Rebdorf Abbey

Rebdorf Abbey is a monastery in Eichstätt, Bavaria, in the Diocese of Eichstätt. Rebdorf first appears in a document in 1055. In 1063, a church was consecrated in the village. In 1153, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa handed over the imperial village to Bishop Konrad I von Morsbach of Eichstätt. Around 1156, he founded the monastery dedicated to St. John the Baptist as an Augustinian Canons Regular foundation. It experienced good spiritual and economic development. By 1239, the foundation owned properties in 47 prince-bishopric locations. In 1309, the last Count of Hirschberg, Gebhard VII, was buried in the monastery church.

Having become in need of reform, the foundation, after much resistance, joined the Windesheim Congregation in 1458 and achieved a significant position in humanism with Priors Hieronymus Rotenpeck and Kilian Leib. The canons also looked after the neighboring Augustinian Canonesses' convent of Marienstein, founded in 1460.

During the Thirty Years' War, the monastery complex suffered severe damage. Reconstruction took place in the 18th century. In 1732, the Romanesque monastery church of St. John the Baptist was rebuilt in Baroque style, and the Eichstätt princely building director Gabriel de Gabrieli erected new convent buildings, which form a 183-meter-long castle-like facade facing the Altmühl. Since then, the old refectory with good Baroque stucco has adjoined the medieval cloister. In the former prelature, with its representative Rococo facade (around 1730), there is a festive hall from 1731 adorned with stucco and frescoes. Behind the monastery church, the so-called Gabrielihof was created with beautiful arcades.

The monastery was dissolved in 1806 during the secularization. At that time, its possessions included, among other things, 191 Tagwerk (approx. 69 hectares) of meadows, 533 Tagwerk (approx. 192 hectares) of fields, and 2,040 Tagwerk (approx. 735 hectares) of forest. The monastery church was desecrated (later reversed), and its furnishings were moved to other locations; altars, for example, were sold to Hausen and Rögling. Ownership changed several times after the secularization. In 1824, Duke of Leuchtenberg Auguste de Beauharnais acquired the buildings. In 1855, the Bavarian State took over the monastery buildings and established a workhouse there. Between the former monastery and the foot of the eastern Altmühl slope, where the branch line between Eichstätt-Bahnhof and Eichstätt-Stadt has operated since 1885 (converted to standard gauge in 1932), a historic flood bridge runs across the meadows.

Known members of the foundation were:

• Provost Silvester von Passau (reg. 1448-54), who wrote "Meditationes de Passione Christi" (Meditations on the Passion of Christ),
• Kilian Leib (* 1471; † 1553), prior from 1503, who was in contact with the most important scholars of humanism and wrote several treatises and a diary (1513-31) - an important meteorological document due to its exact weather observations,
• Maximilian Münch (* 1743; † 1791), author of historical writings,
• Michael Stein (* 1747; † 1779), author of historical writings, member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences,
• Provost Erhard Räm (reg. 1711-32), who commissioned the Baroque redesign,
• Hieronymus Rotenpeck († 1773), praised by contemporaries as a second Cicero, who, among other things, wrote a Latin metric,
• Andreas Strauß (* 1751; † 1805), monastery librarian and author of several works that gained importance for local historians and geographers.

From 1946 to 1949, the Lithuanian Gymnasium for refugee Lithuanians was housed in the former monastery, which served as a refugee camp for Balts in general. In 1951/52, the buildings were converted to accommodate the III. Department of the Bavarian Riot Police. In 1958, the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart bought the complex, restored it, and in 1959 established a boys' secondary school with a boarding school; the latter was closed in 2007. The monastery built an observatory above a soon-to-be-built gymnasium. In 1990, the Diocese of Eichstätt took over the sponsorship of the school and bought the complex from the order in 2003. The church is the parish church of the Parish of St. John (Rebdorf). In 2003, the parish comprised 787 Catholics in Rebdorf itself, and a total of 1801 Catholics with Marienstein, Wasserzell, Blumenberg, and the Marienstein children's village.