Klosterdämmerung ("The Twilight of the Monastery") – Part III (Kamieniec Ząbkowicki)

The third part of the exhibition project "Klosterdämmerung" ("The Twilight of the Monastery") in the former Protestant church of  focuses on the district’s 900-year history. In 1096 a Bohemian castle was built here, which, soon after the transition to Polish-Prussian ownership, was donated to Augustinian monks from Wroclaw. In 1247, Cistercians from  Abbey replaced the convent and built a monastery, which determined the fate of the community until secularization in 1810. Later, Princess Marianne of Orange-Nassau had a palace complex built here, designed by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the garden designer Peter Joseph Lenné.

The consequences of the Second World War with the expulsion of the German population and the resettlement of Poles driven out of eastern Poland brought a period of around 800 years of cultural continuity in the community to an abrupt end. Ties to this history were reestablished prior to 1989 with the restoration of the monastery church and work beginning on the reconstruction of the burnt-out castle.