Zinna Abbey

Zinna Abbey (German: Kloster Zinna) is a former Cistercian monastery, the site of which is now occupied by a village also called Kloster Zinna, today part of Jüterbog in Brandenburg, Germany, about 60 km (37 mi) south of Berlin.

The abbey was founded in about 1170 by Wichmann von Seeburg, the Archbishop of Magdeburg, after his troops had conquered the former Slavic territory. It possibly was meant for preventing the territorial expansion southwards of the Ascanian lords of nearby Luckenwalde, descendants of Albert the Bear. The monastery was built on the northern rim of the Fläming hill range in the marshes of the Nuthe river by Cistercian monks, descending from the monastery on the site of Burg Berge, otherwise Altenberg Abbey, in the County of Berg near Cologne. With huge effort they drained the land and turned it into productive ground.

The abbey soon assumed immense economic significance throughout the whole region. In 1285 it bought the town of Luckenwalde and eleven surrounding villages. At its high point, in 1307, the abbey territory measured almost 300 km². For more distant trade the abbey kept town properties in Berlin, Wittenberg and Jüterbog, among others: the present Jüterbog Town Museum is in the former townhouse of the Abbot of Zinna. The monks left a famous psalter, the psalterium novum beatae Mariae, printed in the 1490s, today on display at the Brandenburg State Library in Potsdam.

The area however remained a remote eastern exclave of the Magdeburg archdiocese, pressed by the neighbouring Margraves of Brandenburg and the Dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg. After a lengthy period of decline, monastic life in the abbey came to an end in 1553 with the Protestant Reformation.

...
Wikipedia