Hohenfurth

Vyšší Brod

Altum vodum

Hohenfurth is situated at 48° 37′ north latitude, 14° 19′ east longitude, approximately 30 km south of Krumau/Český Krumlov on the Vltava (Czech: Vltava).

Bohemia

Czech Republic. Hohenfurth is part of the South Bohemian Region (Jihočeský kraj) in the Český Krumlov District (Okres Český Krumlov)

The tympanum of the portal in the northern choir chapel of the monastery church features a late 13th-century coat of arms bearing the five-petalled rose of the Lords of Rosenberg; this ‘speaking’ coat of arms can be found in various locations within the monastery grounds.

, Cistercian Monastery, view from the north [Photo: Ackermann Parish, Bamberg].

Hohenfurth already existed as a settlement of the Witigones in the first half of the 13th century; the village is first mentioned in a document in connection with the foundation of the Cistercian monastery (the mother monastery being Wilhering Abbey in Upper Austria, with Morimond as its primary abbey) by Wok I of Rosenberg in 1259. Contributing to the abbey’s economic success were, amongst other things, donations from the Rosenbergs and other branches of the Witigoni family, as recorded in the abbey’s own land registers (the earliest dating from the 1370s and thus the oldest known land register in Bohemia). Evidence of the monastery’s prosperity can be seen in the central buildings of the monastic complex, which were erected from the second half of the 13th century through to the 14th century.

During the time of Wilhelm von Rosenberg (d. 1592), the abbot’s house was built, which was later used as a pharmacy. In the second half of the 17th century, a new convent building was erected to the south of the medieval monastery grounds. Under Abbot Quirinus Mickl (1711–1767), the monastery library was remodelled and extended between 1753 and 1755.

The changes in the political system are reflected in the monastery’s history: Following the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1941, the monastery was dissolved by the Nazis and temporarily used as a resettlement camp for Germans from Bukovina, and later for Germans from Bessarabia, as well as a military hospital. In 1945, the monastery was repopulated and dissolved once again by the Communist government in 1950; a Cistercian community has been active there again since 1990.

1930: 2,017 inhabitants, of whom 1,731 were German; 1991: 1,973 inhabitants; 2012: 2,551 inhabitants.^[1]

The Deanery Church of St Bartholomew, built on the market square between 1260 and 1270, was destroyed in 1422 during the Hussite Wars and was rebuilt and extended in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Cistercian Monastery of Hohenfurth/Vyšší
Brod, cloister
[Photo: Ackermann Parish, Bamberg].

The Cistercian monastery lies at the centre of Hohenfurth’s history and art history. The three-nave monastery church, built between 1360 and 1370 as a vaulted hall church, which ends in a polygonal chancel to the east following a transept with chapels and a pre-chancel bay, stands at the heart of the monastery complex. The cloister adjoins the nave to the south; the sacristy and chapter house are situated south of the transept. Some parts of the church, which was consecrated in 1259 and originally built of timber, date from the second half of the 13th century, including the cloister, the portal leading from the southern transept into the sacristy with a tympanum decorated with reliefs (the Hand of God amidst vine leaves) dating from around 1270/80, and the chapter house on a square plan, whose three-ribbed vault is supported by a central octagonal pillar. The monastery’s refectory and dormitory were added at the end of the 14th century. An artist provisionally named the Master of Hohenfurth (Czech: Mistr Vyšebrodského cyklu) created a cycle of nine panel paintings depicting scenes from the life of Jesus for the high altar of the monastery church before 1347; these are now housed in the National Gallery in Prague (St Agnes Convent). The commission was placed by Peter I of Rosenberg (Petr I z Rožmberka; 1291–1347), who had himself depicted as the patron, with his coat of arms, on the panel depicting the Nativity. In 1524/25, Abbot Christoph von Knoll commissioned the late-Gothic altars of St Roch and St Barbara. Franz Linhart Wullimann and Franz Georgius crafted the church’s present-day high altar between 1644 and 1646. The numerous burial sites of the Witigonen/Rosenberger family within the monastery grounds, dating from the 13th century to the early 17th century, bear witness to the close ties with the founding family. Among the most significant funerary monuments are the figurative tomb slab of Abbot Christoph Knoll (d. 1542) and the Rosenberg family’s epitaph from the early 17th century. The Neo-Gothic church tower has stood in place of its Baroque predecessor since 1862.

The monastery library holds a collection of around 70,000 volumes, including a collection of manuscripts from the High and Late Middle Ages as well as incunabula.

In 1979, the town of Ellwangen established a twinning arrangement with the residents of the Kaplitz district in South Bohemia (including the villages of Kaplitz/Kaplice, Gratzen/Nové Hrady and Hohenfurth).

• Václav Bůžek: Hohenfurth. In: Joachim Bahlcke, Winfried Eberhard, Miloslav Polívka (eds.): Handbook of Historical Sites. Bohemia and Moravia. Stuttgart 1998 (Kröners Taschenausgabe 329), pp. 195–196 (including, amongst other things, a bibliography in Czech).
• Heimatkreis Kaplitz (eds.): The Monastery of the Witigones. 750 Years of the Cistercian Abbey of Hohenfurth/Vyšší Brod, South Bohemia, 1259–2009. Accompanying volume to the exhibition organised as part of the twinning arrangement between the district town of Ellwangen and the displaced persons from the former Kaplitz district in South Bohemia; Ellwangen/Jagst Castle Museum, Baden-Württemberg, October 2009 to January 2010. Donauwörth 2009.
• Local History Association for South Bohemia (ed.): German Cultural Landscape along the Vltava and Maltsch Rivers. Munich 1986.
• Jiří Kuthan: Vyšší Brod. Hohenfurt, a listed site, former monastery. České Budějovice 1989.
• Jaroslav Pešina: The Master of the Vyšebrod Cycle. Prague 1982. Ibid.: The Master of the Hohenfurt Cycle. Prague 1982.

• www.ckrumlov.info/docs/de/region_histor_klasvb.xml (the town’s official website)
• www.herder-institut.de/bildkatalog/wikidata/Q1019688 (Images of Hohenfurth/Vyšší Brod in the image archive of the Herder Institute, Marburg)

[1] See Bůžek: Hohenfurth, p. 196; and www.czso.cz/csu/2012edicniplan.nsf/t/00002BD91A/ $File/13011203.pdf (Population figures for municipalities in the Czech Republic as at 1 January 2012 [Census in the municipalities of the Czech Republic as at 1 January 2012])

Marco Bogade: Hohenfurth/Vyšší Brod. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32417 (as at 30 July 2021).