Ortenburg, Bavaria

Ortenburg is situated in the forested area south of the Danube and north of the Rott. It is one of the main centres of population in the Lower Bavarian Upland. The majority of the municipality is located in the Wolfach Valley and the Wolfach itself runs directly through Ortenburg.

The market town lies 20 km west of Passau, 10 km south of Vilshofen an der Donau, 12 km northwest of Bad Griesbach and 20 km north of Pocking.

The closest municipalities are Haarbach, Beutelsbach, Vilshofen an der Donau, Fürstenzell, and Bad Griesbach im Rottal.

The municipality of Ortenburg consists of the market town of Ortenburg and more than 100 villages, hamlets and isolated settlements.

The most relevant villages are Dorfbach, Göbertsham, Holzkirchen, Königbach, Neustift, Oberiglbach, Sammarei, Söldenau and Unteriglbach.

Neustift is home to the St. Scholastika monastery, which is the motherhouse of the Bavarian Province of the Benedictine Sisters of Adoration in Germany.

File:Wallfahrtskirche Sammarei.jpg

Sammarei (Bavarian for: St. Mary) is a Catholic place of pilgrimage. The Sammarei pilgrimage church was built by Isaak Bader and consecrated in 1631. The original chapel is still preserved behind an iconostasis-like altar wall. It contains the baroque high altar from 1772 with the miraculous image from 1631. Around the chapel there are around 1300 votive images which illustrate the importance of this place of pilgrimage. The main and side altars are merged to form a monumental five-part altar wall.

File:Ortenburg-1620.jpg by Friedrich Casimir.]]

Set in the Wolfach River valley, Ortenburg can look back over a 900-year history. In about 1120 it was established by the Counts of Ortenburg (De). At the same time, the upwardly mobile von Kamm family appeared on the scene. However, during the thirteenth century, the von Kamms relocated to Hals (now a quarter of Passau). The Ortenburg counts, whose own origins lay with the Spanheimer dynasty, were keen to establish their own separate dynastic centre and such the Imperial County of Ortenburg kept its Imperial immediacy until 1806.

The Ortenburgs were among the most powerful of the Bavarian nobility, competing in terms of power and position with the Wittelsbach dynasty. During the height of their power, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Ortenburgs held lands from as far south as the Brixen valley, that extended also far into the Upper Palatinate.

Smuggling across the border

Bibles (Martin Luther) to Habsburg: Hans Ungnad von Weißenwolff, Freiherr von Sonneck, Hans III (1493–1564), famous Bible printer and smuggler in Bad Urach[https://www.swp.de/suedwesten/landespolitik/unterwegs-auf-den-alten-pfaden-der-bibelschmuggler-23566017.html Smuggler in German] Smuggler, translator and Slovene refugee Protestant preacher Primož Trubar, who published the first books in Slovene and is regarded as the key consolidator of the Slovene identity, lived in Tübingen Derendingen. In The Free Imperial City (German: Freie Reichsstadt) bibles and the Ortenburger Ratschlag was produced.

The original chalice in the protestant worship is still in use in Ortenburg. In this time the church of Ortemburg was the only reachable protestant church outside the border Crypto-Protestantism of Habsburg Empire.

The Mostbauern of Ortenburg (orchard meadow farmers) came as grower and cellar master protestant refugees from Austria.

• Heinrich Deubel (1890–1962), Nazi SS Dachau concentration camp commandant

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File:Schloss Ortenburg.jpg

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Category:Passau (district)

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