Arnsburg Abbey (German: Kloster Arnsburg) is a former Cistercian monastery near Lich in the Wetterau, Hesse, Germany. It was founded by monks from Eberbach Abbey in 1174. Although heavily damaged in the Thirty Years' War it was rebuilt later in the 17th century and prospered in the 18th century, when much of the abbey was rebuilt in Baroque style.
Secularized in 1803 and abandoned by its monks in 1810, its economy buildings were given to the Grafen (Counts) von Solms-Laubach, who adapted them as their seat. The abbey church today stands as a roofless ruin, but many of the outbuildings are still intact and have seen various uses over the past 200 years. Since 1960 the abbey has also been the site of a war memorial, containing the graves of German soldiers and Soviet, Polish and Romanian prisoners-of-war/forced labourers as well as those of 87 people shot by the SS in the final days of World War II. The abbey is partially open to the public.
Geography
Arnsburg Abbey is located on the Wetter river, near the former (now Landesstraße 3053) between Lich and Butzbach. The region is also known as Wetterau. Administratively, the area is an Ortsteil of Lich (also named Kloster Arnsburg), part of the Landkreis Gießen.
History
Previous structures
Roman castrum
In the 1st century AD, the Roman Empire under Emperor Domitian expanded its territory in Germania at the expense of the local Chatti. The Limes Germanicus was extended to the northeast to include most of the area now known as Wetterau. The Limes passed a few hundred meters north and east of the location of the later abbey. Around 750 meters southwest of this area the Romans built a castrum, later known as , which housed a cohort of around 500 soldiers. The castrum encompassed an area of 2.9 hectares, protected by a surrounding rectangular wall with 14 towers and four gates (each flanked by another two towers). This was the most northeastern full-sized castrum of the Limes. Along with the rest of the border, it was vacated by the Romans in 250/260.
Medieval castles
The area then disappeared from history until the Middle Ages. In between, it was settled by the Franks but whether there was a continuity of use of the Arnsburg area is unknown. Research is currently under way in this regard with excavations at Villa Arnesburg, a place mentioned in 1151 and 1174. This village was later abandoned (Wüstung) but may have been a local place of settlement in late Antiquity, bridging the abandonment of the castrum and the building of the castles.
Excavations indicate that a first castle was built to the northwest of the later abbey (c. 800 AD) and a second castle followed around 1000 AD in the area called Hainfeld, between the former castrum and the abbey site. This second castle overlooked the steep bank of the Wetter and was constructed in four phases over c. 150 years before it was abandoned shortly after 1151. This castle is known as .
The etymology is unclear. The ruling local family had no tradition of members being named "Arn" or "Arnold". One possibility is that it derived from Castellum Hadrianum (Hadriansburg) after the Roman Emperor Hadrian during whose reign the castrum was built. Another is that the name derived from Aar (eagle), reflecting the Roman Eagles and/or the heraldic use of the bird by Kuno of Arnsburg after serving two German emperors. By the 15th century, the monks of the abbey translated "Arnsburg" into Latin as castrum aquilae.
The first local lord known by name is Kuno von Arnsburg, who served Emperor Heinrich IV as a Ministerialis in 1057. Around 1064 he married Gräfin Mathilde of the House of Bilstein. Their daughter, Gertrud (b. c. 1065, d. before 1093) married Eberhard von Hagen (1075–1122), lord of near Frankfurt, who moved his seat to Arnsburg and changed his name to "von Hagen und Arnsburg". Under Eberhard's son, Konrad I (1093–1130) the family became the most powerful in the Wetterau and the Rhine-Main region. Konrad II exchanged properties with Fulda Abbey, receiving the land of Münzenberg Castle not far from Arnsburg. His son, Kuno I (1151–1207), from 1156 styled himself von Münzenberg, implying that by then a castle had been built at Münzenberg and the one at Arnsburg had been vacated.