Franziskanerkloster Korbach

The Franciscan monastery in Korbach once stood in the north Hessian town for nearly eighty years. Built in 1487 by three Waldeck counts, it belonged to the strict Observant branch of the Franciscans. The monks began their small church that same year, though little else of their daily life survives beyond records of the Korbacher Franciscan painter who decorated the altars. The monastery’s end came slowly after the counts introduced the Reformation in 1526. The guardian Antonius Attendorn refused to preach Lutheran doctrine, and the remaining six friars resisted for another twenty years. They secretly removed valuables in 1546 and finally left in 1566 under pressure from the town and its Protestant preachers. Even an imperial order in 1628 could not reverse the closure. Today only a fragment of the cloister remains: a stone fountain framed by two pointed windows and the tombstone of guardian Jacob Altena. Four late-medieval altarpieces from the monastery survive in nearby churches, each dated between 1518 and 1527. The anonymous Korbacher Franciscan painter who made them signed his work with a self-portrait in full habit, leaving behind the only trace of his identity.