Günterstal

Last weekend saw the apotheosis of Freiburg's festivities for its 900th anniversary. As you know, they were scheduled for 2020 but had to be canceled due to the pandemic.

Only some events were rescheduled for 2021; new ones were scanty. On Saturday, July 10, citizens could visit "Freiburg's center and its four cardinal points": In the center Haslach with a juice reception, in the north Hochdorf's picnic mile, in the west Munzingen and a wine fountain, in the east Ebnet offering games and riddles, and in the south guided walks in Günterstal.

Red Baron took the last option. 

On Monday, the Badische Zeitung reported about the Günterstal walking tours, "Who knows, for example, that the philosopher Edmund Husserl, ex-prime minister of Baden-Württemberg Hans Filbinger, and the mathematician Ernst Zermelo are buried in the local cemetery? Two participants came at 9 a.m., and 15 came for the three other tours."

I was there in the not-so-early morning hour together with a lady. Our competent guide was the vice president of the local civic association.

Edmund Husserl	Hans Filbinger

Indeed, we three started at the cemetery. Here are the tombs of Husserl and Filbinger. 

The first documented reference to Günterstal Abbey is dated September 15, 1224, when the Bishop of Constance inaugurated a new altar in an as-yet-unfinished nunnery chapel. A nobleman of the nearby Burg Kybfelsen ought to have founded the abbey for his daughters Adelheid and Berta, who were joined by other women seeking to live in a monastic community, i.e., a Cistercian monastery.

Line 2 leaves Germany's most southern streetcar terminus for downtown Freiburg. To the right, Günterstal's traditional restaurant, Kybfelsen, in the background are buildings of the former Cistercian monastery.

Our charming guide showed us a plaque commemorating Edith Stein. Here is the link to my extended blog about Edith's life and stay at Günterstal.

In memory of Edith Stein, canonized in 1998 as co-patroness of Europe.
The philosopher stayed here when living at 4 Village Street;
she was preparing for her doctorate in July 1916.

    

Then we walked along the historical village wall that once had surrounded Günterstal.

We passed a house where Herbert Marcuse had lived from 1928 until 1933, when he had to flee Nazi Germany.

In Freiburg, Marcuse belonged to Martin Heidegger's inner circle of students. On the one hand, he admired Heidegger's "concrete philosophy" and demanded, like him, a "destruction "of the previous history. On the other hand, he criticized Heidegger's individualism and lack of the material constitution of history. Consequently, Heidegger rejected Marcuse's critical habilitation thesis, "Hegel's Ontology and the Foundation of a Theory of Historicity." Nevertheless, Heidegger had Marcuse's paper published in 1932. In 1984, five years after Marcuse's death, a colleague, Jürgen Habermas, called Marcuse the "first Heidegger Marxist."

Slowly, our "group" approached the Benedictine Monastery St. Lioba.

 
From 1905 to 1913, Oberamtsrichter (senior judge) August Wohlgemuth had his mansion erected in the Tuscan style above the village of Günterstal on the land that had formerly belonged to the Cistercian monastery.

Subtropic vegetation

Indeed, Freiburg's southern suburb, Günterstal, is the ideal environment for such a building.

In the aftermath of the lost First World War, some Catholic women in Freiburg founded a charitable congregation devoted to mitigating the misery in town. In 1922, they asked the pope to be recognized as a Benedictine order. Was history repeating?

The traditional entrance to the monastery

In the same year, Wohlgemuth had to sell his estate. The ladies bought the premises and moved in. They chose St. Lioba as their patroness, manifesting that their congregation was not introspective and devoted to ora et labora alone but an order facing the world. In 1927, the pope gave his placet.

Abbess St. Lioba with her shepherd's crook

St. Benedict with his shepherd's crook

Don't neglect love.
The congregation's motto is below its coat of arms.

Oratory with light effects

Today, 37 Benedictines (Ordo Sancti Benedicti) live in St. Lioba, but the population is aging fast. When the number becomes too low, monasteries can no longer manage the costs and have to close. This happened to the Franciscan monastery in my Wiehre suburb in 2013.

It happened again to the Dominican (Ordo Praedicatorum) nuns' monastery at Neusatzeck near Bühl in the Black Forest. They were 16, with two of them needing care, had to sell their premises, and found a warm welcome at St. Lioba's in the spring of this year.

 

           ©Ingo Schneider/BZ

Here are the prioresses, Magdalena Löffler, OSB, and Birgitta Dorn, OP.  For Sister Magdalena, the rules of life of St. Benedict count. They include moderation, order, and freedom, i.e., everything that helps to get well through life. "The Dominican nuns," explains Sister Birgitta,  "preach the gospel, spread the Christian message." Nevertheless, the ladies get along well, for their lifestyles have much in common.

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