HEILSBRONN (or Kloster-Heilsbronn), a village of Germany, in the Bavarian province of Middle Franconia, with a station on the railway between Nuremberg and Ansbach, has 1200 inhabitants. In the middle ages it was the seat of one of the great monasteries of Germany. This foundation, which belonged to the Cistercian order, owed its origin to Bishop Otto of Bamberg in 1132, and continued to exist till 1555. Its sepulchral monuments, many of which are figured by Hocker, Heilsbronnischer Antiquitätenschatz (Ansbach, 1731–1740), are of exceptionally high artistic interest. It was the hereditary burial-place of the Hohenzollern family and ten burgraves of Nuremberg, five margraves and three electors of Brandenburg, and many other persons of note are buried within its walls. The buildings of the monastery have mostly disappeared, with the exception of the fine church, a Romanesque basilica, restored between 1851 and 1866, and possessing paintings by Albert Dürer. The “Monk of Heilsbronn” is the ordinary appellation of a didactic poet of the 14th century, whose Sieben Graden, Tochter Syon and Leben des heiligen Alexius were published by J. F. L. T. Merzdorf at Berlin in 1870.
See Rehm, Ein Gang durch und um die Münster-Kirche zu Kloster-Heilsbronn (Ansbach, 1875); Stillfried, Kloster-Heilsbronn, ein Beitrag zu den Hohenzollernschen Forschungen (Berlin, 1877); Muck, Geschichte von Kloster-Heilsbronn (Nördlingen, 1879–1880); J. Meyer, Die Hohenzollerndenkmale in Heilsbronn (Ansbach, 1891); and A. Wagner, Über den Mönch von Heilsbronn (Strassburg, 1876).