Tepl

Czech: Teplá

The town and abbey of Tepl are situated approximately 15 km east of Marienbad/Mariánské Lázně at 49° 58′ north latitude and 12° 53′ east longitude.

Bohemia

Czech Republic. Tepl is part of the Karlovy Vary Region (Karlovarský kraj) in the Cheb District (Okres Cheb).

The town’s coat of arms, modelled on that of the Lords of Wrtba/z Vrtby, features three black stag’s antlers on a yellow background. These trace their origins back to the Bohemian noble family of the Hroznatovci, whose progenitor was Hroznata of Ovenec (c. 1160–1217), the founder of the monastery.

German-speaking settlers began to move into the region around Tepl – which had been predominantly Slavic in the 12th and 13th centuries – during the 15th century. By the mid-17th century – following the end of the Thirty Years’ War – the area was predominantly German-speaking. The abbey and the village of Tepl, some 2 km away, were first mentioned in a document in the late 12th century (presumably 1193) in connection with the foundation of the Premonstratensian monastery at Tepl by Hroznata of Ovenec. The collegiate church was consecrated in 1232 by the Bishop of Prague, Johann von Draschitz/z Dražice, under King Wenceslas I. From the late 15th century until after the Second World War, the abbots of Tepl, beginning with Sigismund Hausmann (1448–1506), were German-speaking.

. View from the north-west [Photo: M. Bogade].

In 1422, the abbey was burnt down during the Hussite Wars. During the Thirty Years’ War, it was plundered by the Swedes in 1643. Following a fire in 1659, the collegiate church, along with the entire abbey, underwent extensive reconstruction and extension, particularly under Abbot Raimund II Wilfert (1688–1724) at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. The Baroque interior of the church, which still dominates much of the building today, dates back to the abbacy of Hieronymus Ambros (1741–1767). Tepl was spared from the Josephine suppression of monasteries in 1781. The Abbot of Tepl, Karl Prokop Reitenberger (1813–1827), founded Mariánské Lázně in the early 19th century, which was recognised as a spa town in 1818.

The monastery complex was used as military barracks after the Second World War and stood empty after 1978. Following the ‘Velvet Revolution’ of 1989, the abbey was returned to the Premonstratensians; from 1991 onwards, it was repopulated and restoration work began on the building, parts of which had suffered immense damage. Since 2008, the abbey has been a National Cultural Monument (Národní kulturní památka) of the Czech Republic.

1900: 3,000 (Germans only); 1930: 2,474 (82 Czechs); 1950: 1,080; 1991: 2,924; 2013: 3,052.^[1]

The centre of the monastery complex is the Church of the Annunciation, a late Romanesque, three-nave hall church dating from the late 12th and early 13th centuries (consecrated in 1232). The complex was given a Baroque makeover under Abbot Raimund II Wilfert at the end of the 17th century. The original layout of the hall church, comprising a nave and an eastern transept with three apses – the central one of which was given a Gothic makeover in the 14th century – remains recognisable even after the Baroque alterations. The church has a west façade in late Romanesque or early Gothic style, with a portal added in the late 19th century. The towers were completed according to plans by the architect Christoph Dientzenhofer (1655–1722); the two-storey convent building and the prelature on the south side of the church – which protrudes from the western line of buildings with its richly decorated gable – are also attributed to him.

Supraporta above the gateway [Photo: M. Bogade].

The Baroque interior of the collegiate church was created primarily under Abbot Hieronymus Ambros. The Egerland painter Elias Dollhopf (1703–1773) decorated the building with frescoes, including a cycle of scenes from the life of the Blessed Hroznata in the transept. The sculptor Ignatz Franz Platzer (1717–1787), born in Prague/Praha, created in 1750/59, together with the Prague court stonemason Josef Lautermann, the high altar, the crucifix altar, the altar of Saints John and Paul, and various small sculptures on the side altars. On the north side of the building complex, the library was built between 1902 and 1910 to a design by Josef Schaffer, modelled on the Prelature (with a collection of approximately 100,000 volumes, including medieval manuscripts and incunabula) and the museum were built on the north side of the complex. The geographical and art-historical centre of the town of Tepl is formed by the so-called Deanery Church (the present building dating from 1762–1765) and the Baroque Trinity Column by Wolfgang Braunbock from 1721.

Blessed Hroznata, flanked by two angels. Sculpture
group at the main portal of the Prelature, dating from the first
half of the 18th century [Photo: M. Bogade].

According to legend, the Blessed According to legend, at the end of the 12th century, Blessed Hroznata founded the Premonstratensian monastery at Tepl (established by Strahov Abbey near Prague) and the Premonstratensian convent at Chotieschau/Chotěšov, situated some 20 km south-west of Pilsen/Plzeň. The local veneration of the Blessed Hroznata in Tepl and Chotieschau, the intensity of which fluctuated and whose cult was confirmed in 1887/98, was, as Petr Kubín demonstrates, independent of the national affiliation of the faithful from the Middle Ages right through to modern times. Hroznata’s remains were kept in the central nave in front of the high altar of the church until 1898 and were transferred to a reliquary in the northern aisle on the occasion of the confirmation of his cult.

Johannes von Tepl (Jan ze Teplé, also known as Johannes von Saaz/Jan ze Žatce, Johannes of Schüttwa/Jan ze Šitboře, c. 1350–1414) wrote the prose poem *The Farmer from Bohemia* around 1400; it was first published in 1460.

In 1954, the Hessian town of Butzbach became a twin town with the displaced persons from Tepl. The Heimatkreis Tepl-Petschau e. V., which published a documentary on the Tepl region in 1967,^[2] has been running the ‘Heimatstube Tepler Hochland’ in Butzbach since the 1950s (see www.bkge.de/heimatsammlungen/50931.html).

• Petr Kubín: Blahoslavený Hroznata. Kritický životopis [The Blessed Hroznata. A Critical Biography]. Prague 2000.
• Peter Hilsch: Tepl. In: Joachim Bahlcke, Winfried Eberhard, Miloslav Polívka (eds.): Handbook of Historical Sites. Bohemia and Moravia. Stuttgart 1998 (Kröners Taschenausgabe 329), pp. 603ff. (including, amongst other things, a bibliography in Czech).
• P. Vlček, P. Sommer, D. Foltýn: Encyklopedie českých klášterů [Encyclopaedia of Bohemian Monasteries]. Prague 1998, pp. 665–670.
• Basil Grassl: History and Description of Tepl Abbey. Pilsen 1910.

• www.klastertepla.cz (the monastery’s bilingual website)
• www.tepla.cz (website of the town of Tepl/Teplá)

[1] See Hilsch: Tepl, p. 604 and www.czso.cz/csu/2013edicniplan.nsf/engt/50002DF52B/ $File/13011303.pdf: Population figures for municipalities in the Czech Republic as at 1 January 2013 [The census in the municipalities of the Czech Republic as at 1 January 2013] (accessed 11 March 2014).

[2] Josef Schmutzer, Otto Zerlik (eds.): The Tepl Land. The comprehensive documentation of the Tepl-Petschau local heritage association in the Sudeten German spa triangle. What the abbey towers tell us. Home of the canons and musicians. For remembrance, edification and a constant reminder. Geisenfeld 1967.

Marco Bogade: Tepl/Teplá. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/54430.html (as at 28 October 2015).