St. Stephen's Abbey

St. Stephen’s Abbey stands in Augsburg, a Benedictine monastery that began in 968 when Bishop Saint Ulrich founded a house for Augustinian canonesses. The site passed to the town after secularisation in 1803 and briefly served as a quartermaster’s store. In 1828 King Ludwig I opened a grammar school on the same ground, and seven years later he refounded the monastery under Benedictine rule to run the school. Barnabas Huber, sent from Ottobeuren, became the first abbot in 1835 and recruited twenty monks from Austrian and Swiss houses. Ignatius Albert von Riegg, Bishop of Augsburg, supported the plan and helped gather the community. The abbey’s buildings were levelled in 1944 but rebuilt afterwards. Today the monks teach at the Royal Lyceum, Catholic Gymnasium and seminary, while also caring for pastoral and youth work. Visitors find a working monastery with a school and boarding house set within rebuilt cloisters. The abbey belongs to the Bavarian Congregation of the Benedictine Confederation. Its church and domestic ranges stand on the same Augsburg site chosen by Saint Ulrich more than a thousand years ago.