Augustinereremitenkloster Osnabrück

The Augustinerkloster stood in Osnabrück’s Neustadt beside the Hase river from the late 13th century until the mid-16th century. Founded by the Wilhelmites in the 1240s, it became an Augustinian house in 1256 and moved into the town in 1287. The complex occupied the land now taken by the district court, with gardens on today’s Neumarkt square. Early disputes with the cathedral chapter and city council were settled only after papal intervention in 1300. A fire in 1331 destroyed the buildings, which were rebuilt on the same site. The monastery played a key part in the Reformation. Gerhard Hecker, a monk from 1492, began preaching Luther’s ideas in 1521 and clashed publicly with Otto Beckmann in 1528. By 1542 Bishop Franz von Waldeck handed the site to the city, and four years later the last four friars left with pensions. After temporary use by the Jesuits, the church was pulled down in the 18th century and a prison built in its place. Visitors today can still see traces of the old monastery. A carved relief of the Trinity, found in the 1960s on Neumarkt, recalls the 15th-century cloister. A 16th-century crucifixion group from the church now stands in the Gymnasialkirche beside the cathedral. Nearby St Ansgar’s church in Nahne holds a Madonna said to have come from the Augustinerkloster. The surviving fragments give a quiet glimpse of the once large complex.