A stay at the cloister

While in Eisleben, we stayed two nights just outside town at a Roman Catholic cloister that dates back to the 1200s. The almost 800-year history of Cloister Helfta is a story of death and rebirth, of famous women mystics whose spirits can still be felt in the rhythm of the hours of prayer with the sisters, and of contemporary bold women committed to continuing their way of life and making a viable future for this special place.

On Monday morning, Sister Maria Assumpta Schenkel, the leader of this community of 15 sisters, told us of the history of the place and how they came to be there.

The abbey was founded in 1250 and built between 1250 and 1257. Parts of the walls of the present-day chapel date all the way back to this time. Three famous women mystics of the Middle Ages were among its founders: Gertrude the Great, Mechtild of Hakeborn, and Mechtild of Magdeburg. A famous story about Mechtild of Magdeburg is that she was having doubts about her vocation and was praying in the chapel one day when she saw a great light in one of the windows. In that light she saw the face of Jesus.

In 1525, the Peasant Rebellion forced the closing of the cloister. It was rebuilt in 1530, but then came the Protestant Reformation. In 1542, the new count, George I, pressured the sisters to adopt the Protestant movement. They refused, and left. The cloister's grounds were abandoned and would lie in ruin for several hundred more years.

In 1949, when East Germany was created, the cloister's land became a large farming cooperative. The eventual plan was to tear it all down, but the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 halted those plans.

The cloister reopened through the efforts of a committed group of people who embarked on a campaign to raise money for rebuilding, mostly from the church in western Germany, and who traveled to Bavaria, where they met Sister Maria Assumpta and asked her to come to Helfta. She agreed and, by 1996, six nuns took residence at this deeply historical place.

The stone base of the altar in the historic chapel is constructed of stones that were brought there by each congregation in the area, both Roman Catholic and Lutheran. It is a profound symbol of the ecumen-ical co-operation between the two churches. And it seems nothing short of a miracle, given the history of this place over hundreds of years, that a visitor to the cloister's chapel can still, today, look upon the same 13th-century window in which Mechtild had her vision.

The renovated and restored buildings, and the lovely grounds, make a quiet and serene, retreat-like hotel for visitors to the area. In addition to the hotel, the cloister, as European monasteries have done for centuries, brews its own variety of beer (which many in our group agreed made an excellent accompaniment to our dinner both nights).

I think we all deeply appreciated this restful and restorative place in the middle of our trip. It offered plenty of oppor-tunities for sitting and gazing out over a pond, walking along a quiet path or through the labyrinth, or praying and chanting the daily hours with the sisters.