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Founded: 1103Category: Religious sites in Germany
Historical period: Salian Dynasty (Germany)
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Kastl Abbey, dedicated to Saint Peter, was founded in 1103 or shortly before by Count Berengar II of Sulzbach together with Frederick and Otto, Counts of Kastl-Habsberg.
It was dissolved in 1563 in the course of the Reformation, but re-established as a Catholic monastery in 1625. From 1636 the building was used by the Jesuits, from 1773 by the Knights Hospitallers. Dissolved again in 1803, it was the seat of the Provincial Court until 1862.
From 1958 to 2006 the buildings housed a Hungarian secondary boarding school, now closed.
Anna, daughter of Emperor Louis IV, died here on 29 January 1319 aged three. Her body was not taken to Munich but was entombed in the monastery. In 1715 the body was removed from its tomb and kept in an oak cupboard. Later, preserved as a mummy, it lay in a shrine in the entrance hall to the monastery church, where it could be viewed. The body of the princess was recently returned to its tomb to protect it from light damage and a large photo is on display instead.
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.