Dr. Felicitas von Aretin

Experience the World of Monasteries

A thoughtful, richly illustrated book—for anyone who is curious about special places and special people.

Gerhard Richter’s world-famous stained-glass windows in Germany’s oldest monastery, Tholey Abbey. A fully booked conference hotel in the former Seeon Monastery. A 24-year-old woman who, in the prime of her life, decides to enter the monastery.

The journalist and author Felicitas v. Aretin takes us on a journey to ten of her favorite monasteries in her richly illustrated book Experiencing Monastic Worlds: Between Heaven and Today—and shows how vibrant and diverse these places can be today when they embrace change as an opportunity.

Many places have long since been abandoned, such as Hornbach Abbey—now an innovative family hotel—or Eberbach Abbey, famous for its vineyards and *The Name of the Rose*. And yet, the centuries-old silence can be felt everywhere—as can the art that breathes new life into these special places: At Tholey Abbey, Reute Monastery, and the headquarters of “missio Munich,” for example, v. Aretin encounters the Muslim artist Mahbuba Maqsoodi, who has completely reinterpreted stained-glass windows and mosaics there. At Chorin Monastery , a lost monastic culture is brought to life digitally and analog
, while at Lüne Monastery, a Protestant women’s community cares for spectacular art treasures.

“I am fascinated by how (former) monasteries can become modern spaces for dialogue, hospitality, and the transmission of values—values that our society and each and every one of us needs in a crisis-ridden world,” says Felicitas v. Aretin. She has already taken an in-depth look behind monastery walls on two occasions: in *Starke Schwestern* (published by Herder Verlag) and, together with the artist-monk and prior of the Europakloster, Brother Thomas Hessler, in *Mein Rückzug in die Welt*.