Irsee Abbey

Imperial Abbey of Irsee
*Reichsabtei Irsee*
	Imperial Abbey of Irsee; Reichsabtei Irsee
	Imperial Abbey of the Holy Roman Empire
	Coat of arms
	Irsee Abbey church
Capital	Irsee Abbey
Government	Theocracy
Historical era	Middle Ages
- Founded by Henry,; Margrave of Ronsberg	; 1186
- Refounded after; near-collapse	; 1373
- Looted in Peasants' War	1525
- Looted in Thirty Years' War	mid-17th century
- Granted Imperial immediacy	1694
- Mediæval buildings; collapsed	; 1699–1704
- Secularised to Bavaria	1802
Today part of	Germany

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Irsee Abbey (German: Reichsabtei Irsee) is a former Benedictine abbey located at Irsee near Kaufbeuren in Bavaria. It is now a conference and training centre for Bavarian Swabia.

[edit] History

[edit] Abbey

The monastery, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was founded in 1186 by Henry, Margrave of Ronsberg, to house a community that had grown up around a local hermit. It came close to collapse in the 14th century, when the community was reduced to a single monk, and was saved only by the intervention in 1373 of Anna von Ellerbach, the second founder, sister of the Bishop of Augsburg, and her appointee, abbot Conrad III, known for his extreme frugality. After severe losses during both the German Peasants' War in 1525 and the Thirty Years' War in the 17th century, including on both occasions the destruction of the library and on the second occasion of the archives, the abbey was finally able to put itself back on a stable footing in the later 17th century, and at length in 1694 was granted Imperial immediacy (German: Reichsunmittelbarkeit), becoming an Imperial abbey (German: Reichsabtei). The monastery was dissolved in the secularisation of 1802 when it became a part of Bavaria. The greater part of the library was moved to Metten Abbey.

In 1812 accommodation for the parish priest and local officials was set up in the monastery buildings.

[edit] Hospital

From 1849 the premises were used as an asylum and hospital for the mentally ill. Between 1939 and 1945 more than 2,000 patients, both adults and children, were transported by the then regime from Irsee and Kaufbeuren to death camps.

[edit] Conference centre

In 1972 the hospital was wound up. The local authority of the district of Schwaben began the restoration of the buildings in 1974, which opened as the Schwäbische Tagungs- und Bildungszentrum Kloster Irsee ("Kloster Irsee Swabian Conference and Training Centre") in 1984.