The Pen to the Holy Spirit at the Bult
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Oldest foundation in Hanover: The 800-year history of the Heilig-Geist-Stift
The oldest monastery in Hanover: the listed monastery of the Holy Spirit at Heiliggeiststraße 20 on the Bult.
© Source: Robin Beck
bult. It was founded as the “Hospital Sankt Spiritus” in 1256 – at that time, however, the monastery was still in the city center at the Steintor. It was not until the end of the 19th century that a new building was built in the Bult district at Heiligengeiststrasse 20. The Heilig-Geist-Spital and Stift with the Office of Gardens and Enclosure has been there since 2001, according to the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, with its “historical importance due to of testimony and display value for building and art history” under monument protection.
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Heilig-Geist-Stift got its listed new building in 1895
In the beginning, the hospital was intended to house poor strangers and travelers, as well as shelter and care for the blind and lame. In addition, from 1300 onwards, it is also used today as a nursing home for the elderly. After almost 50 people lived in the monastery in the 17th and 18th centuries, from the mid-19th century only needy women were taken in – until the new building on the Bult.
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With the building erected in 1895 by architect Karl Börgemann, the capacity was expanded to 200 people. The E-shaped complex consists of a representatively designed main building and three parallel wings connected at the rear. The facades of the three-storey building are covered with “rich brick ornamentation and structures in neo-Gothic forms”, according to the preservationists. The interior of the building, which received individual chambers instead of the traditional dormitories in 1929 and was modernized in 1970, also has monumental value.
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Rats- and von Soden-Kloster limits the pen to the Holy Spirit
The Stift zum Heiligen Geist is surrounded by “a larger park-like garden surrounded by a cast-iron fence”. The buildings are all completely coordinated in terms of shape and colour. In the north, the Heilig-Geist-Stift and -Spital is limited by the adapted, simultaneously created new building of the Rats- and von Soden-Kloster – which is also a monument.