Nütschau Priory, Benedictine monastery in Travenbrück, Germany

Nütschau Priory is a Benedictine monastery housed in the Herrenhaus Nütschau, a Renaissance manor begun in 1577 by Heinrich Rantzau as the Castrum Nutzkow. The three-gabled brick house, one of the oldest manor houses in Stormarn, has a slender turret with two bells on its central gable; the clock face bears the year 1792. A stone plaque of 1577 survives at the former stairway, and the moat and drawbridge are gone.

Around 830 a Carolingian earthwork, the Nütschauer Schanze, guarded the Limes Saxoniae on the Trave. In 1577 the humanist Heinrich Rantzau built the small moated castle Castrum Nutzkow, whose shell survives. The manor passed through 28 owners before the Bishop of Osnabrück bought it in 1951 for monks from Gerleve Abbey; the community became an independent priory in 1975.

The monastery is dedicated to Ansgar, the missionary bishop of Hamburg-Bremen, and in 1965 Bishop Helmut Herrmann Wittler gave it an Ansgar reliquary. The monks keep the Benedictine ora et labora and run a training house and a youth house. They give pilgrims on the Way of St. James and the Monk's Path shelter for the night.

Visitors can see the grounds only by arranging a visit in advance, since the site is actively used and needs quietness. Those who want to stay overnight will find basic rooms on the premises for pilgrims and groups.

The bronze sanctuary lamp above the tabernacle in the chapel came from the Torretta of St Benedict at Montecassino, destroyed in World War II. Made around 1880 by the Beuron art school, it bears the inscription "Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam".