Andechs Abbey

The Benedictine priory and erstwhile abbey of Andechs is a place of pilgrimage on a hill east of the Ammersee in the Landkreis of Starnberg (Upper Bavaria) in Germany, in the municipality Andechs. Andechs Abbey is famed for its flamboyant Baroque church (1712) and its brewery. Composer Carl Orff is buried in the church. The abbey runs a brewery, Klosterbrauerei Andechs.

The site of Andechs was originally occupied by a castle belonging to the counts of Dießen on the Ammersee, probably built on a Roman castrum, and remained the seat of the powerful counts of Dießen-Andechs (1135 to 1180) and dukes of Andechs-Merania (1180 to 1248). In 1132 the count donated his ancestral seat at Dießen to the Holy See and moved to Andechs.

Otto II of Andechs was bishop of Bamberg, 1177 – 1196. In 1208, when Philip of Swabia, King of the Germans, was assassinated at Bamberg by Otto of Wittelsbach, members of the house of Andechs were implicated, and the castle at Andechs was razed before the family was rehabilitated.

Saint Hedwig of Andechs (ca 1174 – October 1243) born at Andechs, was one of eight children born to Berthold IV, Count of Dießen-Andechs and Duke of Istria. Of her four brothers, two became bishops, Ekbert of Bamberg (1203 – 1231), and Berthold, Patriarch of Aquileia; Otto succeeded his father as Duke of Dalmatia, and Heinrich became Margrave of Istria. Of her three sisters, Gertrude of Andechs-Merania (1185–September 24, 1213) was the first wife of Andrew II of Hungary and the mother of St Elisabeth of Hungary; Mechtilde became Abbess of Kitzingen; while Agnes, a famous beauty, was made the unlawful wife of Philip Augustus of France in 1196, on the repudiation of his lawful wife, Ingeborg of Denmark, but was dismissed in 1200, after Pope Innocent III laid France under an interdict.

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