- Lehnin Abbey
Lehnin Abbey is a former
Cistercian monastery inLehnin inBrandenburg ,Germany . Since theReformation it has accommodated the Luise-Henrietten-Stift, aProtestant community.History
The abbey was founded in
1180 with the support ofOtto I, Margrave of Brandenburg as a daughter house ofSittichenbach Abbey . In its turn it founded four daughter houses: the abbeys of Paradiz (1236), Mariensee (1258), Chorin (1260) and Himmelpfort(1299).It was an important contributor to the land development of the
Margraviate of Brandenburg . It was dissolved in1542 during the Reformation.Since then it has housed the Protestant religious community known as the Luise-Henrietten-Stift.
Buildings
Lehnin Abbey remains significant for its architecture, as one of the finest brick Gothic structures in
Germany . The ruins were extremely well restored in the 1870s.Burials
*
Otto I, Margrave of Brandenburg Vaticinium Lehninense
The Vaticinium Lehninense was a work, famous in its day, which purported to be the creation of a monk of Lehnin called Hermann, supposedly written in the 13th or 14th century. Manuscripts of the "prophecy", which was first printed in 1722, existed in
Berlin ,Dresden ,Breslau andGöttingen .It begins by lamenting the end of the
Ascanian line of theMargraves of Brandenburg , with the death ofHenry the Younger in 1320, and gives a faithful portrait of several of the margraves, until it comes to deal withFrederick William, Elector of Brandenburg (d. 1688). Here the writer leaves the region of safety and ceases to make any realistic portrait of the people about whom he is prophesying. The work ends with a Catholic ruler who re-establishes Lehnin as a monastery and is also made to restore the union of theHoly Roman Empire .The work is anti-Prussian, but the real author cannot be discovered. The first to unmask the fraud was Pastor Weiss, who proved in his "Vaticinium Germanicum" (Berlin, 1746) that the pseudo-prophecy was really written between 1688 and 1700. Even after the detection of its true character, attempts were made to use it in anti-Prussian polemics.
External links
*de icon [http://www.klosterkirche-lehnin.de/ Lehnin Abbey church]
*
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
