Grüssau Abbey

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Krzeszów Abbey (in German Abtei Grüssau) is a house of the Benedictine Order in Bad Wimpfen in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The community was formerly located at Krzeszów, Silesia (ger. Grüssau), and previously in the Emaus Abbey in Prague.

1 History
- 1.1 Silesia
- 1.2 Baden-Württemberg
2 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Silesia

The monastery at Krzeszów near Kamienna Góra in Lower Silesia (ger. Landeshut) was founded on 8 May 1242 by Ann of Bohemia, widow of Duke Henry the Pious of Silesia, for Benedictine monks. In 1289 Duke Bolko I of Świdnicko - Jaworski gave it to the Cistercians, who consecrated the new abbey church in 1292. The abbey was destroyed during the Hussite Wars and again during the Thirty Years' War, and rebuilt on both occasions. It was particularly connected with the Silesian mystic Angelus Silesius. It was secularised by Prussia in 1810. The church became a parish church and the remaining premises were used for various governmental purposes.

When after World War I the German monks of the Emaus Abbey in Prague were obliged to leave the city, they resettled in 1919 in the empty monastery buildings at Grüssau.

In 1946 a mysterious convoy called at a monastery at Grussau and loaded thousands of manuscripts - autograph scores of Mozart (¼ of his known music), Beethoven, Bach and other composers - and disappeared. The monastery was suspended by the Nazi government during World War II. Although it was returned to the monks after the end of the war, as ethnic Germans they were expelled from Silesia by the Polish government shortly afterwards (on 12 May 1946).

[edit] Baden-Württemberg

In 1947 the community under Abbot Albert Schmitt occupied the former Ritterstift (collegiate foundation or canonry) of St. Peter's in Bad Wimpfen, now known as Kloster Bad Wimpfen. The last abbot, Laurentius Hoheisel, resigned in 1997. As the membership of the community had declined too far for it to be legally independent, it has been directed from 2001 by the abbot of Neuburg Abbey near Heidelberg.

By the autumn of 2006 no monks remained, the last having moved to Neuburg, although Kloster Bad Wimpfen still remains nominally a Benedictine monastery and is still a member of the Beuron Congregation within the Benedictine Confederation. A small community (consisting at the end of 2006 of a priest and a layman) maintain the facilities as a Benedictine guesthouse and venue for retreats, under the management of Neuburg Abbey.