Wissembourg is one of the first imperial monasteries of the then Franconian Empire of the Merovingians.
The monastery was built on an island between two rivers of the Lauter and later surrounded by a 6 m high wall with 3 gates and 3 towers under Abbot Samuel as a monastery castle. A tower, the Schartenturm, is still preserved. On a sandstone tablet embedded in a house wall on the "Quai du 24. Novembre" there is a Latin text which translates as: "What the warrior Abbot Samuel was able to do in the coat of the warrior, is testified to by this castle ring, which was built in 3x6 years of hard work. In the year of the Lord In 1074 this monastery was consecrated by Heinrich, Bishop of Speyer".
The monks' house
North of the cloister, across an open square, stands another interesting building. The monks' residence, built in 1202, contained a common dining room (refectory), a warm lounge (tepidarium), an archive, a library and cells for the monks. Contrary to the rules of a Benedictine monastery, these are single cells; for the monks came from the old high nobility and never from the bourgeois family until the 15th century.
Archive and library were plundered in the Thirty Years' War and the rest in the French. Revolution burned.
The Canons' Monastery
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the monastery suffered from a lack of young people, especially because of the restriction to only accept sons of the high nobility. In 1523 economic and religious developments (Luther's teachings) also led to the conversion of the monastery into a canon's monastery.
Text excerpts from "Weissenburg and a little world history" by Walter Jäger