Brauweiler Abbey

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St. Nikolaus, church of the former Brauweiler Abbey

Brauweiler Abbey

Brauweiler Abbey or Brauweiler Monastery (in German Abtei Brauweiler) was a house of the Benedictine Order located at Brauweiler, now in Pulheim near Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany.

It was founded and endowed in 1024 by Pfalzgraf Ezzo, count palatine of Lotharingia of the Ezzonian dynasty and his wife Mathilde, a daughter of Emperor Otto II and Theophano.

The present abbey church, now the parish church of Saint Nicholas and Saint Medardus, is the third building on the site, built between 1136 and 1220 or later. The abbey was dissolved in the secularisation of 1803. The premises were subsequently used, under a Napoleonic law, as a hostel for beggars, and from 1815 under the Prussian regime as a workhouse. From 1933 through 1945 the facility was uses for internment, torture and murder of political and social 'undesirebles' by the GESTAPO and collaborating civil police and judicial authorities in the Rhineland, prisoneres included the former mayor of Cologne and first Chancellor (PM) of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer. From 1945 through 1949 it was an open camp for Displaced Persons (DP) administered first by the British Army and then the UNRA (United Nations Refugee Authority). The church was still being used for Catholic mass.

The abbey buildings are now used by the Rheinisches Amt für Denkmalpflege (Rhinish Department for the Care of Historic Monuments).

[edit] References

Bathe, Peter, 2003. Der romanische Kapitelsaal in Brauweiler. Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme seiner Architektur, Bauskulptur und Malerei. Köln. ISBN 3-89498-100-8.
Euskirchen, Claudia, 1993: Die barocken Klostergebäude der ehemaligen Benediktinerabtei Brauweiler. Köln. ISBN 3-7927-1383-7.
Schreiner, Peter, and Tontsch, Monika, 1994. Die Abteikirche St. Nikolaus und St. Medardus in Brauweiler. Baugeschichte und Ausstattung (2nd edn. 1999). Pulheim. ISBN 3-927765-12-0.
Handbuch der Historischen Stätten Deutschlands, 1970. Nordrhein-Westfalen. Stuttgart: Kröner-Verlag.