Kloster Burchardi

The monastery of St. Burchardi (Kloster Burchardi) is a former Benedictine monastery transformed into a space for social projects, cultural offers and encounter.

About this building

The monastery of St. Burchardi was founded by Bishop Burchard I of Halberstadt in 1186. in 1206, Cistercian nuns took over the monastery. The monastery was suppressed and sold on 1 October 1810, in the course of secularisation in Germany.

Since the sale of the St. Burchardi Monastery in 1810, its entire grounds and the associated buildings have had an eventful history. In 1836, Ferdinand Heine I acquired the monastery as an agricultural business with around 90 hectares of fields and meadows. The business remained in the family for three generations until 1945. During this time, the buildings on the former monastery grounds, including the St. Burchardi Church, were used for agricultural purposes as barns, storage sheds, stables, workshops and distilleries, and in smaller building areas also as administrative and residential space

The AWZ - Bildungs- und Betreuungs-GmbH now runs the former monastery. The “Burchardikloster” location has around 2,000 m² of workshops and other practice and classroom spaces. The offering is complemented by a 50 m² greenhouse, a 200 m² hall, around 7,000 m² of open space, and offices and social rooms for all training areas.

 

Key Features

  • Architecture
  • Monuments

Visitors information

  • Parking within 250m
  • Café within 500m

Other nearby buildings

Center for Jewish Art

Communal Synagogue in Halberstadt

The Communal (Gemeinde) synagogue in Halberstadt was erected in the years 1709 - 1712, and destroyed in 1938. Only one wall from the 1879 addition has been preserved. The building was a massive square structure built with the light-yellowish-grey stone that was generally used in this region for public buildings. The exterior was almost completely undecorated. Each of the four exterior walls had two pairs of windows that were visually unified by an arch. Centered on the west wall was the main entrance. The location of the Torah ark was indicated on the exterior of the eastern wall by a protrusion with a sloped-roof. The building was capped by an imposing mansard roof, a reference to the regional baroque tradition. Significant additions were made to the structure in 1879 by architects Ebe and Bende from Berlin. An infill structure containing separate entrance halls for men and women were added as well as a new exterior staircase to the women's gallery. This filled the space between the original 18th century synagogue structure and the row of houses that had screened it from the street. According to the plans drawn for the reconstruction of 1879, the northern side of the vault was decorated with a depiction of the showbread table in the Temple of Jerusalem. The southern side had a depiction of the Temple menorah. The interior cupola in the center of the vault was painted with palm trees.

Wikimedia Commons/Dguendel

Michaelstein Monastery

Michaelstein Monastery is a former Benedictine monastery, close to the town of Blankenburg. After its restoration after the Second World War, the monastery was used as a music academy, a venue for concerts and events, a conference centre and a museum. The monastery is a stop of the Harz Monastery Hiking Trail and part of the Romanesque Road that crosses the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.