Anna Leuhusen

Anna Rheinholdsdotter Leuhusen, (d. a. 1550), was the last Abbess of Saint Clara Abbey in Stockholm in Sweden. She became known for her involvement in the Swedish War of Liberation between Sweden and Denmark in the 1520s.

Anna Leuhusen was born the child of Reinhold Leuhusen, merchant in Stockholm, sister of Martin Leuhusen, who is listed as a member of the city council of 1521; her sister was married to the Danish colonel Gregorius Holst. Anna Lehusen enterred the Clara Abbey as a member of the order of Saint Clare of Assisi. She was appointed abbess of the convent sometime before 1508, when she is confirmed as such, and she was to be their last abbess.

Sweden and Denmark, formally in a union since the 14th century, was during this period involved in a war which would led to Swedish Independence. In 1520, the city of Stockholm was sieged and taken by the Danes after the defeat of Christina Gyllenstierna, but the rest of Sweden soon rose in rebellion and in 1522, the city was now besieged by the Swedes under Gustav Vasa. During the siege, the Clara nunnery was used as an escape channel by people within the city, who wished to join the Swedes outside the city, both merchants and courtiers. Leuhusen was a Danish loyalist and, according to the legend, responsible for betraying several of these people; during the day, she hung a white cloth out of the window, and during the night a lamp to the part of the convent facing the city, as a sign to the Danes that there were refugees in the building. When they left the convent on their way outside the city, they were taken by the Danes and executed for treason.

In June 1523, the city was taken back by the Swedes and made capital of the independent kingdom of Sweden. Consequently, the Clara convent was to be one of the very first convents to be confiscated during the Swedish reformation in 1527. Abbess Anna Leuhusen and her nuns was then moved to the former Grey Friar Abbey in the city, which had been left emptied by the monks, where they worked as nurses the rest of their lives. She is known to have kept one of the convent most treasured posessions; when the abbey was founded in 1288, Princess Rikissa of sweden had entered it, and became it's abbess in 1335; Rikissa had a golden chain, which was used by the abbesses of the abbey for centuries. Anna Leuhusen kept this chain when the abbey was dissolved and gave it to her family. Her brother did not convert until 1536.

See also

* Brita Tott
* Magdalena Rudenschöld

References

* http://runeberg.org/sqvinnor/0262.html
* http://runeberg.org/famijour/1875/0018.html
* http://histvarld.historiska.se/histvarld/sok/artikel.asp?id=21016
* http://fornvannen.se/pdf/1950talet/1958_047.pdf