Dinklage Castle
Description
The Abbey of St. Scholastica is a Benedictine nunnery located in Dinklage Castle, Lower Saxony. Named after St. Scholastica, sister of St. Benedict of Nursia, it occupies a historic moated castle that belonged to the noble von Galen family until 1949. The castle is also the birthplace of Cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878–1946), beatified in 2005.
Castle history
The site’s first fortress, Ferdinandsburg, was documented in 980 but destroyed in 1374. Later castles—including Dietrichsburg, Herbordsburg, and Hugoburg—came under von Galen ownership between the 17th and 19th centuries. The current castle dates largely from the late Middle Ages, with major construction in 1597, featuring a four-wing, moat-surrounded layout with Renaissance sandstone portal, brick west wing, timber-framed north and east wings, and a stuccoed main house with 16th-century stone oriel.
Monastic history
Benedictine nuns took residence in 1949 after displacement from East Germany, establishing a priory that became an abbey in 1977. Since then, the community has developed guest and retreat facilities, a candle workshop, weaving and communion wafer production, and social outreach projects such as the Martinsscheune shelter for homeless people.
Cultural and public engagement: The abbey runs a guesthouse (since 1999), monastery shop (2000), and café (2001). It also fosters heritage awareness of Cardinal von Galen through the Cardinal von Galen Foundation, founded in 2010, which opened a permanent exhibition in the restored castle mill in 2013 and created public artworks.
Today, the abbey remains a place of prayer, hospitality, and cultural heritage, maintaining ties with its motherhouse in Alexanderdorf and other Benedictine monasteries.