Lehnin Abbey

Lehnin Abbey (German: Kloster Lehnin) is a former Cistercian monastery in Lehnin in Brandenburg, Germany. Founded in 1180 and secularized during the Protestant Reformation in 1542, it has accommodated the Luise-Henrietten-Stift, a Protestant deaconesses' house since 1911. The foundation of the monastery in the newly established Margraviate of Brandenburg was an important step in the high medieval German Ostsiedlung; today the extended Romanesque and Gothic brickstone buildings, largely restored in the 1870s, are a significant part of Brandenburg's cultural heritage.

Lehnin Abbey was founded by the Ascanian margrave Otto I of Brandenburg, 23 years after his father, late Albert the Bear had finally defeated the Slavic prince Jaxa of Köpenick and established the Brandenburg margraviate in 1157. According to legend, Otto, while hunting at the site, had fallen asleep benath a giant oak, when a white deer appeared to him in a dream, whose furious attacks he could only ward off by appealing to the Saviour.

To consolidate their rule, the Ascanians called for Christian settlers, especially from Flanders (cf. Fläming) to settle among the "pagan" Slavs. Beside, they established Cistercian monasteries to develop the lands and to generate an income. Lehnin on the Zauche plateau south of the Havelland region, a daughter house (filial) of Morimond Abbey, was the first abbey to be founded as an Ascanian family monastery and place of burial. It soon became an important contributor to the land development of the Margraviate. Otto I was buried here in 1184. In its turn Lehnin founded the daughter houses of Paradies Abbey (1236, present-day Klasztor Paradyż in Gościkowo, Poland), Mariensee Abbey (1258, relocated to Chorin in 1273), and Himmelpfort Abbey near Fürstenberg/Havel (1299).

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