Herz-Mariae-Kloster (Diefflen)

The Herz-Mariae-Kloster in Diefflen was the first German house of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood. Founded in 1909, it stood in the Saarland village that had grown from a medieval chapel to a parish of more than three thousand souls by the First World War. The sisters ran a small hospital and a dispensary, offering care that the village could not otherwise provide. The order had begun in South Africa in 1885 when Franz Pfanner, an Austrian Trappist abbot, invited German helpers to join him. Sister Maria Paula Emunds, who became general superior in 1907, led the sisters to independence from the Trappists by 1929. Expansion across Europe followed, yet in Germany the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf long delayed a foundation. Today the site is marked by a simple stone cross beside the former convent garden. The brick buildings were demolished in 1972, but the outline of paths and the old boundary wall remain. Visitors find quiet places where the sisters once walked, a reminder of the small but significant role this place played in the growth of German Catholic mission work.