Kloster St. Andreas

The origins of the property date back to the 19th century when it served as an inn in Altenbeken-Buke, run by the Stiens family. In 1946, the childless Stiens couple bequeathed the entire estate to a group of twelve Ukrainian Studite monks who sought refuge in Germany after the war. These monks, belonging to the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Lviv, transformed the building into a monastery and chose Saint Andrew as their patron. The hieromonk Juvenalyj (Mokrickyj) painted icons that are still preserved in the house today. As early as 1949, the monks left the monastery and emigrated to Canada. From 1953 to 1954, Olivetan Fathers of the Byzantine Rite lived in the premises for one year.

In 1954, Studite sisters from Krefeld-Traar took over the monastery and established a retirement home. Under the leadership of Sister Sophia, who assumed leadership in 1961, the establishment was definitively settled, and a mail-order book business was developed. In 1964, the monastery became the seat of the “Verein Haus St. Andreas” with the aim of creating an Eastern Church prayer and information center. The chapel was under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Bishop Kyr Platon (Kornyljak). Father Antonij, a German monk, celebrated Sunday services here. In the following years, the house was extensively renovated and expanded; the former stables were transformed into the monastery chapel, whose altar was consecrated in 1967. The Hanoverian icon painter Wolfgang Becker designed the iconostasis, which was consecrated in 1969 and is still visible today. From 1971, conferences and seminars took place in the monastery. At the end of the 1980s, the “Eastern Church Center of the Community of the Basilian Sisters of the Most Holy Redeemer” was founded here. Following renovation measures in 1997 and connection to the Altenbeken sewage system in 2001, the nuns also gave up the monastery in 2004 and returned to their mother house.

The former Monastery of St. Andrew is located in Höxter, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

After a two-year vacancy, the building was sold to a private individual and converted. Today, it once again houses a restaurant, where the former iconostasis is integrated in a slightly modified form into the so-called “Klosterstübchen” (Monastery Parlor).

• Iburg Castle Ruin (Bad Driburg) (Ruin, approx. 4349 m away)
• Trinity Monastery (Bad Driburg) (Sacred building, approx. 4939 m away)
• Reelsen Castle (Castle, approx. 5891 m away)
• Merlsheim Castle (Castle, approx. 6974 m away)