Monastery park history
Modern garden architecture meets archaeological gem
In the 1980s, archaeologists uncovered the foundations of the former Benedictine monastery, which from 1102 to 1647 was one of the intellectual centers of power in northern Germany. There were only a few monasteries in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, which were directly subordinate to the Pope - the Harsefeld Monastery was one of them. In the course of the post-monastery period, however, a large part of the monastery complex fell into decay.
After the archaeologists of the district of Stade had numbered and archived every stone, every found object, every tomb with their bones, they rebuilt the foundations of the cloister cladding and walls up to one meter in height - as a visible and accessible ground monument. At the same time, the Samtgemeinde Harsefeld had the former farmyard and its adjoining parts built by the landscape architect Lindenlaub from Hamburg into a monastery park, which in the 1990s led to an award in the "Nature in Urban Design" competition.
Another award came in 2003, when the monastery park was selected as part of an EU project to a lighthouse of the garden and park scene.
The origins of the monastery park go back many centuries to the times of the monastery and later of the office Harsefeld.
Monastery time (1102 - 1647)
Monasteries were and are extremely active business enterprises. The Harsefeld Benedictine monastery understood pond construction and pond management. In the western area of the extended monastery park, there are still some of the formerly much larger pond populations to discover. Over the centuries, the use of ponds changed, many silted up and were overbuilt. Incidentally, the regulated drainage structure at cultivated ponds is called "monk".
North of the district court was the farmyard with barns to which the farmers brought their taxes.
Basically, monasteries had their own kitchen and medicinal gardens in the Middle Ages. Where these were in the Harsefeld Monastery, unfortunately, can not be reconstructed, since the monastery was repeatedly robbed and burned down. Important documents have been lost.