A Forecast Proved Wrong

Wimmer Wednesday. Young Boniface Wimmer goes to Augsburg.

“Secretary of State Wallerstein, who had all the power in his hands in Bavaria at that time, wanted to found a monastery based on his ideas, to which all other Benedictine monasteries of Bavaria were to be subject. For this purpose, he selected the Abbey of St. Stephan in Augsburg which was to be newly founded. “Here the Order is to take over the lyceum and the gymnasium and also make themselves available for other tasks. The former Free Abbey of Ottobeuren is to be reorganized as a priory, and along with Metten, is to come under the control of St. Stephan.” This was the plan of the statesman, and by royal decree of December 20, 1834, the endowment of 50,000 florins which the king had promised for the founding of Metten, was not sent there, but rather to St. Stephan. Father Barnabas Huber was named Abbot by the king (he made profession on November 13, 1794, at Ottobeuren).

“The monks were borrowed, at least temporarily, from the following monasteries: five from Metten, one from Altenburg, three from Einsiedeln, one from Emmaus, two from Gottweig, two from Kremsmünster, one from Lambach, one from St. Lambrecht, one from Marienberg, three from Melk, one from Michaelbeuren, one from Muri, one from the Scottish monastery in Vienna, and three from Seitenstetten. This was the reason why Father Boniface Wimmer and his four confreres from Metten were also transferred to the new St. Stephan Abbey in October 1835. The Secretary called the fathers of Augsburg ‘the cheerful Benedictines.’

When he had been in Metten on a previous occasion, he had uttered (the fortunately non-prophetic words), ‘Metten, you won’t amount to anything.'”

—From Boniface Wimmer, Abbot of Saint Vincent in Pennsylvania, translated by Dr. Maria Von Mickwitz and Father Warren Murrman, O.S.B., editor.