Stift Inzigkofen: An Augustinian Canonesses’ Convent in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
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- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page21 sections
History
Stift Inzigkofen is a former Augustinian canonesses’ convent in Inzigkofen, Germany, whose history extends from its foundation in 1354 to the death of the last nun in 1856. It developed from a small religious retreat into a wealthy Upper Swabian women’s monastery that influenced the surrounding area economically, spiritually, and culturally for approximately five centuries.
Foundation and Augustinian Reform
According to the convent chronicle, Mechthild and Irmengard Sönnerin, sisters from a bourgeois family in Sigmaringen, founded the community with a woman named Lùdgart. The small hermitage was first mentioned in 1356. Its members initially followed the Franciscan Third Order, a form of religious life associated with Franciscan spirituality but distinct from the formal communities of friars and nuns.
In 1394 the expanding community joined an Augustinian reform movement and became a house of Augustinian canonesses. These were women religious who followed the Rule of Saint Augustine and lived together under common prayer and discipline. The number of canonesses was first set at 13 and later grew to as many as 30, alongside lay sisters who generally carried out domestic and practical work.
Stift Inzigkofen came under the visitation of Mariazell near Winterthur. In 1395 it was released from the parish of Laiz. Under Prioress Anna Schmid, the 13 canonesses voluntarily adopted strict enclosure in 1412. Enclosure limited the movement and outside contact of professed religious women in order to protect a secluded contemplative life. In the same year, the convent became a legally independent parish, while a confessor provided pastoral care with support from a newly established chaplaincy benefice.
Reform, Patronage, and Expansion
The convent sought stricter statutes after apparently receiving insufficient support from Beuron, which had taken over visitation in 1419. During a visitation by the Augustinian canons of Langenzenn from 1430, Inzigkofen entered the sphere of the Raudnitz reform. In 1431 it adopted the statutes of the recently reformed Augustinian canonesses’ convent at Pillenreuth. The community also maintained close relations with the reform center at Indersdorf during the fifteenth century.
Visitation passed to Indersdorf in 1466, to the Wengen Foundation in Ulm in 1550, and to Kreuzlingen in 1578. A second benefice was founded in 1458. Although Laiz remained the parish church for the village of Inzigkofen, local residents were allowed to attend services at the convent.
Stift Inzigkofen rose from a poor beguine hermitage into a wealthy and prestigious monastery through donations and protection from noble, urban-patrician, and ecclesiastical benefactors. A beguine community was a medieval association of religious women living communally without necessarily belonging at first to a formally recognized monastic order. The Reischach family of Dietfurt and the canon Michael von Reischach were especially important patrons. The convent’s reform affiliations and its spirituality, strongly influenced by mysticism, attracted women from noble and lesser noble families as well as prosperous urban households.
Secular authority remained with the local lords of Inzigkofen. The Reischach family held this role initially, followed by the Werdenbergs from 1421, the Fürstenbergs from 1534, and the Hohenzollerns from 1540. The Hohenzollerns incorporated the convent fully into their developing territorial state. Ecclesiastical oversight belonged to the bishop of Constance and the appointed visitors, while the confessors also exercised substantial influence.
The convent’s income came from donations, the dowries of incoming canonesses, agricultural production, feudal dues, interest on money investments, and the sale of works made within the community. Its position improved as women from noble and patrician families entered and as the Fürstenbergs and Hohenzollerns supported the institution during the sixteenth century. The integration of the nearby Dominican nuns’ convent of Hedingen between 1595 and 1597 greatly increased Inzigkofen’s landholdings, although it also created tensions between older and newer members.
By 1626 the convent controlled an extensive manorial estate containing 44 farms held in fief. This material base supported an increasingly strict life of contemplation and enclosure. In the eighteenth century, community life centered on approximately 40 nuns. About two-thirds were choir nuns, who undertook the formal liturgical duties and administrative offices, while the smaller group of lay sisters performed mainly domestic work. An elected prioress governed for life and exercised both spiritual and temporal authority.
Religious Life and the Reformation
The Reformation associated with Martin Luther did not take root at Inzigkofen. The convent chronicle condemned Luther’s teachings, and the associated changes, including clerical marriage, the abolition of the Mass and the veneration of saints, the abandonment of prayers for the dead, and the rejection of holy-water consecration, deeply disturbed the canonesses.
Spiritual discipline weakened after mitigated statutes were introduced in 1502. Renewal followed the Thirty Years’ War, the major European conflict of 1618 to 1648, and the community’s exile in Constance from 1632 to 1645. New statutes adopted in 1643 restored strict enclosure and remained essentially in force until dissolution.
Daily life under the renewed statutes included the eight canonical hours of prayer, including the midnight office, weekly and seasonal fasting, penitential practices, additional voluntary prayers, and prolonged day-and-night adoration before the exposed sacrament. Meditation was central to the convent’s spirituality, and mystical devotion was particularly influential during some periods.
Music had an important place in the community, and musical ability was considered when novices were selected. A convent school cannot be demonstrated, although the canonesses supported the village school. They also produced reliquaries decorated with gold, silver, and pearls, together with distinctive nativity figures made from wax and wire.
The reform movement also encouraged the systematic assembly of a substantial library. It contained devotional works, religious literature, and especially German mystical writings from the fourteenth century. Several manuscripts were copied in the convent’s own scriptorium. Most of the library was dispersed or destroyed during secularization, but some important mystical manuscripts survived, and several texts are known only through copies made at Inzigkofen.
Secularization and the Princely Period
In October 1802, in anticipation of the Imperial Deputation Act of 1803, Prince Anton Aloys of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen announced his intention to take possession of the convent. On 5 November he ordered its expropriation, and on 16 December the property was auctioned at a valuation of 4,328 gulden. The 1803 act was a legal settlement that secularized many ecclesiastical institutions in the German states and transferred their property to secular rulers as compensation for territorial losses. It formally transferred Stift Inzigkofen’s property to Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.
The canonesses retained the right to remain in the convent and receive pensions until the last nun died in 1856. The church continued to be available to the people of Inzigkofen, but most books, documents, artworks, and other contents were sold. Some possessions were left to the sisters.
Secularization began a roughly two-century princely period. In 1810 the former convent offices were converted into a country residence. Princess Amalie Zephyrine and her grandson, Hereditary Prince Karl Anton, used it as a summer residence between 1811 and 1848. During this period, the slopes on both sides of the Danube were reshaped as the romantic Fürstlicher Park Inzigkofen, which also includes the nearby Amalienfelsen.
Twentieth-Century Uses and Conservation
After the last canonesses died, the former convent stood empty for a long period. From 1939 to 1944 it served as a camp of the female Reich Labour Service, one of five such camps in the then Prussian-Hohenzollern district of Sigmaringen. After the Second World War, it was used as a reception camp.
Since 1948 the buildings have housed the Volkshochschulheim Inzigkofen, an independent, non-denominational, and non-partisan adult-education center. Former nun cells became bedrooms for courses and seminars, while former monastery rooms continue to provide teaching space. In 2002 the municipality of Inzigkofen bought the complex within the enclosure wall from the Hohenzollern family. Because much of the complex remained substantially unchanged during the two centuries after secularization, it was then regarded as the best-preserved monastic complex in southwestern Germany.
Conservation began in 2003 and continued through 2010. Work included the cloister, the Mesnerhaus, the main building’s facade, the chapter house, historic ceilings, doors, window shutters, kitchen, dining hall, and guest rooms. The cloister and Mesnerhaus were completed in 2007, while major work on the main building took place in 2007 and 2008. In December 2008, the former Augustinian canonesses’ convent was named Monument of the Month by the Monument Foundation of Baden-Württemberg. In June 2010, renovation of the convent building and the securing of the historic buildings were completed. The municipality later undertook phased repairs to the approximately 900-meter enclosure wall.
Stift Inzigkofen remains an important architectural monument in Baden-Württemberg and a supraregional center for adult education. Its surviving library holdings continue to support research into German mysticism. A reconstruction of the former library was undertaken where possible, and an eight-page manuscript fragment made for the convent in the late fifteenth century entered the Martinus Library in Mainz approximately two centuries ago. An exhibition at the former convent from 16 March to 20 May 2007 brought together approximately 120 objects from 28 lenders and explored the institution’s five-hundred-year history, economy, buildings, daily life, spirituality, artistic production, and later princely period.
Remains
The surviving complex developed through five building phases from the late fourteenth to the late eighteenth century. It grew from a small religious settlement beside an existing chapel into a compact monastic town enclosed by a 900-meter wall. The site includes the former convent church, cloister, convent buildings, guesthouse, accommodation for the confessor, economic buildings, gardens, cemetery, and hermit chapel. Its architecture records the community’s growth and changing needs across the late Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and late-eighteenth-century periods.
Church and Medieval Buildings
Former Convent Church
From its foundation in 1354, the community used the existing Mauritius Chapel. In 1388 the chapel was demolished and replaced by a towerless church dedicated to John the Baptist, Saint Bartholomew, and Saint Maurice. A bell tower was added in 1484. The former convent church, St. John the Baptist, retains this tower, while its present appearance largely reflects enlargement and remodeling by Christian Grossbayer in 1780 and 1781. The work gave the interior a largely Neoclassical character and added a nuns’ gallery that allowed the canonesses to maintain strict enclosure.
The gallery has an elaborate grille made from branches and papier-mâché. Its balustrade and choir screen carry the Zollern arms and form a major southwestern German example of the Zopfstil, a late-eighteenth-century style with restrained, classicizing ornament. Gilded pillars frame flower vases modeled in paper and plaster, while the curved cornice carries figures of the Twelve Apostles among climbing vines. The church also retains a Late Gothic winged high altar made in 1505 by the Strüb workshop of Veringenstadt, together with a Late Gothic Madonna and Child and the fifteenth-century Bussen Madonna.
Mesnerhaus
The late-Gothic Michaels House was built in 1475 and is now called the Mesnerhaus, or sexton’s house. It is one of the complex’s dominant historic buildings. Its construction was financed through foundations associated with Michael von Reischach, whose patronage also reflects the support that helped the convent expand during the later Middle Ages.
From 1391 to 1449, provisional wooden structures beside the church were replaced by convent buildings. The convent and church were repeatedly altered and enlarged up to 1576. These successive works formed the medieval core from which the later three-winged complex developed.
Seventeenth-Century Convent
Convent Building and Cloister
In 1659 Prioress Maria Franziska Raßler commissioned a new convent building, cloister, and convent church. Designed by Michael Beer of Au in the Bregenz Forest and built between 1659 and 1663, the work produced a three-winged complex in a transitional style between the Renaissance and Baroque. The Baroque was an architectural style marked by dynamic forms, rich ornament, and theatrical spatial effects. The buildings include the cloister, a Prälatensaal, or hall associated with a senior ecclesiastical official, and stucco ceilings.
The construction was reportedly not fully financed at the outset, and the canonesses are said to have helped with the work when they could do so without being observed by outsiders. The former convent cells are now guest bedrooms, and other rooms serve as teaching spaces for the adult-education center.
Chapter House
The chapter house, formerly called the convent room, occupies the ground floor of the east wing. A chapter house was the room where a religious community met for governance, discipline, and collective decisions. The room contains a large late-eighteenth-century tiled stove and a wooden coffered ceiling made from spruce boards. Profiled strips divide the ceiling into rectangular fields, and stamped ornaments decorate the frieze.
At the center of the frieze is a representation of the Lamb of God, possibly identifying the prioress’s place during convent assemblies. The date 1663 on the frieze commemorates completion of the building. In spring 2008, the ceiling was removed because broken beams threatened the structure. It was stripped of paint, reinstalled, and conserved, exposing the previously hidden ornamented frieze. The original floor, probably made of wooden boards, could not be restored and was replaced with parquet. The conserved ceiling is suspended from roof-truss braces that had been badly deteriorated before the work.
Baroque Enclosure and Economic Buildings
Hermit Chapel and Administrative Building
An administrative building and a higher enclosure wall incorporating a hermit chapel were constructed beside the church between 1726 and 1729. The Baroque chapel was decorated in 1740 by the Riedlingen painter Joseph Ignaz Wegscheider with Wessobrunn stucco and ceiling paintings. Wessobrunn stucco refers to an ornamental plaster tradition known for elaborate vegetal and architectural decoration.
The ceiling fresco depicts the Annunciation. The chapel also contains a sculptural copy of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln, made in 1732 after the type of a crowned Queen of Heaven holding a scepter and Child. The copy is attributed to Franz Anton Källin.
Enclosure Wall and Monastic Town
By the Baroque period, the complex had become a small monastic town enclosed by an outer wall built in 1728 and 1729. The enclosure contained the church, convent precinct, guesthouse, confessor’s accommodation, economic buildings, and extensive gardens. The wall, approximately 900 meters long, remains a defining element of the surviving site.
Tithe Barn
The former tithe barn was built in 1510 to store produce from the convent’s fields and its tithe income. It burned during the Thirty Years’ War, probably around 1636, when Swedish troops passed through the area, and was rebuilt in 1645 and 1646. After secularization, the princely court chamber converted it into an orangery and wintering facility. Parts of the building were later leased to local farmers for hay, straw, and grain storage.
Cemetery, Interiors, and Movable Heritage
Nuns’ Cemetery
The historic nuns’ cemetery contains wrought-iron crosses and is centered on a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the Child while standing on a cloud. The green-gray Molasse sandstone figure from the Lake Constance region probably dates from the seventeenth century and was placed at its current location in 1888. Its original provenance is unknown.
In 1948 the statue was severely weathered, with its form barely recognizable after damage from acid rain. It was cleaned, consolidated, and restored in 2011. The restoration could not reconstruct its original form because no image documentation had survived.
Interior Features and Objects
In 2011, spruce-wood doors and frames were stripped of post-monastic paint. This revealed natural wood tones and, in some cases, Baroque decoration and inlay work. The 1463 crucifix on the monastery wall was also restored. The garden room, which opens toward the garden onto a sitting-out area, was completed in 2008, and approximately 200 window shutters were restored in 2010.
The former convent treasury door is made of solid iron and probably dates from the seventeenth century. Other surviving objects include an eighteenth-century altar bouquet made from shaped and framed sheet metal and wire, a reliquary shrine containing an arm relic of Saint Fidelis, and an eighteenth-century wooden commode with prayer stool and altar structure depicting Mary and the Child. A monstrance, the liturgical vessel used to display the consecrated host, was made by Michael Mair of Augsburg in the seventeenth century. It is silver and partly gilded and measures 89 centimeters in height.
A 102-centimeter-high wooden sculpture of Saint Maurice, shown in armor with a sword belt, helmet, and extended sword, dates from around 1350 and is owned by the Catholic subsidiary parish of Inzigkofen. The oak sculpture known as “The Apostle John at Christ’s Breast,” also called the Christ–John group, was made around 1310 to 1320 by an unknown Upper Swabian master. It is 89 centimeters high, is presumed to have come from the Inzigkofen convent, and is now in Berlin’s Bode Museum.
Library and Exhibition Material
The former library was assembled especially during the fifteenth-century reform and included religious literature, devotional works, and German mystical writings copied in the convent’s scriptorium. Some of the surviving manuscripts preserve texts known only through their Inzigkofen copies. The library has been reconstructed where possible. The 2007 exhibition also presented parts of the former library, the decorated iron treasury door, and five watercolors of the castle and Fürstlicher Park made in the 1830s. One, by Charles de Mayenfisch in 1833, shows a boat trip on the Danube with a hermitage and measures 10.7 by 17.5 centimeters.
