Kapuzinerinnenkloster Bonn

The Kapuzinerinnenkloster Bonn was a convent of Capuchin Tertiary Sisters in Bonn. It stood from 1629 until 1802 under the Archbishopric of Cologne. The community began when three sisters moved from the Cologne convent of St Anna at the Kreuzberg into a house left vacant by the Ludolphs Convent Beguines in Wenzelgasse. Two years later they relocated to a house on Kölnstrasse. The convent’s patron was Saint Anne, and by 1638 the community had grown to eighteen sisters despite the Thirty Years War. The new building on Kölnstrasse was finished in 1646 after local opposition. A small church was consecrated in 1647 by the Bishop of Osnabrück, Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg, in the presence of the Archbishop of Cologne, Ferdinand of Bavaria. Income came from loans to Bonn citizens, tolls at Bonn and Andernach, and grants from the cathedral chapter and the Electorate. By 1798 the convent housed thirteen choir sisters and four lay sisters, drawn largely from Bonn’s citizen families. Today the site is marked by a plaque on Kölnstrasse. The former cloister garden is now a quiet courtyard behind modern buildings. A low wall along the street recalls the outline of the church, and a single lime tree stands where the cemetery once lay. The convent’s history remains visible in the street names and the memory of the sisters who lived there for a century and a half.