Baindt Abbey

The origins of the monastery date back to the early 13th century, when spiritual communities of women formed in the Lake Constance region. One such community, originally founded in Boos near Saulgau in 1231 and confirmed as a Cistercian monastery by the Pope in 1236, found little acceptance among the local nobility. Therefore, Schenk Konrad von Winterstetten, the imperial procurator for Swabia, acquired the hamlet of Baindt as a new location. In the same year, 1240, the community relocated to Baindt. Emperor Frederick II placed the abbey under imperial protection, which led to its elevation to the status of an imperial abbey in 1376. The abbots of Salem served as spiritual advisors. During the German Peasants' War in 1525, the monastery was burned down and also destroyed again in the Thirty Years' War, but monastic life resumed in 1649. Between 1764 and 1766, the monastery church underwent a Baroque renovation.