Kloster Reuthin, Dominican monastery in Wildberg, Germany.
Kloster Reuthin is a Dominican convent in Wildberg built on a river terrace overlooking the Wildbach stream. The complex included a monastery church and residential buildings for the nuns, arranged together to form a functioning religious center.
Burkhard IV von Hohenberg founded the monastery, built between 1252 and 1284 as a Dominican convent and the family monastery of the Hohenberg counts. A beguine cell existed from 1313, and a new beguine house was built in 1470. Plundered in the Peasants' War of 1525, it was dissolved under Duke Ulrich of Württemberg; the nuns refused the Reformation after 1535, and a 1559 agreement led to a long secularization. From 1570 the buildings served as a monastic estate office; a major fire in 1824 destroyed the church and main building.
Reuthin was the house monastery of the Counts of Hohenberg: many of their daughters entered it and donated their dowries. Among roughly 240 nuns known by name are members of the Hohenberg family, regional lower nobility and daughters of respected families from neighbouring towns as far as Rottenburg. A late 14th-century antiphonary donated by nuns of the Vihlin family survives, its miniature in the Landesmuseum Württemberg showing the donors and their brother Syfridus Vihlin, dean and parish priest in Herrenberg.
The monastery sits on high ground above the Wildbach stream and is accessible on foot from Wildberg town center. Visitors should be prepared for uneven terrain and steps, so sturdy shoes are advisable.
The monastery's sheep farming was first documented in 1298, when grazing rights were granted on Wildberg land — one of the earliest records of sheep farming in southern Germany, as monasteries began promoting wool production. The Fruchtkasten now houses Wildberg's local museum, with a lecture and exhibition room and a vaulted cellar used for events.
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