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Historical dates

ca. 1182 A Benedictine Monastery grows out of a community of hermits in the Eiberger Forest under the sponsorship of the Margrave Heinrich von Ronsberg. The convent finds its first homestead on the Irsee Castle Mountain.
1190 - 1195 Church and Monastery newly erected in its present location at the foot of the mountain.  
1209 Innocenz III takes the monastery under papal protection.  
13. Cent. Papal, royal and pontifical documents affirm the rights and possessions of the monastery.  
13. - 16. Cent. After the Ronsbergers die out, the gentlemen von Kem-nat, von Ramschwag and von Benzenau carry out the prefecture. With purchases and gifts the monastery establishes an area of sovereignty over the villages of Irsee, Eggenthal, Baisweil, Lauchdorf, Schlingen, Ketterschwang, Rieden, Pforzen, Leinau and Mauerstetten and the hamlets which belong to them.
1525 Rebellious peasants devastate the monastery.  
until 1535 Reconstruction of the church and monastery on the pre-Baroque premises.  
1551 The royal monastery Kemptem purchases the Irsee prefecture.
1632 - 1648 The monastery and its subjects suffer greatly under the plundering, levies and extortion of the 30 years war.  
1662 Cloister Irsee purchases the rights of the prefecture from the Imperial Monastery of Kempten.  
1685 Irsee merges together with the monasteries of Füssen, Ottobeuren, Fultenbach, Donauwörth, Elchingen, Deggingen und Neresheim into the Lower Swabian Benedictine congregation of Holy Spirit.  
1692 Irsee attains within its area of jurisdiction the power over life and death and now carries out full sovereignty.
1699 - 1704 New construction of the monastery church according to plans of Franz Beer.  
1707 - 1730 The Baroque monastery facility is newly established under Abbot Willibald Grindel.
around 1750 Cloister Irsee is regarded as the most important place of scientific knowledge and the cultivation of music. The Museum of Mathematics is held in high esteem.  
1802/03 Cloister Irsee is disbanded in the course of secularization.  
1804 Royal Bavarian Treasurer's Office.  
1849 Opening of the first Swabian regional insane asylum.  
1876 The Irsee Asylum becomes part of the new regional mental care facility in Kaufbeuren.  
1939 - 1945 The inhuman race ideology of the National Socialists and the resulting activities for the "extermination of worthless life" also affect Irsee: More than 2000 patients [adults and children] from Kaufbeuren/Irsee are deported to extermination facilities, die upon order of a fat free starvation diet [E-diet] or are directly killed as a result of injections and overdoses of medications.
1949 The director of the institution and numerous nursing staff are sentenced.  
1972 The Irsee division for psychically ill is disbanded. The last patients leave the house.  
1974 The State Parliament of Swabia decides on the restoration of the Monastery facility and the new conditions of use as educational centre, bearing in mind its tradition of Benedictine spirituality.  
1981 The Swabian Conference and Educational Center Cloister Irsee [Schwäbisches Tagungs- und Bildungszentrum Kloster Irsee] opens its doors.