Grüssau Abbey

Grüssau Abbey is an abbey of the Beuron Congregation founded in 1947. The abbey initially consisted of Benedictine monks who had been expelled from Grüssau Monastery in Silesia after the Second World War. It was based in the former collegiate church in Bad Wimpfen before the seat was moved to Neuburg Abbey near Heidelberg due to a decline in membership until 2004.

The German Benedictine monks of Emmaus Monastery in Prague had to leave Prague after the First World War and settled in the former Cistercian monastery of Grüssau in Silesia in 1919. This monastery was dissolved during the Second World War. After the end of the war, the monastery was initially returned, but the monks were also expelled from Silesia in May 1946. Larger groups of monks initially came to Gerleve Abbey, Neresheim Abbey, Maria Laach Abbey and Neuburg Abbey.

Since a large part of the expelled Silesians had come to Northern Germany, the Benedictines initially looked for a suitable location for a new monastery foundation there. After these plans failed, the convent meeting in Neuburg decided on July 1, 1947, to resettle the collegiate church in Bad Wimpfen, which had been abandoned since 1803 and which the Hessian state government, as owner of the property, had already offered on May 12, 1947. The most striking building of the collegiate church is the collegiate church of St. Peter. There were no residential buildings in 1947 and had to be makeshiftly created by the first monks arriving from August 1, 1947. The western part of the Gothic cloister of the collegiate church, the former collegiate granary, was converted into a residential building. In 1949, the monks leased a nearby farm, and later further farm buildings were erected near the monastery building.

In the early 1950s, the monks managed to recover three of the seven bells cast in 1935 by Petit and Edelbrock for Grüssau Monastery, which had been transported to Hamburg in 1941 for melting down. However, the bells were too large for the bell towers in Wimpfen, so they were sold in 1952 to the Catholic parish church of St. Cäcilia in Mosbach, where the bells had also been lost due to melting down for war purposes.

In the early days, the pastoral duties of the abbey included, in addition to regional work on site, in particular pastoral trips to various parts of Germany, especially to Northern Germany, where pastoral care was provided to the displaced Silesians. The Grüssau Rundbrief and the participation of Grüssau Fathers in the chapel car mission maintained contact with the scattered faithful. The regional work included pastoral duties in the Neckarsulm hospital as well as Sunday and confession assistance in various parishes in the area. In the 1960s, after the retirement of the former Catholic parish priest, Catholic parish pastoral care in Bad Wimpfen was added. In Wimpfen, the conferences of the Silesian youth of the Eichendorff guilds and the annual conferences of the Association of Catholic Nobles of Silesia were also continued.

In 1961, the monastery was enlarged by the donation of a baroque collegiate house on the neighboring Lindenplatz. In 1963/64, new buildings for the monastery library, sacristy, lecture hall and guesthouse were built. The collegiate church in Bad Wimpfen, which belongs to the Diocese of Mainz, was extensively renovated in 1964 and 1969. Especially after this renovation, the purely pastoral duties of the abbey were supplemented to a certain extent by tourism duties in the church, which was visited by numerous visitors interested in art history.

The first abbot in Wimpfen was Albert Schmitt (1894–1970). His successor in 1969 was Abbot Laurentius Hoheisel (1923–2008), who resigned in 1997. Since self-sufficiency was no longer legally possible due to too few members, the convent was led by the abbot of Neuburg Abbey near Heidelberg since 2001. In January 2004, an affiliation took place, which was initially limited to five years. In October 2006, the community consisted of only four monks. Former Abbot Laurentius Hoheisel went to a nursing home, Father Odo was a spiritual director with the Benedictine nuns in Kellenried, Father Paulus was no longer on site and Brother Michael moved to Neuburg Abbey. Thus, no Benedictine monk was left on site. The seat of Grüssau Abbey formally moved to Heidelberg, as Abbot Franziskus Heereman is also abbot of Neuburg Abbey.

The community remaining in Bad Wimpfen, consisting of a secular cleric and lay people in the rooms of the collegiate church, operated an education and meeting house under the name Kloster Bad Wimpfen until the end of 2007. On January 1, 2008, the Malteser took over the sponsorship to continue Kloster Bad Wimpfen as a spiritual center. Kloster Bad Wimpfen is currently (2012) led by the theologian Ingrid Orlowski. Today, the district office of the Malteser Hilfsdienst and a residential youth welfare facility are also located on the monastery grounds.