Zinna Abbey
Encyclopedia
Jüterbog
Jüterbog is a historic town in north-eastern Germany, located in the Teltow-Fläming district of Brandenburg. It is located on the Nuthe river at the northern slope of the Fläming hill range, about southwest of Berlin.-History:...
in Brandenburg
Brandenburg
Brandenburg is one of the sixteen federal-states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, about 60 km (37.3 mi) south of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
Cistercians
The abbey was founded in about 1170 by Wichmann von Seeburg, the Archbishop of MagdeburgArchbishopric of Magdeburg
The Archbishopric of Magdeburg was a Roman Catholic archdiocese and Prince-Bishopric of the Holy Roman Empire centered on the city of Magdeburg on the Elbe River....
, after his troops had conquered the former Slavic
Polabian Slavs
Polabian Slavs - is a collective term applied to a number of Lechites tribes who lived along the Elbe river, between the Baltic Sea to the north, the Saale and the Limes Saxoniae to the west, the Ore Mountains and the Western Sudetes to the south, and Poland to the east. They have also been known...
territory. It possibly was meant for preventing the territorial expansion southwards of the Ascanian lords of nearby Luckenwalde
Luckenwalde
Luckenwalde is the capital of the Teltow-Fläming district in the German state of Brandenburg. It is situated on the Nuthe river north of the Fläming Heath, at the eastern rim of the Nuthe-Nieplitz Nature Park, about south of Berlin...
, descendants of Albert the Bear. The monastery was built on the northern rim of the Fläming
Fläming
The Fläming Heath is a region and a hill chain that reaches over 100 km from the Elbe river to the Dahme River in the German states Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg. Its highest elevation is the Hagelberg...
hill range in the marshes of the Nuthe
Nuthe
The Nuthe is a river in Brandenburg, Germany, left tributary of the Havel. Its total length is 65 km. The Nuthe originates in the Fläming region, near Niedergörsdorf. It flows north through Jüterbog, Luckenwalde and Trebbin. The Nuthe joins the Havel in central Potsdam.It has been said that...
river by Cistercian monks, descending from the monastery on the site of Burg Berge, otherwise Altenberg Abbey
Altenberg Abbey
Altenberg Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery in Altenberg, now a part of Odenthal in the Bergisches Land, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany....
, in the County of Berg
Berg (state)
Berg was a state – originally a county, later a duchy – in the Rhineland of Germany. Its capital was Düsseldorf. It existed from the early 12th to the 19th centuries.-Ascent:...
near Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. With huge effort they drained the land and turned it into productive ground.
The abbey soon assumed immense economic significance throughout the whole region. In 1285 it bought the town of Luckenwalde and eleven surrounding villages. At its high point, in 1307, the abbey territory measured almost 300 km². For more distant trade the abbey kept town properties in Berlin, Wittenberg
Wittenberg
Wittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is a city in Germany in the Bundesland Saxony-Anhalt, on the river Elbe. It has a population of about 50,000....
and Jüterbog, among others: the present Jüterbog Town Museum is in the former townhouse of the Abbot of Zinna. The monks left a famous psalter
Psalter
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were...
, the psalterium novum beatae Mariae, printed in the 1490s, today on display at the Brandenburg State Library in Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....
.
The area however remained a remote eastern exclave of the Magdeburg archdiocese, pressed by the neighbouring Margraves of Brandenburg
Margraviate of Brandenburg
The Margraviate of Brandenburg was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806. Also known as the March of Brandenburg , it played a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe....
and the Dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg
Saxe-Wittenberg
The Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg was a medieval duchy of the Holy Roman Empire centered at Wittenberg, which emerged after the dissolution of the stem duchy of Saxony. As the precursor of the Saxon Electorate, the Ascanian Wittenberg dukes prevailed in obtaining the Saxon electoral dignity.-Ascanian...
. After a lengthy period of decline, monastic life in the abbey came to an end in 1553 with the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
.
Frederick II
Following the Peace of WestphaliaPeace of Westphalia
The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October of 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the...
, the Magdeburg territories had finally been secularized
Secularization
Secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions...
in 1680 as the Duchy of Magdeburg
Duchy of Magdeburg
The Duchy of Magdeburg was a province of Brandenburg-Prussia from 1680 to 1701 and a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1701 to 1807. It replaced the Archbishopric of Magdeburg after its secularization by Brandenburg. The duchy's capitals were Magdeburg and Halle, while Burg was another...
and been given to Brandenburg-Prussia
Brandenburg-Prussia
Brandenburg-Prussia is the historiographic denomination for the Early Modern realm of the Brandenburgian Hohenzollerns between 1618 and 1701. Based in the Electorate of Brandenburg, the main branch of the Hohenzollern intermarried with the branch ruling the Duchy of Prussia, and secured succession...
. In 1764, in an effort to bring economic revival to the area, King Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
established a new village for weavers
Weaving
Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...
descending from Upper Lusatia
Upper Lusatia
Upper Lusatia is a region a biggest part of which belongs to Saxony, a small eastern part belongs to Poland, the northern part to Brandenburg. In Saxony, Upper Lusatia comprises roughly the districts of Bautzen and Görlitz , in Brandenburg the southern part of district Oberspreewald-Lausitz...
at the site on which some of the monastic buildings had remained.
The new settlement since 1902 has been called Kloster Zinna after the abbey and in 1992 was incorporated into the town of Jüterbog. The success of the economic efforts was quite modest, but there is still a statue to Frederick II erected in celebration of the centenary jubilee in 1864 and re-erected in 1994.
Buildings
The plain abbey church is an early Gothic pillared basilica
Basilica
The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...
with a cruciform groundplan. In the late Gothic period vaulting was introduced into most parts of the structure. Of especial musical interest is the organ by Wilhelm Baer, dating from 1850/51, which on guided tours it is possible to walk through.
Before the altar, there is an Ave Maria
Ave Maria
Ave Maria may refer to:*Ave Maria , the "Hail Mary", a traditional Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox prayer calling for the intercession of Mary, the mother of Jesus-Music:...
inscription embedded in the floor which consists of individual letter tiles. Each letter appears as a relief print
Relief print
A relief print is an image created by a printmaking process where protruding surface faces of the matrix are inked; recessed areas are ink free. Printing the image is therefore a relatively simple matter of inking the face of the matrix and bringing it in firm contact with the paper...
on an unglazed, red-brown terracotta tile measuring 14 x 14 cm. The Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
inscription dates to the 13th or 14th century and was composed in Gothic majuscule. The technique is considered a precursor of movable type
Movable type
Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document ....
printing.
In the building known as the "New Abbey" is the local museum, with medieval frescoes and a model of the original monastery complex as it would have been in 1170, as well as displays relating to the abbey's history up to c. 1550 and the development of the weavers' colony. In the old customs house there are displays of traditional weaving techniques and live demonstrations. In the old brewhouse the sweet herbal liqueur
Kräuterlikör
Kräuterlikör is a kind of German liqueur that is flavored with herbs or spices and sweetened with sugar. Liqueurs of this kind normally contain 15% to 40% alcohol by volume...
"Klosterbruder" is still produced, in which process the visitor is encouraged to participate.
The buildings and the picturesque landscape are also used in spring and summer as the background for concerts, and in co-operation with Lehnin Abbey
Lehnin Abbey
Lehnin Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery in Lehnin in Brandenburg, Germany. Since 1911 it has accommodated the Luise-Henrietten-Stift, a Protestant women's community.-History:...
the medieval music events of the Musica Mediaevalis concert series. There is also a traditional New Year's concert by candlelight in the church - at natural temperature.