingarten in 1766. By the 1780's many monasteries had come to place great emphasis on the disinterested pursuit of learning, almost to the exclusion of their other purposes, and the librarian of Schussenried thought that a library should be open to all students, and that religious disputes should be banished from it.

At the turn of the 18th century from 1795 to 1814, during the later part of the era of the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic era, a series out of annexations and secularizations took place in Germany. In 1803 in one of the last great acts of the Holy Roman Empire before it was dissolved a major redistribution of territorial sovereignty within the Empire was agreed to. (In German this agreement was called the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss). As a result of this agreement the monastery and its territory were given to the Counts of Sternberg-Manderscheid, who used the abbey as their castle. The books were removed from the library in 1809. This family then sold the lands and buildings to the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1835. And the king broke up and dispersed the book collection. The Kingdom of Württemberg set up a foundry on part of the land and in 1875 a lunatic asylum was set up in the buildings which attained some notoriety as a tourist site. Until 1997 it was a branch of the State Psychiatric Hospital. Since 1998 the monastery has been used as an exhibition and events center.

Home