Himmelpforten (Low Saxon: Himmelpoorten) is a municipality west of Hamburg (Germany) in the district of Stade in Lower Saxony.

[8] When in the mid-16th century the majority of the population in the Prince-Archbishopric adopted Lutheranism, the function of the nunnery, to provide sustenance for unmarried women, wasn't to be given up.

[9] During the Leaguist occupation under Johan 't Serclaes, Count of Tilly (1628-1630), the administrator regnant of the Bremian See, John Frederick had to agree to Catholic visitations in the nunneries.

By November 1629 the Roman Catholic visitors issued an ultimatum to the prioress of the Lutheran conventuals to convert to Catholicism or to leave the nunnery.

[11] In accordance with the Edict of Restitution the estates of Himmelpforten's nunnery were then bestowed to the Catholic Jesuits, in order to finance them and their missioning in the course of the Counter-Reformation in the Prince-Archbishopric.

[14] On 30 July 1651 Lewenhaupt was officially invested with the nunnery,[12] while the eleven still remaining conventuals under Prioress Gertrud von Campe were to be supplied a livelihood until their death.

[22] Himmelpforten is one of Germany's oldest Weihnachtspostämter or Christmas Post Offices, to which children can write letters to Santa and volunteers send responses.