Aloisiuskolleg, Bonn

1981, meter stamp for the Jesuit co-educational St. Aloysius College in Bonn

The University of Dillingen

GERMANY, 1965, postal card of the Golden Hall at the University of Dillingen

The University of Dillingen, which existed from 1551 to 1803, was located in Swabia, then a district of Bavaria. It was founded as the College of St. Jerome by Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, Prince-Bishop of Augsburg, and then in 1551 raised by Pope Julius III to the status of a university with the privileges enjoyed by other universities. Emperor Charles V ratified these privileges, and the formal inauguration took place 21 May, 1554. In 1563 Bishop Otto gave the Jesuits, whose provincial then was Peter Canisius, charge of the instruction in the university, and authorized them to follow their own rules in all that pertained to organization and administration. But the cathedral chapter of Augsburg would not admit the legality of this complete transfer, and disputes often arose. Nevertheless the chapter paid regularly the sums stipulated in the original document of transfer, and finally accepted the transfer as arranged June 14, 1606. In 1773 the Society of Jesus was suppressed, and their activity as professors came to an end. Thereafter the university was directly under the bishop. For the new scholastic year other professors, some of whom were ex-Jesuits, were installed; but theology and canon law were taught by secular priests exclusively. The former Jesuit college took the name "Academic House." In 1803 the Elector of Bavaria abolished the University of Dillingen. In its place other educational institutions came into existence. The Golden Hall was created in the year 1688/89 as the auditorium of the university, and was decorated in the years 1761-64 in the ornate shapes of the late Rococo with the entire ceiling covered in murals. This was both a prayer and meeting room for the Sodality of Our Lady and assembly hall for the university for the major events of the academic year. It is used today for concerts and festive events.

Maria Laach Abbey, Eifel

  
GERMANY, 1956, the 8th centenary of the abbey, Scott 747
GERMANY, 1996, a tourism issue showing the abbey on the lake in Eifel, Scott 1807

 
GERMANY, 1993, celebrating the 9th centenary of Maria Laach & Bursfelde, and its FDI cancel.
It also appears on the postal card below, Scott 1781

The Benedictine Maria Laach Abbey (Abbatia Beatæ Mariae Virginis ad lacum) was dissolved by secularization in 1802, and was bought by the Jesuits in January 1863. It became a college, a house of writers, a place of learned meetings. Students of philosophy came from Aachen, the theologians came from Paderborn. By the end of the year more than 175 Jesuits lived here. Jesuits here produced seven volumes of the Collectio Lacensis (Decrees of the Councils), the Philosophia Lacensis library, the learned publication Stimmen aus Maria-Laach which has been called the Stimmen der Zeit since 1914. In 1865 a vault was built under the St. Joseph Chapel where the bodies of 14 Jesuits still rest. However, during the Kulturkampf, on 5 July 1872, the Jesuits were expelled. The Society returned the abbey to the Benedictines in 1892.

The Jesuit Church and College, Ellwangen

 
WUERTTEMBERG, 1920, Scott O-169, O-173

The Jesuit church and college at Ellwangen have now both passed into other hands, but they may be seen on these stamps to the left of the famous shrine of Our Lady of Loretto and below the word Volksstaat.

The Jesuit College, Ingolstadt

GERMANY, 1986 postal card featuring a University of Ingolstadt building

   
GERMANY, 2006, the 12th centenary of Ingolstadt, Scott 2372 and its FDI cancel
GERMANY, 2016, a cancel for the "Feast for Pure Beer" the 5th centenary of a state order signed by the Bavarian royal duke William IV in Ingolstadt at the end of April, 1516, the oldest, still current food law in the world statiung that Bavarian beer can only contain hops, water and barley. The college and tower are at the left.

In 1549, with the approval of Paul III, Peter Canisius, Salmeron, Claude Lejay, and other Jesuits were appointed to professorships in theology and philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt. In 1688 the teaching in the university's Faculty of Philosophy passed entirely in the hands of the Jesuits. Until 1773 the Order profoundly influenced the development and direction of the university, making it one of the most important in Catholic Germany. They also began in 1549 a college and a boarding school for boys, but left in 1552 when the college promised them by Duke Wilhelm V was not realized. The building in which they taught from 1549 to 1552 appears on the above postal card, FDI cancel, and if one looks closely enough on the stamp itself. They returned in 1556 having made new arrangements with Wilhelm's successor, Duke Albrecht and founded a gymnasium (high school), and in 1576 Albrecht established the Jesuit college. The Jesuit mission in Ingolstadt lasted until the Suppression in 1773.

The Munich School of Philosophy

GERMANY, 2011, meter stamp for the Jesuit School of Philosophy in Munich

The Munich School of Philosophy, which has resided since 1971 in Munich, at Kaulbachstrasse, was originally founded by Father (later Cardinal) Augustin Bea as the Berchmanskolleg in 1925, in the town of Pullach. The school received accreditation by the Bavarian state government as a school for instruction in the priesthood in 1925. The Vatican in 1932 raised the school to a Faculty of Philosophy in Canon Law, thereby enabling it to confer the doctoral degree in philosophy upon its students, who were at that time all Jesuits in formation, from the German-speaking Jesuit provinces and from around the world. Since 1945 non-Jesuit students have also been enrolled. The school moved to its present location in the center of Munich in 1971, so as to be able to offer its courses and programs to all students interested in philosophy. Since then, the name Berchmanskolleg is no longer used for the school, but it continues to be the name of the nearby Jesuit residence, where most of the Jesuit professors and student live. At present approximately 600 students of philosophy are enrolled at the school, the majority of them not members of the Jesuit Order, and now including women and international students.

The Church of St. Michael and the Jesuit College, Passau

GERMANY, 1984, postal card featuring the twin towers and red roof of the church and the college (the white building to its right);
three smaller postal card images are shown below

Passau in Bavaria is a town where three rivers meet: the Ilz, the Danube and the Inn. Just west of their confluence on the northern shore of the Inn River is the former Jesuit College of Passau, now the Gymnasium Leopoldinum, and the former Jesuit Church of St. Michael.

Prince Bishop Leopold V, Archduke of Further Austria, brought the Jesuits to Passau in 1611, where they established a collegium, designed by the Alsacian Jesuit priest Johannes Isfording from Molsheim. It was both a high school and the diocesan seminary. The Jesuits, in fact, controlled the education of the diocesan clergy of Passau until 1766, just before the Suppression. The library of the college has since then become the Staatliche Bibliothek Passau (Passau State Library), home to an extraordinary collection of 360,000 books, including more than five hundred incunabula and 320 manuscripts, a number of them dating to the thirteenth century, and exquisitely illuminated.

After the first church, built in 1612, fell victim to the city fire of 1662, the two-towered Church of St. Michael was built between 1665-1678 according to the designs of Italian architect Pietro Francesco Carlone, who also designed the Church of St. Ignatius in Linz. A chapel dedicated to St. Francis Xavier is attached to the west front. The church was decorated in Baroque style by the Italian stucco artist, Giovanni Battista Carlone, clearly influenced by the work in Rome of Gianlorenzo Bernini. Thus the church became the pioneer of high Baroque decoration north of the Alps. The Jesuits deliberately imported these forms of Italian Baroque, hoping to confirm and deepen the Catholic faith of the city.

The church and the college can be discerned on a stamp and three other postal cards below (if you look closely enough).

   
GERMANY, 2000, Scott 2072
AUSTRIA, 2014, a personalized show stamp
St. Michael's towers and the college are visible in both behind the two towers of the Niedernburg Convent.

  

  

   
GERMANY, 1977, 1982 , and 1993, postal cards (Ganzsachen) showing the church and college.

Kolleg St. Blasien, St. Blasien

1996, meter stamp from Kolleg St. Blasien, a Jesuit secondary school in St. Blasien.
2009, meter stamp honoring the 75th anniversary of Kolleg St. Blasien. More

The Jesuit Church & College, Straubing

2006, show cancel for the 250th anniversary of Mathias van Flurl, founder of Baverian mineralology and geology to the left of Mathias is an image of the Jesuit church in Straubing and to its left a bit of the Jesuit college of Straubing (today a police department) that Mathias had attended beginning in 1768.
The Jesuits arrived in Straubing in 1631 and transformed the Gothic church into a Baroque church.

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