Kloster Oeventrop

The former Herz-Jesu-Missionshaus Oeventrop stands on the edge of the village of Oeventrop, a red-brick complex built in 1902 on land that once held five hectares of farmland and five of woodland. The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart needed a second training college after settling in Hiltrup near Münster at the end of the Kulturkampf. Dechant Caspar Berens, parish priest in Rumbeck, encouraged the search for a site close to Arnsberg. The new building opened in 1902, though a fire in 1946 destroyed its tower, which was never rebuilt. Between 1902 and 1969 the house prepared young men for the priesthood. In 1938 it housed ninety-three students, eighteen lecturers, ten priests, twelve lay brothers, six nuns and several lay staff. From this base missionaries were sent to Papua New Guinea, China, Africa and Peru. One graduate, Karl Hesse, later became Archbishop of Rabaul. During the Second World War the main building became a military hospital for lung patients; by 1945 about 1,300 soldiers had died there and were buried in the nearby war cemetery. After the war the house served as a home for elderly and sick people from Dortmund. From 1945 it also ran a rebuilt seminary and the Thomas-Akademie, which in 1965 welcomed Josef Ratzinger as a lecturer. The library held roughly forty-five thousand volumes and a small museum displayed artefacts from the South Seas. Later the building became a children’s home, then a clinic for addiction, and finally a film set for a television comedy in 2025. Today it remains a landmark watched over by the city’s conservation office.