The Ponds @museum.de

Fish farming and water management were an important source of income for most of the Cistercian Order’s houses. That also holds true for Heiligengrabe, where there’s evidence of three fish ponds from the very earliest times. The largest, known as Mühlenteich, or Mill Pond, lay west of here, at the level of the Governor’s House. The other two are the ones you see here.

All three ponds were fed by the Nadelbach, a brook that flowed north to south across the abbey grounds. Even when this was a nunnery, that is, before the Reformation, the records show expenditure for a fisherman. And in the 18th century, the Governor of the Collegiate Foundation received the income from the ponds – though the sum probably wasn’t very large.

At the end of the 18th century, one of the canonesses even leased the ponds and bred carp, pike, tench, perch and roach, which she was obliged to sell to the other canonesses at fixed prices.

This is what it sounded like here in around 1900:

The collegiate foundation’s school had converted the rear pond into a small open-air swimming pool, which the girls really enjoyed using in the summer. The water was apparently even deep and plentiful enough for a rowing boat. And in winter they had great fun skating on the frozen pond. Check your screen to see what it looked like back then.

The bath house, which was designed to protect the young ladies from curious gazes, disappeared when the collegiate foundation’s school was shut down and there's been no swimming in the ponds for decades.

The wooden bridge and the jetty, however, are designed as reminders of those former activities.

When the adjacent meadows were drained in GDR times, the brook was diverted. As a result, the ponds, which once held a great deal of water, have gradually become marshy. In recent years, attempts have been made to restore them, but they’re no longer suitable for fish farming or swimming.

The current plantings on the banks have transformed what were once commercially exploited areas into an idyllic landscape. The land surrounding the two ponds is home to birch, alder, hazelnut, willow, maple and lime as well as such exotic trees as bald cypress, magnolia and sweet gum. And on warm summer evenings, the local frogs around the ponds take part in deafening croaking competitions!