Eibingen Abbey (, full name: Benedictine Abbey St. Hildegard) is a community of

Benedictine The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...

nuns in Eibingen near Rüdesheim in

Hesse Hesse or Hessen ( ), officially the State of Hesse (), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major hist ...

, Germany. Founded by

Hildegard of Bingen Hildegard of Bingen Benedictines, OSB (, ; ; 17 September 1179), also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictines, Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mysticism, mystic, visiona ...

in 1165, it was dissolved in 1804, but restored, with new buildings, in 1904. The nuns produce wine and crafts. They sing regular services, which have been at times recorded. The church is also used as a concert venue. The abbey is a Rhine Gorge World Heritage Site.

History

The original community was founded in 1165 by

. This was the second community founded by her. It was disestablished in 1804. After the ''Reichsdeputationshauptschluss'' (

German mediatization German mediatisation (; ) was the major redistribution and reshaping of territorial holdings that took place between 1802 and 1814 in Germany by means of the subsumption and Secularization (church property), secularisation of a large number of ...

), the land once owned by the convent became part of the domains of the prince of Nassau-Weilburg who, in 1831, even bought both the monastery and its church. The community was reestablished by Charles, 6th Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg in 1904 and resettled from St. Gabriel's Abbey in Prague. The nunnery belongs to the Beuronese Congregation within the

Benedictine Confederation The Benedictine Confederation of the Order of Saint Benedict () is the international governing body of the Order of Saint Benedict. Origin The Benedictine Confederation is a union of monastic congregations that nevertheless retain their own aut ...

. A new building was erected in Neo-Romanesque style. In 1941, the nuns were expelled by the

Nazis Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

; they were not able to return until 1945. In 1988, the sisters founded Marienrode Priory at

Hildesheim Hildesheim (; or ; ) is a city in Lower Saxony, in north-central Germany with 101,693 inhabitants. It is in the district of Hildesheim (district), Hildesheim, about southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste River, a small tributary of t ...

, which became independent of Eibingen in 1998. The nuns work in the vineyard and in the craft workshops, besides undertaking the traditional duties of hospitality. They are singing or reciting the

canonical hours In the practice of Christianity, canonical hours mark the divisions of the day in terms of Fixed prayer times#Christianity, fixed times of prayer at regular intervals. A book of hours, chiefly a breviary, normally contains a version of, or sel ...

. The nuns have recorded their Vespers and other parts of the liturgy. A first recording was made in 1973 and contained only two works by Hildegard of Bingen, a Kyrie and ''O virga ac diadema''. A second recording appeared in 1979, to remember the 800th anniversary of Hildegard's death, including the same pieces and antiphones, a hymn, a

responsory A responsory or respond is a type of chant in western Christian liturgies. Definition The most general definition of a responsory is any psalm, canticle, or other sacred musical work sung responsorially, that is, with a cantor or small group sing ...

and parts of ''Ordo virtutum''. In 1989, a third recording appeared, conducted by P. Johannes Berchmans Göschl, a scholar of

Gregorian chant Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainsong, plainchant, a form of monophony, monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek language, Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed main ...

. A reviewer of

Gramophone A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physic ...

noted about a 1998 recording: "These nuns are living the same life as that of Hildegard's community, singing daily the same Benedictine Office, breathing the same air and trying to capture the spirit of their great twelfth-century predecessor."

Abbesses

(1098–1179), first abbess and founder of the community From 1603 the abbesses held the title of "Abbess of Rupertsberg and Eibingen". * Kunigunde Frey von Dehrn, abbess around 1600 * Anna Lerch von Dirmstein, abbess until 1666 * Kunigunde Schütz von Holtzhausen, abbess from 1666 to 1669 * Scholastica von Manteuffel, abbess from 1670 * Maria Antonetta Mühl zu Ulmen, abbess from 1711 Agatha Philippina zu Guttenberg

* Philippine zu Guttenberg, last abbess from 1790 to 1804. Since the re-establishment of the community in 1904: * Regintrudis Sauter, abbess from 1908 to 1955 * Fortunata Fischer, abbess from 1955 to 1978 * Edeltraut Forster, abbess from 1978 to 1998 * Gisela Happ, prioress-administrator from 1998 to 2000 * Clementia Killewald, abbess from 2000 to 2016 * Dorothea Flandera, abbess from 2016 to 2023 * Katharina Drouvé; abbess from 2023

Heritage

The abbey is a Rhine Gorge World Heritage Site. The church has been a venue for concerts of the

Rheingau Musik Festival The (RMF) is an international summer music festival in Germany, founded in 1987. It is mostly for classical music, but includes other genres. Concerts take place at culturally important locations, such as Eberbach Abbey and Schloss Johannisberg, ...

, such as a "BachTrompetenGala" with organist Edgar Krapp and a concert with the New York Polyphony in 2014. The sculptor Karlheinz Oswald made in 1998 a life-size

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

statue called Hildegard of Bingen, with one copy in the Bingen museum, another in the garden in front of the abbey church.

References

External links

*
Hildegardisvesper
Vespers from Eibingen Abbey, YouTube, 20 September 2011
The Hildegard of Bingen Trail in Germany
spiritualtravels.info
Sites › Rüdesheim › Abbey St. Hildegard
landderhildegard.de

thecatholictravelguide.com * Gregor Kollmorgen

newliturgicalmovement.org 11 November 2010 {{authority control Monasteries in Hesse 1160s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire 1165 establishments in Europe Christian monasteries established in the 1160s Benedictine nunneries in Germany World Heritage Sites in Germany Buildings and structures in Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis Hildegard of Bingen