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Stürzelbronn

Around 1135, the Duke of Lorraine, Simon I, gave the Cistercian order part of his vast estate in the valley of Sturzelbronn. The Dukes of Lorraine remained the protectors of the monastery founded by their ancestor. In the year 1143, the buildings of the new abbey, ?Vallis Sanctae Mariae?, cradle of the current village, were ready to accommodate the new abbot with twelve white monks. The abbey had a good influence on material well-being in the region and on religious life. Very rapidly farms flourished, the monks dug numerous fishing lakes in Bitche country, a hospice welcomed patients. In 1525, during the peasants' war, fuelled by the idea of Lutheran Reform the peasants devastated the monastery, burned the archives and the library. In 1633, during the Thirty years' war, the abbey wa totally destroyed when the ?Swedes? besieged Bitche Castle. There was no more life at the monastery for half a century. Abbot Fournier began the reconstruction of the abbey in 1687. In 1789 the Revolution led to its death. The buildings, the land and the furnishings were sold. A few relics are still visible including the only calendar carved in stone in France, used to calculate the date of the first Sunday of Lent and of all the movable feasts, a magnificent tympanum adorned with geometric drawings and the monks' well. Sturzelbronn, granddaughter-house of La Ferté and daughter-house of Maizières in Burgundy never spread.