Franziskanerkloster Soest

The grey-robed Franciscans arrived in Soest in 1233, founding the first house of the Order of Friars Minor west of the Weser. Their convent stood beside the older parish church of St Thomas, yet the new Gothic church built from 1259 became the centre of the friars’ life. The archbishops of Cologne encouraged the work, granting indulgences and copying the four-light tracery of the still unfinished cathedral across the Rhine. The friars ministered to the sick, lepers and dying in the town, while their library and school trained novices for the Saxon province. After the Reformation reached Soest in the 1530s the brothers were forced to leave for Werl, but returned to serve the dwindling Catholic minority. By 1768 the community still numbered twenty-nine, yet only eight remained when the monastery closed in 1814. The buildings later housed a teachers’ college and, from 1892, an evangelical preachers’ seminary. Today the former church, Neu St Thomä, is the parish church of the Protestant Thomas community. Its long, light-filled nave and three-sided choir show the same proportions as the double aisles of Cologne cathedral. After wartime damage the congregation rebuilt the interior between 1956 and 1966, installing a modern organ in 1970. Since 2025 the church has served as a Kulturkirche, hosting concerts, exhibitions and readings organised by the Soest Art Association.