For villages in Poland, see Lindów, Masovian Voivodeship

Lindów, Masovian Voivodeship

Lindów is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Mszczonów, within Żyrardów County, Masovian Voivodeship, in east-central Poland. It lies approximately south of Mszczonów, south of Żyrardów, and south-west of Warsaw....

 and Lindów, Silesian Voivodeship

Lindów, Silesian Voivodeship

Lindów is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Lipie, within Kłobuck County, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately north-east of Lipie, north of Kłobuck, and north of the regional capital Katowice....

.

Lindow in der Mark, short: Lindow (Mark), is a town in the Ostprignitz-Ruppin

Ostprignitz-Ruppin

Ostprignitz-Ruppin is a Kreis in the northwestern part of Brandenburg, Germany. Neighboring are the districts Müritz and Mecklenburg-Strelitz in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the districts...

 district, in Brandenburg

Brandenburg

Brandenburg is one of the sixteen federal-states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam...

, Germany. It is located 14 km northeast of Neuruppin

Neuruppin

Neuruppin is a town in Brandenburg, Germany. Located on the shore of Ruppiner See , it is the capital of the district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin. Population: 32,800 .-Overview:...

, and 29 km northwest of Oranienburg

Oranienburg

Oranienburg is a town in Brandenburg, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Oberhavel.- Geography :Oranienburg is a town located on the banks of the Havel river, 35 km north of the centre of Berlin.- Division of the town :...

. The town is situated on an isthmus between the lakes Gudelacksee

Gudelacksee

Gudelacksee is a German lake in Lindow, Landkreis Ostprignitz-Ruppin, Brandenburg. At an elevation of 52 m, its surface area is 4.38 km²....

 and Wutzsee.

History

In the course of the medieval eastward migrations of Germans

Ostsiedlung

Ostsiedlung , also called German eastward expansion, was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germans from modern day western and central Germany into less-populated regions and countries of eastern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The affected area roughly stretched from Slovenia...

 Gebhard I, Count of Arnstein conquered the area around today's Lindow. In 1196 he settled in the castle of Ruppin, located in today's Alt Ruppin, a locality of Neuruppin. The comital family later adopted the name counts of Lindow-Ruppin. By 1220 or 1240 the counts founded a Cistercian nunnery next to Lake Wutzsee in Lindow and richly enfeoffed it with lands and villages, whose inhabitants became serfs to the nunnery. The nunnery compound comprised a cloister

Cloister

A cloister is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth...

 surrounded by the convent buildings in the east and west, the cloister church in the north and a smaller structure on the southern side partially opening towards Wutzsee.

The nunnery's estates comprised 90,000 morgen

Morgen

A morgen was a unit of measurement of land in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the Dutch colonies, including South Africa and Taiwan. The size of a morgen varies from 1/2 to 2½ acres, which equals approximately 0.2 to 1 ha...

 of land, 18 villages, nine watermills and several fishponds and lakes (among others Großer Stechlinsee

Großer Stechlinsee

Großer Stechlinsee or Lake Stechlin is a lake in Landkreis Oberhavel, Brandenburg, Germany. At an elevation of 60 m, its surface area is 4.52 km². The Stechlin cisco, a dwarfed fish, is found only in this lake...

). The dues collected from the tenants of lands allowed to maintain 35 nuns, an abbess and a male provost

Provost (religion)

A provost is a senior official in a number of Christian churches.-Historical Development:The word praepositus was originally applied to any ecclesiastical ruler or dignitary...

, pastoring them and representing the nunnery in contracts with outsiders. In return for the endowments the nuns were committed to take care of the education of the daughters of the counts, and other regional noble families.

Next to the nunnery a settlement developed which was first named in a document of 1343. The settlement developed into a little town. In 1457 a parish church was erected for the townsfolk. With the extinction of the comital family in the male line the comital fief was reverted to the prince-electors of Brandenburg in 1524. The prince-elector confirmed the nunnery in its subfiefs, previously bestowed by the counts, in 1530. After the prince-elector adopted Lutheranism

Lutheranism

Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...

 in 1539 the nunnery was secularised in 1541/1542 and its fiefs taken by the prince-elector but pawned to his creditors, who left only a narrow annual appanage for the nuns. Lindow's population adopted Lutheranism in the course of the Reformation

Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

.

The prior function of the nunnery, to provide sustenance for unmarried women mostly from local noble families, wasn't to be given up with its secularisation. So the formerly Roman Catholic nunnery turned into a Lutheran convent , with its inhabitants now called conventuals. However, the appanage was little, so only few conventuals could be maintained. The foundation became a home exclusively for unmarried daughters of noble birth. The conventuals were chaired by a domina

Dominus (title)

Dominus is the Latin word for master or owner. As a title of sovereignty the term under the Roman Republic had all the associations of the Greek Tyrannos; refused during the early principate, it finally became an official title of the Roman Emperors under Diocletian...

, appointed by the prince-elector.

During the Thirty Years War, Danish and imperial troops captured and robbed the town in 1627, while conventuals and townsfolk weathered that on Werder island in the Gudelacksee. When in 1635 Swedish troops ravaged the town, they did not find much and crossed over to Werder island and slaughtered many townspeople.

The Catholic League

Catholic League (German)

The German Catholic League was initially a loose confederation of Roman Catholic German states formed on July 10, 1609 to counteract the Protestant Union , whereby the participating states concluded an alliance "for the defence of the Catholic religion and peace within the Empire." Modeled...

 invaded and ravaged the area three years later. On 18 October 1638 the Leaguist General Matthias Gallas

Matthias Gallas

Matthias Gallas, Graf von Campo und Herzog von Lucera , was an Austrian soldier, who first saw service in Flanders, then in Savoy with the Spaniards, and subsequently joined the forces of the Catholic League as captain during the Thirty Years' War.On the general outbreak of hostilities in Germany,...

 robbed and burnt the Lutheran convent, the following day he robbed and burnt the whole town of Lindow to the ground. The convent's library and the archives were destroyed by fire, the cloister

Cloister

A cloister is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth...

 school, built in the late 15th century, survived and is preserved until today. 28 further villages in the area were ravaged and burnt. Many of the survivors fled the area in order to find a survival elsewhere. Most buildings of the nunnery are in ruins since.

Until 1644 one building of the convent was restored to house the surviving remaining 12 conventuals. The decrease of dues collected from the impoverished tenants forced to reduce the number of conventuals to a mere five.

In the course of the repopulation policy of the Great Elector Frederick William I of Brandenburg the depopulated town was settled with Reformed (Calvinist) refugees from the Electoral Palatinate and Reformed immigrants from Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 between 1685 and 1691. A Reformed congregation, besides the existing belittled Lutheran, was established and Lindow used to be headed by two burgomaster

Burgomaster

Burgomaster is the English form of various terms in or derived from Germanic languages for the chief magistrate or chairman of the executive council of a sub-national level of administration...

s at a time, one of each denomination. The convent was reestablished as Hochadeliges Fräuleinstift (High and Noble Damsels' Foundation) in 1696.

In 1746 a city fire burnt most of Lindow to ashes. Today's Town Church (Stadtkirche) at the southern end of the old town, was reerected in baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 style as the Lutheran church between 1751 and 1755 by the architect Georg Christoph Berger. It shows an altarpiece

Altarpiece

An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...

 «Noli me tangere

Noli me tangere

Noli me tangere, meaning "don't touch me" / "touch me not", is the Latin version of words spoken, according to , by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognizes him after his resurrection....

» by Heinrich Stadler of 1771 depicting the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth appearing to Mary Magdalene. The matroneum

Matroneum

A matroneum in architecture is a gallery on the interior of a building, originally intended to accommodate women ....

 opposite to the pulpit altar is still occasionally called the damsels' gallery (Fräuleinempore), where the conventuals used to sit during services. The typical Protestant pulpit altar has a sand glass fixed on its parapet, donated by the congregation to a pastor in the 18th century in view of lengthy preaches in order to restrain them. In 1752 the then Domina Ilse von Rochow erected on her expenses a new dominate building. Rochow reachieved some autonomy for the conventuals who were electing their chairing domina since, restricting the throne to a mere confirmation of the elect. The number of conventuals rose again.

The Reformed church stood in the centre of the town behind the town hall. The last years of the 18th century was a flourishing time for Lindow, however, ending with another devastating city fire on 16 April 1803. After that Burgomaster Werdermann erected today's town hall in neoclassicist

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 forms on his own expenses between 1807 and 1809. In 1810 Lindow was bestowed town privileges

Town privileges

Town privileges or city rights were important features of European towns during most of the second millennium.Judicially, a town was distinguished from the surrounding land by means of a charter from the ruling monarch that defined its privileges and laws. Common privileges were related to trading...

. In the first third of the 19th century Lindow became the seat of a Jewish congregation, which opened a cemetery in 1824 and a private synagogue, serving as a place of worship for the Jews living in diaspora in the surrounding villages. The writer Theodor Fontane

Theodor Fontane

Theodor Fontane was a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist writer.-Youth:Fontane was born in Neuruppin into a Huguenot family. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary, his father's profession. He became an...

 visited Lindow several times and described it in his writings. The rural exodus made many people move to the urban centres, this is why the Reformed congregation and the Jewish congregation shrank. In the early 1920s the Jewish congregation was dissolved due to lacking membership.

The convent, was modernised in its constitution and stabilised in its revenues by 1875, named Landesherrliches Fräuleinstift Kloster Lindow (sovereign Damsel's foundation of Lindow monastery) since. Conveyances of interest bearing assets allowed again to maintain eleven conventuals. The Reformed church was so dilapidated that it had to be closed in 1842, it was finally torn down in 1879. The Lutheran Town Church then served as a Lutheran-Reformed simultaneum

Simultaneum

A shared church, or Simultankirche, Simultaneum or, more fully, simultaneum mixtum, a term first coined in 16th century Germany, is a church in which public worship is conducted by adherents of two or more religious groups. Such churches became common in Europe in the wake of the Reformation...

 until the two congregations merged in a united congregation

United and uniting churches

United and uniting churches are churches formed from the merger or other form of union of two or more different Protestant denominations.Perhaps the oldest example of a united church is found in Germany, where the Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of Lutheran, United and Reformed...

 in 1922. Since 1859 a Catholic mission existed which resulted in the foundation of a Catholic congregation by 1926 and the erection of St. Joseph Chapel between 1931 and 1932 in moderate forms of Brick Expressionism

Brick Expressionism

The term Brick Expressionism describes a specific variant of expressionist architecture that uses bricks, tiles or clinker bricks as the main visible building material...

.

Lindow lived through the changes after the First World War and the takeover by the Nazis in 1933. Between September 1937 and the end of 1944 the SS organisation Lebensborn

Lebensborn

Lebensborn was a Nazi programme set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded...

 ran the home Kurmark in Klosterheide, a component village of Lindow north of the town. The widow of the Music Professor Zeidler was deported to Theresienstadt after her husband's death in 1942 and perished there. She was a Protestant of Jewish descent, and lost her previous precarious protected status of a so-called privileged mixed marriage when her husband died.

After the Second World War Lindow became part of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany. The damsels' foundation became a Protestant home for elderly of all backgrounds (called Evangelisches Stift «Kloster Lindow» since), many terribly impoverished by the impacts of the war, run by deaconess

Deaconess

Deaconess is a non-clerical order in some Christian denominations which sees to the care of women in the community. That word comes from a Greek word diakonos as well as deacon, which means a servant or helper and occurs frequently in the Christian New Testament of the Bible. Deaconesses trace...

es of the Lichtenrade

Lichtenrade

Lichtenrade is a German locality within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Berlin. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Tempelhof.-History:The locality was first mentioned in 1375, named Lichtenrode...

 Mother House «Salem» in West Berlin

West Berlin

West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...

 between 1947 and 1961, when the Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

 disrupted this affiliation. The Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, the regional Protestant church body

Landeskirche

In Germany and Switzerland, a Landeskirche is the church of a region. They originated as the national churches of the independent states, States of Germany or Cantons of Switzerland , that later unified to form modern Germany or modern Switzerland , respectively.-Origins in the Holy Roman...

 of the area, converted a building in the nunnery compound on Wutzsee as its conference venue (Evangelische Akademie). However, communist East Germany, with its censorship and repression of free conventions, forbade the opening of the venue.

In the 1980s a local initiative renovated the enclosure walls and headstone

Headstone

A headstone, tombstone, or gravestone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. In most cases they have the deceased's name, date of birth, and date of death inscribed on them, along with a personal message, or prayer.- Use :...

s of the Jewish cemetery, which had weathered the Nazi period untouched. In 1989, the Town Church became a venue for people demanding change in East Germany

Die Wende

marks the complete process of the change from socialism and planned economy to market economy and capitalism in East Germany around the years 1989 and 1990. It encompasses several processes and events which later have become synonymous with the overall process...

. In March 1990 the dismissed East German head of state Erich Honecker

Erich Honecker

Erich Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well from Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976....

 retired for two nights in the manor house of Gühlen, used as guest house of the Council of Ministers of the GDR, however, leaving after protests by people from Lindow. Since 3 October 1990 Lindow is a part of the Federal Republic of Germany. Many traditional productions sharply reduced their staffs, while tourism became a stronger business. The German demographic crisis is also felt in Lindow, here combined with the migration of many younger to more prosperous areas. Evangelisches Stift «Kloster Lindow» was extended by modern premises between 1998 and 2000.

Components of Lindow

Today's Lindow comprises the formerly independent municipalities of:

• Banzendorf (a former outlying estate of the nunnery)
• Hindenberg
• Keller bei Gransee
• Klosterheide (literally monastery/cloister heath; a former outlying estate, Vorwerk, of the nunnery)
• Schönberg in der Mark/Schönberg (Mark)

Further there a the following localities:

• Birkenfelde
• Dampfmühle
• Grünhof
• Gühlen
• Kramnitz
• Kramnitzmühle
• Rosenhof
• Rudershof
• Siedlung Werbellinsee
• Sportschule Lindow
• Wilhelmshöhe (erected as lung sanatorium in 1913 by Rohde & Beschoren in a generous palace-like style)

External links