Pforta

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Pforta, or Schulpforta, is a former Cistercian monastery (1137-1540), near Naumburg on the Saale River in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is now a celebrated German public boarding school, called Landesschule Pforta. It is coeducational and teaches around 400 high school students.

1 History
- 1.1 Monastery
- 1.2 Boarding School
2 Architecture
3 External links
4 References

[edit] History

[edit] Monastery

The monastery was at first situated in Schmölln, near Altenburg. In 1127, Count Bruno of Pleissengau founded a Benedictine monastery there and endowed it with 1100 "hides" of land.^{[citation needed]} This foundation not being successful, on April 23, 1132, Bishop Udo I of Naumburg, a relative of Bruno's, replaced the Benedictines by Cistercian monks from the monastery of Walkenried. The situation here proved undesirable, and in 1137 Udo transferred the monastery to Pforta, and conferred upon it fifty hides of arable land, an important tract of forest, and two farms belonging to the diocese.

The patroness of the abbey was the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the first abbot, Adalbert, from 1132 to 1152. Under the third abbot, Adetold, two convents were founded under Pforta's auspices, in the Mark of Meißen and in Silesia, and in 1163, the monasteries of Alt-Celle and Leubus were also established in the latter province. At this period the monks numbered about eighty. In 1205, Pforta sent a colony of monks to Livonia, founding there the monastery of Dünamünde. The abbey was distinguished for its excellent system of management, and after the first 140 years of its existence its possessions had increased tenfold.

At the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century after a period of strife, the monastery flourished again. The last quarter of the fourteenth century witnessed, however, the gradual decline of its prosperity, and also the relaxation of monastic discipline. When Abbot Johannes IV was elected in 1515, there were forty-two monks and seven lay brothers who later revolted against the abbot; an inspection by Duke George of Saxony reported that morality had ceased to exist in the monastery. The last Abbot, Peter Schederich, was elected in 1533. When the Catholic Duke George was succeeded by his Protestant brother Henry, the monastery was suppressed (on November 9, 1540).

[edit] Boarding School

In 1543, Henry's son, Duke Moritz opened a national school in the abbey, appropriating for its use the revenues of the suppressed monastery of Memleben. At first the number of scholars was 100, in 1563 fifty more were able to be accommodated. The first rector was Johann Gigas, renowned as a lyric poet. Under Justinus Bertuch (1601-1626) the school attained the zenith of its prosperity. It suffered greatly during the Thirty Years' War, in 1643, there being only eleven scholars. Among its pupils may be mentioned the poet, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and the philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, Pforta belonged to Prussia, and then to Imperial Germany. Today the school is maintained by the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, but still supported by its own Schulpforta Foundation. Friedrich Nietzsche also attended Schulpforta from 1858 to 1864.[1]

[edit] Architecture

The remains of the monastery include the 13th century gothic church; it is a cross-vaulted, colonnaded basilica with an extraordinarily long nave, a peculiar western façade, and a late Romanesque double-naved cloister. What remains of the original building (1137-40) is in the Romanesque style, while the restoration (1251-1268) belongs to the early Gothic. Other buildings are now used as dormitories and lecture halls. There is also the Furstenhaus, built in 1573. Schulpforta was one of the three Furstenschulen founded in 1543 by Maurice, Elector of Saxony (at that time duke), the two others being at Grimpla and at Meissen.