Dießen am Ammersee (

Southern Bavarian Southern Bavarian or South Bavarian, is a cluster of Upper German dialects of the Bavarian group. They are primarily spoken in Tyrol (i.e. the Austrian federal state of Tyrol and the Italian province of South Tyrol), in Carinthia and in t ...

: ''Diaßn am Ammasä'') is a municipality in the district of Landsberg in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. It is located on the shores of the

Ammersee Ammersee (; English: Lake Ammer) is a '' Zungenbecken'' lake in Upper Bavaria, Germany, southwest of Munich between the towns of Herrsching and Dießen am Ammersee. With a surface area of approximately , it is the sixth largest lake in Germany ...

Geography

Situated in the Bavarian Alpine Foreland the town stretches from the shores of the

to the forested morainic hills of the

Saale The Saale (), also known as the Saxon Saale ( ) and Thuringian Saale (), is a river in Germany and a left-bank tributary of the Elbe. It is not to be confused with the smaller Fränkische Saale, Franconian Saale, a right-bank tributary of the M ...

and

Würm glaciation The Würm glaciation or Würm stage ( or ''Würm-Glazial'', colloquially often also ''Würmeiszeit'' or ''Würmzeit''; cf. ice age), usually referred to in the literature as the Würm (often spelled "Wurm"), was the last glacial period in the ...

. The town area consists of the

market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rura ...

of Dießen (with St. Georgen, Wengen, Ziegelstadel, Bischofsried and Seehof) and the former independent boroughs of Rieden (with Riederau, Bierdorf, Lachen, St. Alban and Romenthal), Dettenschwang (with Oberhausen, Unterhausen, Wolfgrub and Abtsried), Dettenhofen (with Pitzeshofen, Engenried, Hübschenried and Ummenhausen) and Obermühlhausen (with Oberbeuern, Unterbeuern and Schlöglhof).

History

In Roman times the Via Raetia passed through the area of the modern town. The first documentary mention of the village "Diezen" dates from 1039, the name meaning waterfall. From 1050 on a local nobility is mentioned, the family of the Counts of Dießen-Andechs. The counts had their castle on the south of the town on the Schatzberg and in the years between 1121 and 1127, they founded the Dießen monastery. Around 1140 the family moved to Wolfratshausen and left the town to the monastery though they still acted as bailiffs. With the extinction of the Counts of Andechs in 1248, the Wittelsbacher took over the bailiwick of the monastery. Already in 1251 the place appears as the market town of Diessen. In the course of the war between

Ludwig the Bavarian Louis IV (; 1 April 1282 – 11 October 1347), called the Bavarian (, ), was King of the Romans from 1314, King of Italy from 1327, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1328 until his death in 1347. Louis' election as king of Germany in 1314 was cont ...

and

Frederick the Fair Frederick the Fair () or the Handsome ( – 13 January 1330), from the House of Habsburg, was the duke of Austria and Styria from 1308 as well as the anti-king of Germany from 1314 until 1325 and then co-king until his death. Background Frederi ...

Dießen was burned in 1318 and 1320 by the troops of Duke Leopold. After the victorious

battle of Mühldorf The Battle of Mühldorf (also known as the Battle of Ampfing) was fought near Mühldorf am Inn on September 28, 1322 between the Duchy of (Upper) Bavaria and the Archduchy of Austria. The Bavarians were led by German King Louis of Wittelsbach ...

Ludwig raised the place to Bannmarkt. This meant that until

secularisation In sociology, secularization () is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism or irreligion, nor are they automatica ...

in 1803, there were two strictly separate legal areas in the area of today's township, the ducal and later electoral Bannmarkt Dießen and the Klosterhofmark Dießen-St. Georgen. The market Dießen itself was under the control of ducal, later electoral judges, who also held jurisdiction over the Ammersee and since 1599 also over the forested area west of the town called Forst Bayerdießen. This market judge office even held the blood or high jurisdiction. In the

Thirty Years' War The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from battle, famine ...

the town was plundered by Swedish troops in 1632 and most of its inhabitants fled either to Erlaich island in the lake or the extensive forests around town. In the

War of the Spanish Succession The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict fought between 1701 and 1714. The immediate cause was the death of the childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700, which led to a struggle for control of the Spanish E ...

Dießen was again looted in 1703 by Austrian troops, the population fled again to Erlaich island in the lake. Already in 1704 it came to further raids by hussars. In the years 1743 and 1744 it came again to a cast by Austrian troops. The monastery church, the Marienmünster, was rebuilt in the years 1732 to 1739 by the Baroque master builder Johann Michael Fischer. The monastery was dissolved in 1803 in the course of secularization and parts of the monastery were demolished and most of its land sold off. With the start of steam shipping on the lake and the railroad service from Augsburg to Weilheim towards the end of the 19th century, Dießen became a center of attraction for artists and a center of the arts and crafts movement. From the 1920s onwards the town expanded in all directions with new settlement and building areas.

Dießen Abbey

First foundation

The first documentary mention stems from the year 815, when Rathard founded a monastery in St. Georgen and built the first church there. It was presumably a re-foundation of an older monastery established by the Huosi, since the first larger landed property of the monastery was around the town of Raisting, a heartland of the Huosi. The first monastery was already destroyed in 955 by the marauding Hungarians, the nuns were raped and murdered and the monastery burnt down.

Second foundation

The second monastery, which was consecrated to Our Lady was founded 1132 by the Counts of Dießen. In 1150 the Counts gifted their manor to the new monastery. In 1157, the Counts of Dießen bequeathed to the monastery all their possessions in and around Dießen with all serfs, fish rights and forests. The castle of the Counts went to the monastery too, but with the order to demolish it. While the monastery shortly held the jurisdiction over the town of Dießen, by 1326 the free market won all its rights back. This led to the existence of two clearly separated legal areas in the town. Although the monastery lost jurisdiction over the market around 80 estates were still allodial to the monastery. The jurisdiction area of the Augustiner-Chorherrenstift itself included Raisting, Lachen, Bierdorf, Engenried, St. Alban, Riederau, Rieden, St. Georgen, Wengen, Bischofsried and Pitzeshofen. In the years 1632 and 1634, the monastery was looted by the Swedes, 1704 by troops of the emperor. In 1673 under Provost Renatus Sunday an extension or partial rebuilding of the monastery took place. Under Provost Herkulan Karg the new monastery church was finished in 1739. The monastery was dissolved in 1803 during the

secularization In sociology, secularization () is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism or irreligion, nor are they automatica ...

in Bavaria. Most of the Abbey's possessions were sold to private citizens, only the vast forest was transferred to the state. At the time of the dissolution, 18 convent lords and 5 lay brothers lived in the monastery. In 1917, nuns from Augsburg acquired the surviving convent buildings and operated their mother house there until 1968. In 2014, the monastery was abandoned by the last nuns. Since 2018 the buildings of the Abbey house a

psychosomatic Somatic symptom disorder, also known as somatoform disorder or somatization disorder, is chronic somatization. One or more chronic physical symptoms coincide with excessive and maladaptive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors connected to those symp ...

clinic.

Transport

Railway

Dießen has three stations (, , and ) on the Ammersee Railway. The railway was opened in 1898.

Ammersee shipping

In 1877, twelve Dießen citizens founded the steamship company Ammersee AG. From Easter Sunday to Kirchweih, the four passenger ships of the Bayerische Seenschifffahrt can be used to reach other places on the Ammersee. From Herrsching, located on the eastern shore of the lake, the Munich S-Bahn runs in about 50 minutes via the Munich-Herrsching railway line to Munich Central Station. The oldest passenger ship still in regular service today is the paddle steamer ''Diessen'' launched in 1908.

Sources

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Diessen Am Ammersee Landsberg (district) Ammersee Burial sites of the House of Andechs