In 1183, two brothers, Berengar and Konrad von Schussenried, unmarried members of the
House of Hohenstaufen, donated their holdings – a castle, two nearby mills, a parish church, and even their family coat of arms – to the
Premonstratensian Order. The brothers also joined the Order, and were themselves joined in the latter half of the year by 12
canons and a
provost sent from
Weissenau Abbey to establish a new monastery. Construction began around 1185, and was complete enough by 1188 to allow the burials of Berengar and the provost in the nave of the abbey church. Konrad was also laid to rest in the church three years later. A dispute began at this time with the that resulted in Schussenried's monks fleeing to Weissenau Abbey, where they sought the legal aid of
Pope Celestine III. With the help of the
Bishop of Constance, an agreement was reached in 1205 that allowed Schussenried's monks to return to their monastery. Further security for the abbey was achieved when
Pope Innocent III granted Schussenried his protection on 13 February 1211 and when it was made an
imperial abbey and given control of customs in its territories by Emperor
Frederick II, in 1227. The
general chapter of the Premonstratensian Order itself officially raised Schussenried to the status of abbey in 1440. In 1240, Schussenried was freed from having to recognize a
vogt, though it still received, in 1452, the protection of the knight
Georg, Truchsess von Waldburg. This was replaced by the 15th century with that of the Holy Roman Emperor himself. Schussenried was freed from the legal jurisdiction of other states as early as 1487, and its abbot was allowed to attend Reichstags by 1497. Legal freedom was followed in 1512 with jurisdiction over
high courts in its territories, which was expanded to blood courts in 1521. All cases in Schussenried's territory thereafter would be tried by a local judiciary, for whom a courthouse was built on the abbey's grounds in 1513. Schussenried joined the of Imperial abbeys in 1538. With the abbey's existence secure by the 1220s, Schussenried's monks sought to make it economically independent as well. From 1224 to 1253, Schussenried Abbey purchased estates in the nearby villages of Hopferbach, , Laimbach, Schwaigfurt, , , , Sattenbeuren, and Eggatsweiler. Further expansion took place over the 14th and 15th centuries via the acquisition of
patronage rights in and eventual annexation of , Reichenbach, , Steinhausen-Muttensweiler,
Oggelshausen, ,
Allmannsweiler, Otterswang,
Attenweiler, and
Eberhardzell. Until the 15th century, the brothers of the abbey were minor noblemen from these towns and after that period were mostly local gentry. As monks at Schussenried, they would also administer to the local parishes, part of the Premonstratensian . Several abbots were from those towns as well, but the majority came from larger Swabian towns. The number of
novices at Schussenried at any given time was between 15 and 20, peaking at 45 in the 18th century. These men were educated at Schussenried and other Premonstratensian monasteries, though most of them after 1550 were taught by the Jesuits at the in
Dillingen an der Donau, and some acquired degrees from the universities of
Tübingen,
Freiburg,
Heidelberg, and
Rome. There was little construction at Schussenried during the 16th century, but it survived the
Protestant Reformation and
German Peasants' War. Abbot Matthäus Rohrer, in office from 1621 to 1653, reconstructed the eastern portion of the monastery until the outbreak of an illness in 1628 amongst the monks later attributed to poisoned wine. During the
Swedish phase of the
Thirty Years' War, Schussenried was forced to quarter Swedish troops. When those troops, under the command of
Carl Gustaf Wrangel, withdrew in 1647, they set fire to the monastery. The only portions of the complex that survived were the library, the monastery's entrance hall, and the nave of the church. With profits from emergency sales, the monks installed a new roof over the church in 1649–50. Reconstruction of the abbey was completed in 1660 under Abbot Augustinus Arzet.
New Monastery In 1700, Abbot Tiberius Mangold commissioned the Austrian architect to create a plan for a new abbey church. Thumb's plans were extensive, including four courtyards, and the existing Church of St. Magnus was to be renovated. Further work was made impossible by the
War of the Spanish Succession, which began in 1701 and cost the monastery 297,000
gulden between the quartering of soldiers and monetary seizures. It wasn't until 1714 that Abbot Tiberius was able to continue his renovations, placing an order for new choir stalls from the master Swabian woodcarver . The delivery of the stalls in 1717 began a remodeling of the abbey church in the
Baroque style that would last until 1748. On 20 March 1748, famed Baroque architect
Dominikus Zimmermann submitted a plan for the New Monastery. With that plan came a
scale model with an area of by and removable floors and roofs. His workshop made another model in 1760 of the outer area and its two complexes of workshops. Zimmerman and his brother
Johann Baptist had already worked for Schussenried Abbey at from 1727 to 1733. Zimmermman's plans were accepted, but a local, Jakob Emele, was charged with their execution in 1749. Only about a third of Zimmerman's designs were made reality before the monastery ran out of funds in 1763, and the abbot dismissed. The 16th century courthouse was replaced with a prison built in 1758.
Secularization In 1803,
Napoleon Bonaparte annexed the
Left Bank of the Rhine, and
compensated disadvantaged German princes with the territories of smaller states in the former Holy Roman Empire. Among the former were the
Counts of Sternberg-Manderscheid, who received the Imperial Abbeys of Schussenried and
Ochsenhausen. Schussenried Abbey was awarded to the county on 25 February 1803, and it became a residence for the Counts of Sternberg-Manderscheid. The Counts kept 18 of the 30 monks to look after its grounds, but sold much of the Abbeys' inventory and demolished its eastern portion. Three years later, Sternberg-Manderscheid was mediatized into the newly raised
Kingdom of Württemberg, to whom the Counts sold the Abbey on 1 April 1835. King
William I, as part of his social welfare programs, established a
foundry in 1840 and a nursing home in 1875 on the abbey grounds. The nursing home became the State Psychiatric Hospital of Bad Schussenried, where
Gustav Mesmer was held until 1949. The hospital moved out of the New Monastery in 1997, and the foundry ceased operations in 1998. ==Grounds and architecture==