VTen years ago, the “ArGe Kloster Einsiedel” was founded to investigate what was little known and hardly visible. One knew of an abbey in the eastern Spessart. But only the location explored by the Archaeological Spessart Project allowed the use of the most modern equipment. Ground penetrating radar made sure it was worth starting the spade. After five years, the facility was torn from oblivion. The cleared island was larger than expected – only a third has been exposed – and relics came to light that one would not expect in monasteries, such as women’s and children’s graves.
Parts of the foundations were most recently bricked up for an archaeological park and made accessible from 14 panels to provide information about the origins and the abandonment of the monastery. Its location in the deepest seclusion of the forest belies the fact that there was once heavy traffic there. In the early 13th century, the Counts of Rieneck had set up a rest and customs station on the most important east-west connection through the Spessart, the Birkenhainer Straße, and, when the popularity rose, enabled a Premonstratensian monastery. The monks were responsible for the spiritual and gastronomic care of the travelers; Agriculture and administration, however, were conducted by non-clergymen. They lived there with their families, which should explain the unusual graves. Only the worst enemy lurks mostly on the next corner: The Hanau Count Ulrich II took 1330 inheritance disputes as an opportunity to end the prosperous development with a destructive furore. Afterwards, some Dominicans lived in buildings that had been painstakingly restored, later they served glassmakers as storage facilities – the nearby Ruppertshütten also emerged from glass production in 1502 – and finally the remaining rubble was cleared away for road construction.
After the Rieneck Counts died out in 1559, Kurmainz pushed for road maintenance and promoted “rest stops”, one like the “Bayrische Schanz” just a few kilometers from the former monastery. First mentioned in this function in 1714, the inn – with interruptions – is the only one to this day, now for day trippers.
The current owners, the Münch family, who have been based in the second generation since 1974, are committed to tradition with their down-to-earth cuisine, but have also been able to accommodate romanticizing Spessart ideas since the redesign with stair turrets, dormers or tiled stoves.
Directions:
Ruppertshütten lies between steep slopes. There was little more than livestock farming and glassmaking – and faith, since the energetic re-Catholicization by the Mainz visitor, Capuchin Father Martin von Cochem, which resulted in a baroque church and in 1876 the gothic new building of a parish church towering in the most beautiful sandstone red.
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