[8] The deed of 1 May 1255, empowering the convent's Provost Albertus to steward its possessions and waiving the prince-archiepiscopal overlordship,[11] explicitly mentions the donation of Großenwörden village by Frederick of Haseldorf, later canon at the Hamburg subchapter, who in 1250 on the occasion of joining clergy bestowed part of the allodial holdings of his family (extinct in the 1280s) in the Lamstedt Geest and the Oste Marshes on the nunnery.

[10] The capitular deed also declared that the convent held all its possessions, donated by whom so ever, only by the virtue of the Bremen cathedral chapter, thus denying any exemption from territorial prince-archiepiscopal sovereignty.

[25] Besides the provost there was also a (ad)vocate (German: Vogt), exerting military protection,[26] managing the Vorwerke, and exercising police function in the convent's jurisdictions.

After having become Regent of Hadeln Magnus, the heir apparent of Saxe-Lauenburg, on 24 November 1498 allied with his father John V and Henry IV, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg in order to conquer the Land of Wursten,[32] an autonomous peasants' corporation under the loose Bremian prince-archiepiscopal overlordship.

[41] Under the squandering reign of Prince-Archbishop Christopher the Spendthrift [de] the indebted ruler in 1541 ceded his revenues from Porta Coeli to his Chancery Secretary Steffen vom Stein for three years in lieu of a repayment.

[45] "The ancestors primarily dedicated, founded and endowed noble … monasteries with estates so that their descendants … who had no desire or were uncomfortable to get married, could be admitted to them and sustained in them.

[55] Prioress Gerdruth von Campe informed Provost Franz Marschalck, then residing in safe Bremen out of reach for the Leaguist occupants and the Restitution Commission, who on 8/18 October 1629O.S./N.S.

[56] The subdelegates found the abbey church untouched with all its furnishings, such as altars, religious paintings, pews, paraments, chasubles and other liturgical devices.

[23] Marschalck pleaded the Restitution Commission to have mercy on the conventuals who on their entry into the convent had bestowed estates or revenues on it and were without any means if expelled.

the three men, now coming from Stade, arrived again in Himmelpforten and the day after they requested the conventuals to leave their convent since they all steadfastly held on to the Lutheran faith.

[65][67] Thereafter the three men formally seized the convent in favour of the new Jesuit college founded in Stade in order to Catholicise the local population.

on the diet in Basdahl the estates of the prince-archbishopric rejected that, but allowed the Administrator regnant to collect the revenues of the monasteries until the Thirty Years' War would end.

[73] In 1646 Prioress Gerdruth von Campe started recompleting the set of liturgical devices and donated a new chalice, and two years later her fellow conventual Anna Voß bestowed a new paten on the convent, both till this day owned by the Lutheran parish.

[76] By the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 the prince-archiepiscopal elective monarchy was secularised as the heritable Duchy of Bremen, which was jointly ruled with the new Principality of Verden, as Bremen-Verden, since both imperial fiefs were bestowed on the Swedish crown.

[71] By the 1650s the previous religious bodies, such as the Lutheran cathedral chapter or the archdeaconries, had been abolished, their revenues mostly confiscated, with only few of them not granted to Swedish war veterans.

[80] The secondary schools in Himmelpforten (Hauptschule and Realschule), founded in 1966, and on 27 November 1975 moved to its present location, have later commonly adopted the Latin name Porta-Coeli-School [nds] (PCS).

[81] Since the enfeoffment of Count Lewenhaupt/Löwenhaupt with the former convent this seigniorial entity with its three Vorwerke, its socage farmers and revenues from dues and fines in its jurisdictions was called the Amt Himmelpforten.

[83] Under the Brandenburgian-Lunenburgian occupation (1675–1679) during the Bremen-Verden Campaign billeting (in Himmelpforten mostly Münster troops staying 11 weeks[84]) and requisitioning goods impoverished the area, with most revenues anyway lacking as they had been already previously deducted for Count Gustaf Mauritz Lewenhaupt/Löwenhaupt (1651–1700), the conventuals did not get their annuities and the convent buildings reached a stage of progressed dilapidation.

[90] In 1684 the reestablished Bremen-Verden general government ordered a greater repair of the decayed former abbey church, and also the remaining convent buildings were restored to some extent, all carried out by the socage farmers.

[93] In 1715 they ceded Bremen-Verden to their ally Great Britain-Hanover for Rtlr 600,000, which in 1719 again compensated Sweden with Speziestaler[94] 1,000,000 for its loss, thus gaining the Swedish consent.

[96] In the subsequent years the government of British-Hanoverian Bremen-Verden demolished and rebuilt all the remaining convent buildings, such as the church (1738), the schoolhouse, the mill, the bailiff's office and the pastorate.

[99] In 1813 after the French annexation the Amt Himmelpforten was restituted, and Bremen-Verden was reestablished too, however, all its grown local peculiarities in administration were levelled when this Hanoverian province became the High-Bailiwick of Stade in 1823.

The Amt, having lost its seignorial character through the abolition of feudalism in the 18th and 19th century (In the Kingdom of Hanover farmers became proprietors of the land they tilled in 1832.

[113] After the jail was relocated to Stade the chairman of the Ortsarmenkasse (local poor relief fund) lived in the janitor's house, later the court usher, before the building, then the last of the original convent, was demolished in 1877/1878.

[18] The nunnery ran three Vorwerke, outlying agricultural farm estates employing farmhands and additionally farmers obliged to serjeanty.

A deed of 17 March 1291 shows the oldest preserved version of the nunnery's seal,[19] the model to today's coat of arms used by the municipality of Himmelpforten.

The Amt Himmelpforten, however, used an altered variant of that coat of arms showing in the arch instead of the nun the ducal Bremian Saint Peter's crosswise keys.

[4] Its landed estates and other revenue-yielding assets did not form a closed compound but were dispersed in the central and northeastern part of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen (Stade Geest and Bremian Elbe Marshes).

The (ad)vocates (German: Vogt/Vögte), exerted military protection,[26] managed the Vorwerke, and exercised police functions in the convent's jurisdictions.

[27] Thus they had to prevent farmers from poaching, pasturing on nunnery's land, forbidden lumbering and peat-cutting and to pursue culprits, furthermore they collected the dues and leases.