Kloster Rastede

The foundation of Rastede Monastery dates back to 1091. Count Huno and his wife Willna, who held a count-like status due to their possessions, initiated the project. After Huno's death, Friedrich, likely his son, completed the foundation, and the monastery was consecrated to the Virgin Mary. The monastery church was consecrated in 1096. Extensive lands in and around Rastede, in Ammerland, in Rüstringen, and east of the Weser up to Bardowick and Lüneburg, supplemented by Westphalian possessions, provided the monastery with a solid material foundation. This allowed it to develop into an intellectual center. In the 12th century, the Egilmaringen, later the Counts of Oldenburg, assumed patronage. The monastery served them as a house monastery and burial place. Monks such as Hinrich Gloysteen, who produced the Oldenburg Sachsenspiegel in 1336, and Heinrich Wolters, author of the Rastede Chronicle around 1450, contributed to the cultural and legal documentation of the era. The monastery's writings, including the “Liber vitae historia monasterii Rastedensis,” are important historical sources today. In the course of the Reformation, the monastery lost its spiritual function. After the last monk left in 1529, it was secularized. Count Christoph of Oldenburg used the buildings as a residence, and after his death in 1566, the construction of Rastede Castle began on the same site. Today, only the cellar vaults of the abbot's building and some Romanesque columns in the castle park remain.

The former monastery was located in Rastede, a municipality in the Ammerland district of Lower Saxony, Germany.

Of the original monastery complex, only the cellar vaults of the abbot's building and some Romanesque columns, which can be found in the park behind the current Rastede Castle, remain today.

• Palais Rastede (residence, approx. 313 m away)
• Haus Osterberg (manor house and estate, approx. 4370 m away)
• Schloss Oldenburg (castle, approx. 11685 m away)
• Elisabeth-Anna-Palais (residence, approx. 11785 m away)