Krzeszów Abbey
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Krzeszów Abbey (in German Abtei Grüssau) - The monastery at Krzeszów (ger. Grüssau) near Kamienna Góra (ger. Landeshut) in Lower Silesia 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 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).
