Niederaltaich Abbey

[2] The monastery brought great areas of Lower Bavaria into cultivation as far as the territory of the present Czech Republic, and founded 120 settlements in the Bavarian Forest.

[3] The abbey was granted by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to the Bishop of Bamberg in 1152, and as a consequence lost its reichsunmittelbar status.

[4] Vitus Bacheneder, abbot between 1651 and 1666, created after the Thirty Years' War the foundations of the economic prosperity of the abbey in the Baroque period.

In 1918, with the help of a legacy from the theology professor Franz Xaver Knabenbauer, a native of Niederalteich, a monastery was re-established here and settled from Metten Abbey.

The school itself is now a Ganztagschule, which provides obligatory lessons from 7.45 a.m. until 4.00 p.m.. Niederaltaich Abbey has been a member of the Bavarian Congregation of the Benedictine Confederation since its re-foundation in 1918.

In 1924 Pope Pius XI gave the Benedictines the task of making the theology and spirituality of the east known in the west.

The Eucharist and the Divine Office are celebrated by the monks in the German language in both rites, and in addition, liturgical texts from Church Slavonic and Greek have also been translated.