Pielenhofen Monastery
The Cistercian monastery, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, dates back to its founding in 1240 by the Lords of Hohenfels and Ehrenfels. In 1542 the monastery came under secular administration during the Reformation in the Duchy of Palatinate-Neuburg. In 1559, Count Palatine Ottheinrich dissolved the monastery. In 1655 it was incorporated into the Imperial Monastery of Kaisheim as a subpriorate.
In the course of secularization in Bavaria, the monastery was dissolved for the second time in 1803. The monastery church became a parish church. In 1806, the Carmelite nuns from Munich and Neuburg an der Donau moved into the monastery complex as their central monastery. In 1838 the Salesian Sisters bought the monastery and set up an institute for higher daughters there. From 1981 to 2013, the Regensburger Domspatzen elementary school and the attached boarding school were housed in Pielenhofen.
In 2010 the monastery was abandoned by the Salesian Sisters. In 2013 the monastery buildings were sold to the Herder School Association. The association now runs a secondary school and a technical college for design in the buildings.
The monastery church is a baroque hall church with two narrow side aisles. The high altar with its colossal, late Baroque structure, built by an unknown but important altar builder, dominates the interior of the church. The altarpiece shows the Assumption of Mary and comes from more recent times, created by the Regensburg drawing teacher Albert Stahl. On either side of the altarpiece are the larger-than-life statues of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Mother of God. Above on the right in the excerpt St. Bernard of Clairvaux, left in the excerpt Abbot Stefan of Citeaux.
In front of the choir there are two side altars inserted in the Cistercian style: on the left the cross altar, in the structure the image of St. Sebastian at the Marterholz; on the right the Christmas altar, in the structure the image of St. Wendelin or Isidore.
On the right in front of the Christmas altar is a late Gothic baptismal font from the first half of the 15th century.
In the right aisle: the goal of numerous pilgrimages from the area is the miraculous image, an Ecco-homo image by an unknown master. It comes from the private possession of the Munich citizen's daughter and later Carmelite Maria Anna Josefa Lindmayr (1657-1726), according to whom the picture is said to have cried repeatedly.
The ceiling paintings were created by the Konstanz painter Jacob Karl Stauder (1694-1756).
Source: Church guide Pielenhofen