Rhenish legends: As its name Kloster Eberbach came The emergence of the monastery dates back to an initiative of the Archbishop Adalbert I of Mainz, who had founded the so-called Kisselbachtal already in 1116 an Augustinian monastery. Already 15 years later it was abandoned by the resident canons again and Archbishop Adalbert transferred the buildings and lands of the Benedictine Abbey of Johannisberg.
Anno 1135 Adalbert but even then acquired the land, for he had managed to win the famous Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, as this happened to be staying in Mainz, for the establishment of an abbey in the Rheingau.
Nearly four decades launched in France earlier in life, the Cistercians were still a relatively young religious. Within the Catholic Church they are a reform movement, as it is strictly to the original monastic rules of St. Benedict realized anything back. One of the most important personalities of the time, which helped the Order for recovery and its relevant distribution was just that Bernard of Clairvaux, the archbishop of Mainz was now able to move to found here in the Rheingau, a daughter monastery than him for that purpose that site in Kisselbachtal transferred. Otherwise, there was on German soil, only the Cistercian Abbey of Himmerod on the Eifel, which also is considered a direct creation of the mother abbey of Clairvaux.
In search for a suitable location for the newly founded abbey is now the following have happened:
Just at that moment, when the two high men lingered at the spot to the now home of the monastery, in whose sight is a wild boar with huge tusks of the forest produce to be entered. He ran and jumped down to the Kisselbachtal here in large sets of three times over the Kisselbach. Subsequently, he furrowed his tusks into the ground before returning in the dark thickets of the forest disappeared.
This event was seen as a sign of Bernard, just to build his monastery at this location. Thus, where the boar had jumped the creek, built the church and the ruts that had pulled the boar with his tusks, they built the still existing and 1100-meter monastery walls. This was the foundation for one of the largest Cistercian abbeys in Germany and placed on 13 February 1136 moved into the first Convention with Abt Ruthard and 12 monks in the newly constructed buildings. Those founding of the monastery was under the sign of the reformist ideas of the Cistercians and found expression in the striking simplicity Romanesque architecture and the renunciation of all forms of ornamental and ornamental ingredients.
Over the centuries, the abbey was eventually to a mirror of the turbulent events and the development of Western architectural history. At all the associated periods, conflicts and ideas took Kloster Eberbach large proportion of what particular thanks to the unique good fortune that the entire system was able to survive intact all the time sequences, to this day can be seen in their building. Kloster Eberbach is thus one of the most important medieval monument in Hessen and is the only one in all parts of the abbey obtained the heyday the Cistercians in Germany. Until 1803, the abbey remained in their hands, then reached in Kloster Eberbach worldly possessions.
In the 19th Century monastery Eberbach served first as a criminal, then a so-called "asylum". In the Wilhelmine Empire, it was used as a military convalescent home. In the years following the Second World War was the site of the administration of the Hessen state vineyards, and since 1998, Kloster Eberbach owned by the charitable foundation of the same name. Located idyllic in the heart of the Rheingau and in the midst of vineyards in the Abbey invites present time to relax and enjoy one, because the monks have known to make their monastery is very impressive. In the spirit of the former farm buildings have been carefully modernized in recent years. Today it serves the guests with the warm Rheingaugastlichkeit, where you can enjoy in the present on-site restaurants including typical Rheingau food and wine.
