Marienweiher Abbey

The Marienweiher Monastery is a monastery of the Franciscan Observants in Marienweiher, a district of Marktleugast in Upper Franconia and belongs to the Diocese of Bamberg.

The monastery, dedicated to B.V. Maria Miraculosa, was founded in 1646 by Melchior Otto Voit von Salzburg, Bishop of Bamberg. Initially a hospice, it became a convent from 1699.

From 1718 to 1721, the current Baroque pilgrimage basilica of Marienweiher was built.

In the course of secularization in Bavaria, the monastery was taken into civil possession on December 17, 1802, but no official dissolution took place. Temporarily, the monastery was doomed to die out, but on July 18, 1828, it was officially re-established. The Bavarian Franciscans received a contractually guaranteed right of use of the monastery from the state.

Since 1984, the Silesian province of the Franciscan order has been looking after the monastery.

On June 25, 1993, Pope John Paul II elevated the monastery church to a minor basilica through the Apostolic Letter Celebratum templum.

The monastery is owned by the Bavarian state real estate administration, which already considered selling it in 2007. In early 2009, in search of "utilization possibilities for the monastery," the monastery was offered to the Kulmbach district for one euro, which triggered strong local protests. The Bavarian Minister of Finance, Georg Fahrenschon, has since declared that he expressly distances himself from the plans to sell the monastery. Such plans had "in no way" been coordinated with him. He had stopped this process.