Bergen auf Rügen Abbey: A Medieval Nunnery and Protestant Ladies’ Foundation in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Danish, Duchy of Pomerania, Swedish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page17 sections
History
Bergen auf Rügen Abbey is a historic monastic complex in Germany, founded in 1193 by Prince Jaromar I of Rügen beside St. Mary’s Church near the fortified site on the Rugard. It was the first nunnery in the Principality of Rügen. Jaromar had St. Mary’s built on his own land in fired brick, and the church is dated to around 1170–80. Bishop Peter of Roskilde consecrated it during the period when Rügen was becoming Christian and was being drawn into the Danish ecclesiastical sphere.
Foundation under Danish rule
Rügen had been conquered by King Valdemar II of Denmark on 15 June 1168. In 1169, Pope Alexander III placed the island within the Diocese of Roskilde, an important Danish church center. Bishop Absalon of Lund advanced the conversion of Rügen to Christianity, while the baptized Jaromar I became the principality’s first Christian ruler and a Danish vassal. Bergen’s first twelve nuns came from St. Mary’s Abbey in Roskilde, making the new community a daughter institution of that monastery.
The community initially followed the Benedictine tradition. The date when it adopted Cistercian reform, a monastic tradition emphasizing communal discipline, liturgical practice, and an austere way of life, is unknown. Pope Innocent IV confirmed the monastery’s possessions and its Cistercian rule in 1250. The rule was said to have been observed at Bergen before the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.
Jaromar I gave the monastery extensive, scattered lands, chiefly on Rügen. The nunnery also controlled the town of Bergen, rights over building there, rents and lease revenues, and compulsory use of its mills. Before 1215 it held the patronage of the churches at Sagard, Bobbin, and Jasmund. This meant that appointments to their parish offices, including St. Mary’s at Bergen, required the convent’s approval.
Landholding and jurisdiction
The monastery’s privileges expanded during the thirteenth century. It received exemption from customs duties on Rügen in 1232. In 1296 it acquired high jurisdiction over major crimes punishable by death or mutilation, as well as low jurisdiction over lesser bodily offenses, throughout the villages belonging to the nunnery. A bailiff administered these powers for the monastery. The provost exercised jurisdiction in Bergen, while another bailiff acted as judicial officer on the monastery’s other estates.
The nunnery continued to enlarge its property. It purchased fourteen villages from Arnold Pape in 1344 and acquired the estates of Johann von Kiel at Wieck, Dranske, and Goos in 1357. A document of 1525 listed 59 villages belonging to the monastery, along with shares in six other villages and revenues from three more. Its holdings centered on Bergen and extended across Wittow, Jasmund, and Schaprode. At Bergen, the monastery was the manorial and feudal lord and received dues and labor services from the village.
Spiritual supervision belonged to the abbot of Eldena, who appointed the nuns’ confessor and conducted visitation. The provosts, usually laymen but occasionally clerics, managed the property and exercised jurisdiction in Bergen. The convent itself was headed by a prioress elected by the nuns. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the prioress occupied a separate house.
Community and medieval rebuilding
The nuns came from the Rügen and Pomeranian nobility and commonly from patrician families in Stralsund. In 1358 the convent consisted of a prioress, an under-prioress, and 37 other nuns. From about 1490, the number of nuns fell to 12, alongside novices and boarders. Only Anna, mentioned around 1388 and possibly a daughter of Wartislaw VI, and Elisabeth, who died in 1473 and was a daughter of Wartislaw IX, are known to have borne the title of abbess. Both appear to have held it honorifically because of their high birth.
Prince Wizlaw II promised the nunnery a chapel on the Rugard in 1285. The chapel was completed in 1291 but was dismantled by the nuns in 1380. A fire in Bergen in 1445 largely destroyed the town, the monastery, and its church. Many valuables and relics were lost, but surviving church masonry allowed the building to be reconstructed. A second fire in 1472 damaged the refectory and killed one nun. After the restoration, the church was reconsecrated with a dedication to the Virgin Mary and Saint Luke, replacing its earlier dedication to the Virgin Mary alone.
Reformation and the Protestant foundation
Ducal officials visited the monastery in 1525 and inventoried its valuables. Another inventory followed on 22 September 1534. After Pomerania decided in 1534 to introduce the Reformation, a visitation on 13 July 1535 began the implementation of the church order associated with Johannes Bugenhagen. During secularization, the transfer of religious institutions and their property into secular princely control, the monastery passed to Duke Philip I of Pomerania.
The nuns resisted the first Lutheran preacher, Johannes Hän, and expelled him by throwing stones at him. For a time, services had to be held in the churchyard. A decision of 1569, based on provisions issued in 1541 and 1560, preserved Bergen and several other former nunneries as institutions for educating and supporting noblewomen. Bergen therefore became a Protestant aristocratic ladies’ foundation for daughters of the knightly estate rather than disappearing as an institution.
From 1570, the ducal treasury confiscated the monastery’s estates and revenues, leaving the foundation dependent on the reigning prince. Revised rules were issued in 1578 and published in Stettin in 1616. In 1775, under Prioress Eleonore Tugendreich von Barnekow, the convent received the Order Cross from Queen Sophia Magdalene of Sweden, a ceremonial insignia associated with status in a noble Protestant ladies’ foundation.
War, decline, and reconstruction
Duke Philip Julius of Pomerania-Wolgast converted the provost’s building into a hunting lodge between 1605 and 1611. A Swedish administrative building was erected on its ruins in 1708. During the Thirty Years’ War, a conflict that devastated much of northern and central Europe between 1618 and 1648, the monastery was repeatedly occupied and almost completely devastated. Austrian troops under Hans von Goetze plundered it in 1629, and Imperial troops did so again in 1630.
After Rügen passed to Sweden, the buildings continued to decay. Many conventual women lived with townspeople in Bergen, while some families built lodgings for them within the monastery grounds. The provincial estates petitioned the Swedish authorities for restoration in 1641, and Queen Christina of Sweden intervened in 1654, but the condition of the monastery did not improve. Its connection with the Diocese of Roskilde ended in 1658.
The cloister, the covered passage around a monastic courtyard, was dismantled from 1660, and the convent buildings were demolished over the following decades. On 19 December 1720, King Frederick I of Sweden endowed 1,000 thalers, assigning one-third of the annual proceeds to Bergen and two-thirds to a new foundation at Barth. The Rügen knighthood also collected funds. Construction began in 1732 under the curators Hermann Alexander von Wolffradt and Ernst Bogislav von Rhaden, with von Bugenhagen and Christian Friedrich von Barnekow serving as building inspectors.
Two new residential buildings were erected between 1732 and 1736. Frederick I confirmed the Bergen foundation on 17 August 1733, and its rules were renewed in the same year. During the French period, parts of the monastery were used as a hospital or military field hospital in 1805, 1807, 1809, and 1813. Prioress Juliane von Usedom initiated a fountain in 1876 and, with Bertha von Smiterlöw, established the Julienstift infant school in 1886. The school provided free care, mainly for poorer children.
Twentieth-century disruption and preservation
The foundation experienced forced billeting from 1919 to 1922. In 1945 it was still occupied by Prioress von Harder, several conventual women, and six expectant members awaiting foundation positions or the full provision attached to them. General Heinrich von Albedyll was among its last curators.
After the Red Army occupied Rügen, an evacuation order dated 15 May 1945 expelled all residents and turned the monastery into a defensive position. Loopholes were cut into the walls, furniture was lost, and much of the archive disappeared. Soviet troops withdrew in 1947, after which refugees from the east occupied the buildings. A proposed conversion into a foundation-run old-age home in 1947–48 was never carried out. The foundation was dissolved in the 1980s, and the buildings passed to the city of Bergen auf Rügen.
Extensive renovation of the monastery-courtyard ensemble began in 1991. Archaeological investigations followed between 2001 and 2004, examining the surviving complex and its earlier phases. The buildings reopened as a cultural meeting center on 20 May 2005. The former foundation houses now accommodate the town museum, a workshop displaying local crafts, a restaurant, and apartments.
Remains
The surviving complex is arranged around a monastery courtyard and is dominated by two eighteenth-century residential buildings constructed from 1732 to 1736. Earlier elements survive in the fabric and archaeological history of the site, including parts of St. Mary’s Church, the former relationship with the Rugard chapel, and evidence connected with the medieval convent. Later alterations, including the courtyard wall, iron gate, fountain, electric lighting, and defensive loopholes, reflect the foundation’s changing use.
Church and earlier religious buildings
St. Mary’s Church
St. Mary’s Church stands beside the former monastery near the fortified site on the Rugard. It was built in fired brick, with its construction dated to around 1170–80. A gallery for the nuns was added during a second building phase around 1300, providing a distinct space for the women’s religious community.
The fire of 1445 left portions of the church masonry standing, so the building was reconstructed on its surviving walls. The fire of 1472 also affected the church and the refectory. Following restoration and reconsecration, the church bore the dual dedication to the Virgin Mary and Saint Luke.
Rugard chapel
The chapel on the Rugard was promised to the nunnery by Prince Wizlaw II in 1285 and completed in 1291. The nuns dismantled it in 1380. Its history forms part of the monastery’s medieval relationship with the fortified site above the settlement.
Eighteenth-century courtyard buildings
Main residential building
The main building was completed in 1732. It contains a five-bay prayer hall and the prioress’s apartment. Its position within the courtyard belongs to the reconstruction of the Protestant foundation after the earlier convent buildings and cloister had been dismantled.
Southern residential wing
The southern wing was completed in 1736. Together with the main building, it forms the surviving eighteenth-century residential complex. A northern side wing was planned but never built because the available funds ran out.
Courtyard boundary and fittings
The buildings were enclosed by a monastery wall. The wall was renewed in 1892, and the old entrance to the churchyard was replaced by an iron gate in 1893. A fountain was added in 1876, while electric lighting was installed in the courtyard in 1899. In 1945, the walls were fitted with loopholes when the complex was converted into a defensive position.
Seals and surviving evidence
The monastery’s first surviving convent seal dates from 1289. Its pointed-oval design shows a standing woman holding an upright palm branch in her right hand and a book in her left. The inscription identifies the chapter of Saint Mary at Bergen on Rügen. The prioress used a round seal showing a lamb with a chalice and a banner.
A seal belonging to the provost of Bergen was found in the ruins of Eldena monastery in 1829. It depicts the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus and a kneeling monk beneath them. Its inscription identifies the provost of Bergen. These seals preserve visual evidence of the offices and religious identity that structured the medieval institution.
Later buildings and present complex
The provost’s building was transformed into a hunting lodge between 1605 and 1611. The Swedish administrative building erected on its ruins in 1708 represents a later administrative phase of the site. The surviving foundation buildings were renovated from 1991 onward, with archaeological investigations carried out between 2001 and 2004. They now contain the Bergen town museum, a local crafts workshop, a restaurant, and apartments.
