Klosterhof (Cologne-Dünnwald)

The Klosterhof belonged to the Dünnwald monastery, founded in 1117/1118 (other sources say 1121) through an endowment by the Cologne citizen Heidenreich. The secular bailiff Adolf II of Berg and Archbishop Friedrich I of Schwarzenburg of Cologne endowed the young community with extensive estates and privileges. From 1142 the monastery followed the Premonstratensian order and was placed under Steinfeld Abbey in the Eifel; it is regarded as the first Premonstratensian convent on the Lower Rhine.

As a working estate, the Klosterhof formed part of considerable holdings: in the 15th century the monastery held more than 4,000 Morgen of fields, meadows and woodland, along with numerous farms and vineyards across the wider region – from Rheindorf and Schlebusch as far as Bonn and Remagen. This made Dünnwald one of the more prosperous monasteries around Cologne.

The complex did not escape the wars of its time: in 1635 Swedish troops plundered the Klosterhof, and during the War of the Spanish Succession parts of the buildings were destroyed in 1702. In 1643 the monastery passed to monks from Steinfeld, who converted it into a collegiate house of canons linked to Cologne's Collegium Norbertinum. With the German Mediatisation of 1803 the monastery was dissolved and secularised; the buildings went to the Cologne banking house Schaaffhausen, and the furnishings were auctioned off.

Many legends surround the Dünnwald monastery. Right beside the grounds lies the old monastery pond, which once supplied the nuns with fish and is fed by the nearby Mutzbach stream. According to tradition, one spot in the pond – the so-called "deepe Pötz" – was regarded with particular dread.