Lindow (Mark)

Lindow in der Mark, short: Lindow (Mark), is a town in the Ostprignitz Ruppin district, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is located 14 km northeast of Neuruppin, and 29 km northwest of Oranienburg. The town is situated on an isthmus between the lakes Gudelacksee and Wutzsee.

In the course of the medieval eastward migrations of Germans Gebhard I, Count of Arnstein conquered the area around today's Lindow. In 1196 he settled in the castle of Ruppin, located in today's Alt Ruppin, a locality of Neuruppin. The comital family later adopted the name counts of Lindow Ruppin. By 1220 or 1240 the counts founded a Cistercian nunnery next to Lake Wutzsee in Lindow and richly enfeoffed it with lands and villages, whose inhabitants became serfs to the nunnery. The nunnery compound comprised a cloister surrounded by the convent buildings in the east and west, the cloister church in the north and a smaller structure on the southern side partially opening towards Wutzsee. The nunnery's estates comprised 90,000 morgen of land, 18 villages, nine watermills and several fishponds and lakes (among others Großer Stechlinsee). The dues collected from the tenants of lands allowed to maintain 35 nuns, an abbess and a male provost, pastoring them and representing the nunnery in contracts with outsiders. In return for the endowments the nuns were committed to take care of the education of the daughters of the counts, and other regional noble families. Next to the nunnery a settlement developed which was first named in a document of 1343. The settlement developed into a little town. In 1457 a parish church was erected for the townsfolk. With the extinction of the comital family in the male line the comital fief was reverted to the prince electors of Brandenburg in 1524. The prince elector confirmed the nunnery in its subfiefs, previously bestowed by the counts, in 1530. After the prince elector adopted Lutheranism in 1539 the nunnery was secularised in 1541/1542 and its fiefs taken by the prince elector but pawned to his creditors, who left only a narrow annual appanage for the nuns.]] During the Thirty Years War, Danish as well as Imperial troops captured and robbed the town in 1627, while conventuals and townsfolk weathered that on Werder island in the Gudelacksee. When in 1635 Swedish troops ravaged the town, they did not find much and crossed over to Werder island and slaughtered many townspeople. The Imperial Army invaded and ravaged the area three years later. On 18 October 1638, the forces of General Matthias Gallas robbed and burnt the Lutheran convent, the following day they robbed and burnt the whole town of Lindow to the ground. The convent's library and the archives were destroyed by fire, the cloister school, built in the late 15th century, survived and is preserved until today. In the course of the repopulation policy of the Great Elector Frederick William I of Brandenburg the depopulated town was settled with Reformed (Calvinist) refugees from the Electorate of the Palatinate and Reformed immigrants from Switzerland between 1685 and 1691. A Reformed congregation, besides the existing belittled Lutheran, was established and Lindow used to be headed by two burgomasters at a time, one of each denomination. The convent was reestablished as Hochadeliges Fräuleinstift (High and Noble Damsels' Foundation) in 1696. In 1746 a city fire burnt most of Lindow to ashes. Today's Town Church (Stadtkirche) at the southern end of the old town, was reerected in baroque style as the Lutheran church between 1751 and 1755 by the architect Georg Christoph Berger. It shows an altarpiece "Noli me tangere" by Heinrich Stadler of 1771 depicting the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth appearing to Mary Magdalene. In 1810 Lindow was bestowed town privileges. The convent, was modernised in its constitution and stabilised in its revenues by 1875, named Landesherrliches Fräuleinstift Kloster Lindow (sovereign Damsel's foundation of Lindow monastery) since. Conveyances of interest bearing assets allowed again to maintain eleven conventuals. The widow of the Music Professor Zeidler was deported to Theresienstadt after her husband's death in 1942 and perished there. She was a Protestant of Jewish descent, and lost her previous precarious protected status of a so called privileged mixed marriage when her husband died. After the Second World War Lindow became part of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany, which became East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) in 1945. From 1952 to 1990, Lindow was part of the Bezirk Potsdam of East Germany. The damsels' foundation became a Protestant home for elderly of all backgrounds (called Evangelisches Stift "Kloster Lindow" since), many terribly impoverished by the impacts of the war, run by deaconesses of the Lichtenrade Mother House "Salem" in West Berlin between 1947 and 1961, when the Berlin Wall disrupted this affiliation. The Evangelical Church in Berlin Brandenburg, the regional Protestant church body of the area, converted a building in the nunnery compound on Wutzsee as its conference venue (Evangelische Akademie). However, communist East Germany, with its censorship and repression of free conventions, forbade the opening of the venue. In 1989, the Town Church became a venue for people demanding change in East Germany. In March 1990 the dismissed East German head of state Erich Honecker retired for two nights in the manor house of Gühlen, used as guest house of the Council of Ministers of the GDR, however, leaving after protests by people from Lindow. Since 3 October 1990 Lindow is a part of the Federal Republic of Germany. Many traditional productions sharply reduced their staffs, while tourism became a stronger business. The German demographic crisis is also felt in Lindow, here combined with the migration of many younger to more prosperous areas. Evangelisches Stift "Kloster Lindow" was extended by modern premises between 1998 and 2000.