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Hardehausen

On 28.05.1140 Cistercian monks from the monastery of Kamp (Lower Rhine) came, invited by Bishop Bernhard I of Paderborn to Hardehausen in the southern Eggetal. The secluded location of the monastery which had been upraised to an Abbey in 1165 was typical for the Cistercians. According to the Benedictine rule “Ora et labora” they wanted to live from their own hands work. Agriculture and craft activities played an important role. With the time the monastery of Hardehausen developed an enormous economic power. The abbey became the biggest ecclesiastical landowner in the region “Hochstift Paderborn”. The extensive monastery complex, which shows the successful work of the Cistercians, was built in its present form after the Thirty Years's War - remains of previous buildings had partially been integrated. Secularized in 1803, the monastery buildings had to get through a destiny full of change. The new settlement by the order in 1927 ended already in 1938. The later confiscated monastery housed in the end of 1944 for some months a National Socialist Education Institute. Since 1945 the youth centre (Jugendhaus) of the archdiocese Paderborn and since 1949 the rural education school (Landvolkshochschule) are located in Hardehausen. Both institutes consider themselves as heirs to the Cistercians, committed to bring up again the knowledge of former times into the challenges of the present. Subsidiaries were founded in 1185 Marienfeld (diocese Münster), in 1196 Bredelar (archdiocese Cologne), in 1244 Marienfließ-Scharnebeck (diocese Verden). In 1407 the monastery of Wahlshausen (archdiocese Mainz) was taken over.