Rühn Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery founded by Brunward, bishop of Schwerin in 1232. Already on May 29, 1292 the monastery was burned down completely. After reconstruction 30-40 nuns lived, prayed and worked there.
After the Reformation Duke Ulrich gave the monastery to his wife Elisabeth. She founded in Rühn the first girls' school in Mecklenburg. Numerous renovations and extensions were made then.
In the Thirty Years War the monastery was destroyed. During the age of the Duchess Sophie Agnes von Mecklenburg (1625-1694), it was rebuilt with a park with linden alley in the former monastery garden. Until 2008 the site changed hands several times and functioned for example as an orphan house. Since 2008 it has been owned by the Klosterverein Rühn e.V foundation.
The abbey church was completed in 1270.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.