Economic activities of the monastery
Source: wikimedia commons Arnsberg_Kloster_Rumbeck_FFSN-2930 Michael Kramer
The economic activities
of the Premonstratensian Convent of Rumbeck
In 1185, Count Heinrich I of Arnsberg, with the permission of his sons Heinrich and Gottfried, donated the old administrative or main farm Rumbeck to the Premonstratensian monastery of Wedinghausen, which he had founded in 1170. This was a generous gift, but perhaps also a sign of lingering “active remorse” for the fratricide he had committed.
Instead of using the donated main farm for the livelihood of his community of canons, Wedinghausen converted it between 1185 and 1190 into the Premonstratensian monastery of Rumbeck, whose "father abbot" was the respective prelate of Wedinghausen.
The donation was generous; the main farm, which had several sub-farms, such as the “Neinohle” farm, today “Neyl” between Rumbeck and Oeventrop, comprised 700 acres of arable and pasture land and 2,900 acres of forest (according to today’s calculations, 175 and 725 hectares).
In the centuries that followed, the main Rumbeck farm remained a large farm, used to support the sisters and the monastery staff (at one point, 62 adults lived in the Rumbeck monastery). However, it soon became apparent that its income was not sufficient for this purpose. The priors, later provosts (in the church hierarchy, a "prelate" with a pectoral cross and ring), appointed by Wedinghausen to look after spiritual life and manage the economy, were grateful for small and large donations from pious citizens. Many of Rumbeck's choir and lay sisters came from the Westphalian landed nobility or peasant families. The transfer of land ownership was more obvious than the donation of cash. Although such land transfers were common (including in Wedinghausen and Oelinghausen), in 1313 Pope Clement V at the papal seat in Avignon expressly allowed the Rumbeck monastery to take over these donations as property. Over the years, a “piece of land” was created in the Sauerland and the Soester Börde. The provosts tried to join the individual scattered pieces of land together through exchange or to sell them and use the proceeds to purchase smaller or – later – larger farms.
The tenants of these farms did not pay their rent in cash, which was still rare at the time, but in kind (barley, oats, rye, rarely wheat; also apples and pears, pigs, chickens, geese, etc.) and - increasingly - in services (sowing, mowing and hay days, provision of horses and carts or other assistance). In this way, the Rumbeck monastery was able to keep personnel costs low, at least during the "peak times" of the agricultural year (sowing - harvesting - sowing), because even then the monastery's approximately 30 employees did not work for "God's wages".
The rent from the individual farms was delivered on set dates either directly to Rumbeck or – mostly – to Soest and Werl to the “Schulten”, tenants of larger Rumbeck farms. They monitored the punctual payments (e.g. on “Martin” = November 11th) and delivered the proceeds – for a small fee – to Rumbeck.
The tenants often fell behind on their rents, especially in times of war. Contrary to the frequently expressed view that the monasteries and foundations had "enslaved" their tenants, the provosts of Rumbeck showed a great deal of patience and understanding. In such situations, which we would today call "hopeless", they often provided the tenants with loans in the hope that this would improve their economic situation. As a rule, this support was unsuccessful, so that the lease had to be terminated - sometimes many years after the rent arrears began - and occasionally with the help of the courts.
This was a bitter blow for those affected, because the farm had often been leased to the same family for generations, so that they considered themselves – albeit wrongly – to be the “owners” of the farm.
The succession in the lease was closely monitored.
If, for example, the wife of a deceased tenant wanted to remarry and asked for the lease agreement with her deceased husband to be maintained, the Rumbeck provosts would check very carefully whether the new husband was also capable of managing the farm profitably for the Rumbeck monastery.
There are – rare – cases in which such a lease succession was refused. Then a new tenant took over the farm and the family of the deceased tenant was faced with the question of entering the service of the new tenant – if the latter agreed – or moving out.
The prudent economic management of the Rumbeck provosts succeeded in turning the formerly “pauperen” = poor Rumbeck monastery into a well-founded agricultural enterprise with several leased farms.
After secularization in 1804, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt (from 1806 the Grand Duchy of Hesse) sold this agricultural, debt-free property at a profit.
The Rumbeck Forest stretched from Uentrop to Oeventrop on both sides of the Ruhr. Forest management – as we know it today – only came about after secularization by the Hessians and subsequently the Prussians.
Until then, the forest was used for the – rather unorganized – extraction of timber and firewood, for hunting and, above all, for feeding pigs fattened with acorns.
The institution of marks (agricultural land, forests, streams, rivers, quarries, etc.) and mark cooperatives had been known for centuries. The mark forest is a forest area that is managed jointly by the inhabitants of several places or farms. It is part of a common district, the mark cooperative. The mark cooperative was entitled to a proportionate right of use of the mark; he could claim his share of the mark use based on and in accordance with the size of the arable land in the fields. The mark cooperatives had the right to cut wood in the mark forest (construction wood, timber for use in the field, and firewood), to let their livestock graze in the forest (cattle drives (Hude) for grazing cows, cattle, and calves), and the right to the important acorn fattening (where pigs were driven into the forests to be fed) and similar rights (removal of litter, plaggen = sods, etc.).
The Dinscheder Mark included the three villages of Dinschede, Glösingen and Oeventrop. When the Rumbeck monastery acquired farms in these places that were entitled to the mark (Dinschede: Bause and Sonntag, Glösingen: Weber and Necker-Schmidt, Oeventrop: Hachmann, Raulff, Schwinebrock and Siepen), it became a member of the mark with all the rights that came with them. These were recorded in "Echtwerken" ("Echtwort"), which were inextricably linked to the ownership of the farm. Almost inevitably, the respective Rumbeck provost ("Herr Prälat") was appointed "Holzrichter" (wood judge), who presided over the "Holzgericht" ("Holzding"), which dealt with all matters concerning the mark on the day of the "mast setting". The Rumbeck provost was also "Holzrichter" (wood judge) in the Schwiedinghausen and Hüsten marks, as Rumbeck was a member of the mark through its Odenhausen/Udenhusen/Ausserhof farm. Rumbeck was entitled to 16 (out of 187) real works; each real work had the size of 12 acres.
In the Wennemer Mark, Rumbeck also had mark rights over the Flinkerbusch farm in Freienohl.
Although the Mark cooperatives were not entitled to hunting rights, the Rumbeck monastery was allowed from the outset to carry out "lower" hunting "on both sides of the Ruhr" with dogs and "Manchgarn" (= trapping nets) on small game up to the size of young deer. Several provosts enforced this right in legal proceedings and retained it until secularization in 1804.
The majority of the Rumbeck monastery forest was located east of the monastery, to the right and left of the “Mühlenbach”, formerly called “Rurabeke” (= stream to the Ruhr), with names such as “Knippenberg”, “Hopfenberg”, “Stierskopf” as well as in the “Damberg” beyond the Ruhr.
In these forests, for example, the timber was felled for the lavish Rumbeck buildings that the provosts built in the 17th century. The forests also provided firewood for the many ovens in the various residential buildings of the monastery.
The provosts of Rumbeck built fish ponds early on, which were fed by the “Rurabeke”. These were vital because the rule of St. Norbert, founder of the Premonstratensian Order, originally required strict abstinence from all meat dishes and the use of animal fat. It was not until Pope Pius II in 1460 that the ban on meat and fat was restricted to Advent and Lent.
It is therefore understandable that the Rumbeck monastery, on the one hand, tended and cared for its fish ponds and, on the other hand, fiercely defended its fishing rights in the Ruhr (in the area of the Rumbeck lands and in the area of the Rumbeck farm Odenhausen in Hüsten) and even called for and was granted papal protection against attacks from Arnsberg, Hüsten and Neheim.
In order not to be dependent on the water level of the stream during the seasons, the Rumbeck monastery built a pond in the upper part of the Mühlbach valley, which did not get its water from the stream, but from collecting surface water using slope ditches from the spring-rich western slope. It was collected in a kind of upper ditch and fed to the pond ("rain retention basin") through a trench (= a flow created from stones) under the forest path. This system made it possible to obtain, store and regulate additional water independently of the Mühlenbach.
A similar – still functioning – system is only known in Germany at Maulbronn Monastery.
The Rumbeck monastery also created another large pond in the Mühlbach valley, above today's Schützenwiese. Behind a high earth dam, the water of the Mühlenbach was backed up like a lake in the wide valley. It was only when the road to Hellefelder Höhe was built (after 1804) that the dam was broken open and the pond dried out. After that, the Mühlenbach dug deep into the earth.
The provosts later realised that the water from the Rumbeck forests could be used for additional purposes. Around 1750 they created five more ponds, the water from which could be used to operate the mills all year round - even in dry periods. They had built a flour and oil mill for the grain from the Rumbeck farms and a sawmill to process the oak and beech logs felled in their own forests, and had hired a miller specifically for this purpose.
The provosts, especially Provost Arndts (1746 to 1754), supplemented this early industrial production by building an iron hammer below Rumbeck on the Ruhr. Pig iron was processed here. The water from the mill stream was channeled to a large water wheel that drove a long wooden shaft with a large hammer attached to the end. With its power, glowing iron blocks were formed into, for example, wheel tires for agricultural wagons.
To smelt the pig iron, a lot of charcoal was needed (hard coal was still unknown), made from beech wood. There had always been charcoal burners in the Rumbeck forests who had moved there from the Sauerland. They increased the production of charcoal and brought it to the iron hammer "by the cartload".
(At the same time, the city of Arnsberg delivered 15,000 wagons of charcoal produced in the city's beech forest to the ironworks in Warstein.)
The Rumbeck monastery built another small industrial production facility at the beginning of the Mühlbach valley: an "ash hut" in which wood was burned to ash. This was then mixed with water in large pots ("Pötten") and evaporated - with considerable wood consumption. The result, the "potash", was used in the manufacture of glass (own glassworks) and was also sold to soap manufacturers and cloth dyers affiliated with the monastery.
The Rumbeck provosts set up two additional “businesses” in the 16th century: firstly, a linen bleaching works. The prerequisite for this work was that there was enough linen to bleach. So, in a complex process, the monastery first produced linen by spinning and weaving from flax fibers that had been harvested themselves. In large tubs, filled via a scoop wheel with water from the now renamed “Mühlenbach”, undesirable coloring of the linen was removed in the “bleaching works” with the addition of caustic soda.
On the other hand, by means of a hollow spindle with a twist hook, tear-resistant thread was produced by twisting several threads, which was partly used in the embroidery and tailoring workshop to make vestments and paraments (= fabric items for religious purposes), and partly sold at a profit.
The previous “workforce” was not sufficient for these industrial activities. Additional workers were hired.
Not only the agricultural profits, but also the proceeds from "early industrial" production increased the income of the Rumbeck monastery, which at the time of its secularization in 1804 - in contrast to other abolished monasteries and foundations - was not only debt-free, but had also invested funds profitably - even "abroad", such as in Soest.
The Rumbeck monastery was dissolved after almost 825 years. The community of sisters was allowed to live in their monastery in Rumbeck until the death of the last sister.
The Hessian government took possession of land and farms, industrial production, cash and financial investments in Rumbeck. The land and the iron hammer were initially leased and later sold. The forest became a state forest for the most part.
According to a report by the first Hessian forester Meyer, most of the servants who were released from the monastery service lived "in the (Rumbeck) forests like animals" (presumably in earth huts). They only slowly got used to the harsh daily life in Rumbeck as "cottage workers" or in the surrounding area as "day laborers".
Fritz Timmerman
of the Premonstratensian Convent of Rumbeck
In 1185, Count Heinrich I of Arnsberg, with the permission of his sons Heinrich and Gottfried, donated the old administrative or main farm Rumbeck to the Premonstratensian monastery of Wedinghausen, which he had founded in 1170. This was a generous gift, but perhaps also a sign of lingering “active remorse” for the fratricide he had committed.
Instead of using the donated main farm for the livelihood of his community of canons, Wedinghausen converted it between 1185 and 1190 into the Premonstratensian monastery of Rumbeck, whose "father abbot" was the respective prelate of Wedinghausen.
The donation was generous; the main farm, which had several sub-farms, such as the “Neinohle” farm, today “Neyl” between Rumbeck and Oeventrop, comprised 700 acres of arable and pasture land and 2,900 acres of forest (according to today’s calculations, 175 and 725 hectares).
In the centuries that followed, the main Rumbeck farm remained a large farm, used to support the sisters and the monastery staff (at one point, 62 adults lived in the Rumbeck monastery). However, it soon became apparent that its income was not sufficient for this purpose. The priors, later provosts (in the church hierarchy, a "prelate" with a pectoral cross and ring), appointed by Wedinghausen to look after spiritual life and manage the economy, were grateful for small and large donations from pious citizens. Many of Rumbeck's choir and lay sisters came from the Westphalian landed nobility or peasant families. The transfer of land ownership was more obvious than the donation of cash. Although such land transfers were common (including in Wedinghausen and Oelinghausen), in 1313 Pope Clement V at the papal seat in Avignon expressly allowed the Rumbeck monastery to take over these donations as property. Over the years, a “piece of land” was created in the Sauerland and the Soester Börde. The provosts tried to join the individual scattered pieces of land together through exchange or to sell them and use the proceeds to purchase smaller or – later – larger farms.
The tenants of these farms did not pay their rent in cash, which was still rare at the time, but in kind (barley, oats, rye, rarely wheat; also apples and pears, pigs, chickens, geese, etc.) and - increasingly - in services (sowing, mowing and hay days, provision of horses and carts or other assistance). In this way, the Rumbeck monastery was able to keep personnel costs low, at least during the "peak times" of the agricultural year (sowing - harvesting - sowing), because even then the monastery's approximately 30 employees did not work for "God's wages".
The rent from the individual farms was delivered on set dates either directly to Rumbeck or – mostly – to Soest and Werl to the “Schulten”, tenants of larger Rumbeck farms. They monitored the punctual payments (e.g. on “Martin” = November 11th) and delivered the proceeds – for a small fee – to Rumbeck.
The tenants often fell behind on their rents, especially in times of war. Contrary to the frequently expressed view that the monasteries and foundations had "enslaved" their tenants, the provosts of Rumbeck showed a great deal of patience and understanding. In such situations, which we would today call "hopeless", they often provided the tenants with loans in the hope that this would improve their economic situation. As a rule, this support was unsuccessful, so that the lease had to be terminated - sometimes many years after the rent arrears began - and occasionally with the help of the courts.
This was a bitter blow for those affected, because the farm had often been leased to the same family for generations, so that they considered themselves – albeit wrongly – to be the “owners” of the farm.
The succession in the lease was closely monitored.
If, for example, the wife of a deceased tenant wanted to remarry and asked for the lease agreement with her deceased husband to be maintained, the Rumbeck provosts would check very carefully whether the new husband was also capable of managing the farm profitably for the Rumbeck monastery.
There are – rare – cases in which such a lease succession was refused. Then a new tenant took over the farm and the family of the deceased tenant was faced with the question of entering the service of the new tenant – if the latter agreed – or moving out.
The prudent economic management of the Rumbeck provosts succeeded in turning the formerly “pauperen” = poor Rumbeck monastery into a well-founded agricultural enterprise with several leased farms.
After secularization in 1804, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt (from 1806 the Grand Duchy of Hesse) sold this agricultural, debt-free property at a profit.
The Rumbeck Forest stretched from Uentrop to Oeventrop on both sides of the Ruhr. Forest management – as we know it today – only came about after secularization by the Hessians and subsequently the Prussians.
Until then, the forest was used for the – rather unorganized – extraction of timber and firewood, for hunting and, above all, for feeding pigs fattened with acorns.
The institution of marks (agricultural land, forests, streams, rivers, quarries, etc.) and mark cooperatives had been known for centuries. The mark forest is a forest area that is managed jointly by the inhabitants of several places or farms. It is part of a common district, the mark cooperative. The mark cooperative was entitled to a proportionate right of use of the mark; he could claim his share of the mark use based on and in accordance with the size of the arable land in the fields. The mark cooperatives had the right to cut wood in the mark forest (construction wood, timber for use in the field, and firewood), to let their livestock graze in the forest (cattle drives (Hude) for grazing cows, cattle, and calves), and the right to the important acorn fattening (where pigs were driven into the forests to be fed) and similar rights (removal of litter, plaggen = sods, etc.).
The Dinscheder Mark included the three villages of Dinschede, Glösingen and Oeventrop. When the Rumbeck monastery acquired farms in these places that were entitled to the mark (Dinschede: Bause and Sonntag, Glösingen: Weber and Necker-Schmidt, Oeventrop: Hachmann, Raulff, Schwinebrock and Siepen), it became a member of the mark with all the rights that came with them. These were recorded in "Echtwerken" ("Echtwort"), which were inextricably linked to the ownership of the farm. Almost inevitably, the respective Rumbeck provost ("Herr Prälat") was appointed "Holzrichter" (wood judge), who presided over the "Holzgericht" ("Holzding"), which dealt with all matters concerning the mark on the day of the "mast setting". The Rumbeck provost was also "Holzrichter" (wood judge) in the Schwiedinghausen and Hüsten marks, as Rumbeck was a member of the mark through its Odenhausen/Udenhusen/Ausserhof farm. Rumbeck was entitled to 16 (out of 187) real works; each real work had the size of 12 acres.
In the Wennemer Mark, Rumbeck also had mark rights over the Flinkerbusch farm in Freienohl.
Although the Mark cooperatives were not entitled to hunting rights, the Rumbeck monastery was allowed from the outset to carry out "lower" hunting "on both sides of the Ruhr" with dogs and "Manchgarn" (= trapping nets) on small game up to the size of young deer. Several provosts enforced this right in legal proceedings and retained it until secularization in 1804.
The majority of the Rumbeck monastery forest was located east of the monastery, to the right and left of the “Mühlenbach”, formerly called “Rurabeke” (= stream to the Ruhr), with names such as “Knippenberg”, “Hopfenberg”, “Stierskopf” as well as in the “Damberg” beyond the Ruhr.
In these forests, for example, the timber was felled for the lavish Rumbeck buildings that the provosts built in the 17th century. The forests also provided firewood for the many ovens in the various residential buildings of the monastery.
The provosts of Rumbeck built fish ponds early on, which were fed by the “Rurabeke”. These were vital because the rule of St. Norbert, founder of the Premonstratensian Order, originally required strict abstinence from all meat dishes and the use of animal fat. It was not until Pope Pius II in 1460 that the ban on meat and fat was restricted to Advent and Lent.
It is therefore understandable that the Rumbeck monastery, on the one hand, tended and cared for its fish ponds and, on the other hand, fiercely defended its fishing rights in the Ruhr (in the area of the Rumbeck lands and in the area of the Rumbeck farm Odenhausen in Hüsten) and even called for and was granted papal protection against attacks from Arnsberg, Hüsten and Neheim.
In order not to be dependent on the water level of the stream during the seasons, the Rumbeck monastery built a pond in the upper part of the Mühlbach valley, which did not get its water from the stream, but from collecting surface water using slope ditches from the spring-rich western slope. It was collected in a kind of upper ditch and fed to the pond ("rain retention basin") through a trench (= a flow created from stones) under the forest path. This system made it possible to obtain, store and regulate additional water independently of the Mühlenbach.
A similar – still functioning – system is only known in Germany at Maulbronn Monastery.
The Rumbeck monastery also created another large pond in the Mühlbach valley, above today's Schützenwiese. Behind a high earth dam, the water of the Mühlenbach was backed up like a lake in the wide valley. It was only when the road to Hellefelder Höhe was built (after 1804) that the dam was broken open and the pond dried out. After that, the Mühlenbach dug deep into the earth.
The provosts later realised that the water from the Rumbeck forests could be used for additional purposes. Around 1750 they created five more ponds, the water from which could be used to operate the mills all year round - even in dry periods. They had built a flour and oil mill for the grain from the Rumbeck farms and a sawmill to process the oak and beech logs felled in their own forests, and had hired a miller specifically for this purpose.
The provosts, especially Provost Arndts (1746 to 1754), supplemented this early industrial production by building an iron hammer below Rumbeck on the Ruhr. Pig iron was processed here. The water from the mill stream was channeled to a large water wheel that drove a long wooden shaft with a large hammer attached to the end. With its power, glowing iron blocks were formed into, for example, wheel tires for agricultural wagons.
To smelt the pig iron, a lot of charcoal was needed (hard coal was still unknown), made from beech wood. There had always been charcoal burners in the Rumbeck forests who had moved there from the Sauerland. They increased the production of charcoal and brought it to the iron hammer "by the cartload".
(At the same time, the city of Arnsberg delivered 15,000 wagons of charcoal produced in the city's beech forest to the ironworks in Warstein.)
The Rumbeck monastery built another small industrial production facility at the beginning of the Mühlbach valley: an "ash hut" in which wood was burned to ash. This was then mixed with water in large pots ("Pötten") and evaporated - with considerable wood consumption. The result, the "potash", was used in the manufacture of glass (own glassworks) and was also sold to soap manufacturers and cloth dyers affiliated with the monastery.
The Rumbeck provosts set up two additional “businesses” in the 16th century: firstly, a linen bleaching works. The prerequisite for this work was that there was enough linen to bleach. So, in a complex process, the monastery first produced linen by spinning and weaving from flax fibers that had been harvested themselves. In large tubs, filled via a scoop wheel with water from the now renamed “Mühlenbach”, undesirable coloring of the linen was removed in the “bleaching works” with the addition of caustic soda.
On the other hand, by means of a hollow spindle with a twist hook, tear-resistant thread was produced by twisting several threads, which was partly used in the embroidery and tailoring workshop to make vestments and paraments (= fabric items for religious purposes), and partly sold at a profit.
The previous “workforce” was not sufficient for these industrial activities. Additional workers were hired.
Not only the agricultural profits, but also the proceeds from "early industrial" production increased the income of the Rumbeck monastery, which at the time of its secularization in 1804 - in contrast to other abolished monasteries and foundations - was not only debt-free, but had also invested funds profitably - even "abroad", such as in Soest.
The Rumbeck monastery was dissolved after almost 825 years. The community of sisters was allowed to live in their monastery in Rumbeck until the death of the last sister.
The Hessian government took possession of land and farms, industrial production, cash and financial investments in Rumbeck. The land and the iron hammer were initially leased and later sold. The forest became a state forest for the most part.
According to a report by the first Hessian forester Meyer, most of the servants who were released from the monastery service lived "in the (Rumbeck) forests like animals" (presumably in earth huts). They only slowly got used to the harsh daily life in Rumbeck as "cottage workers" or in the surrounding area as "day laborers".
Fritz Timmerman