Cloister

The eastern and northern enclosure and the library building surround the inner courtyard, which is called the cloister and was used as a monastery garden.

The present cloister results from a redesign of the Romanesque cloister in the 13th and 14th centuries. The elegant cross-ribbed vaults in the overbuilt wings to the north and west of the cloister bear witness to this. The cloister of a monastery encloses an inner garden – the cloister garden. In the imagination of the medieval monks, this garden symbolised paradise.

Parts of the Romanesque cloister were demolished after secularisation in 1804. The fountain chapel once located inside the monastery garden was also destroyed. The fountain was restored during the monastery renovation in the late 20th century, partly using original components.

With the help of generous donors, a magnificent project was realised in Kloster Eberbach in autumn 2020. The world-renowned draughtsman, painter, graphic artist and sculptor Thomas Bayrle (*1937 in Berlin), who lives in Frankfurt, designed a stained glass window with a Pietà motif for the cloister of the former Cistercian abbey. The Bayrle window is the equal of windows such as those by Gerhard Richter in Cologne Cathedral and the Tholey Abbey Church or the church windows by Marc Chagall in Mainz.
After secularisation, the arcades in the south and east wings of the monastery cloister were gradually completely destroyed; in the north and west wings, the tracery of the arcade windows is not preserved or is damaged in places.
With Thomas Bayrle’s window, one of the windows was redesigned. The Pietà motif, that is, the depiction of Mary with the body of Jesus Christ, is a medieval motif that fits perfectly in a monastery. Bayrle interpreted it in a modern way by creating the image - – as a kind of "superform" - – from many small smartphone motifs.
The installation of the work was coordinated with the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments.
The work of art was made by Derix Glasstudios GmbH from Taunusstein, which supplies stained glass to the Papal Court.
The tracery consists of three pointed arches, two circular panes and a spandrel. Each individual window is approx. 65 centimetres wide and 265 centimetres high. A carrier pane of 8 millimetre safety glass was coated with varnish, onto which hand-blown flashed glass from Glashütte Lamberts® in transparent blue tones was manually cut and arranged. The glass was laminated onto the carrier pane with transparent two-component silicone. A total of 5.5 square metres of glass was installed.

The Centre of Monastic Life

The Bayrle Window