Original Shrine

The history of the original Shrine spans centuries. The earliest written mention dates from 1143. At that time a cemetery chapel dedicated to St Michael adjoined the old “Covenant of Our Lady of Schoenstatt”. This chapel was destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War and rebuilt in 1681 - only to be leveled again, this time by Napoleon’s invading army. Later it was restored as a place for private devotions and eventually passed into the hands of the Pallottine Fathers.

In 1914 the chapel became a meeting place of the Marian Sodality, a student group at the Pallotine Seminary under the spiritual direction of Father Joseph Kentenich. On October 18 of that same year he inspired the young students to seal a Covenant of Love with Mary, the Blessed Mother. Together they offered her their sincere striving for holiness and asked her in return to make the chapel a place of pilgrimage where she would work her miracles of transformation.

In this way the chapel became a place of grace. A simple way of expressing the covenant of love is “Nothing with you - nothing without us”, that is, nothing without God’s guidance, grace and intervention, and nothing without the human response of love and cooperation.

Schoenstatt’s history and spirituality have unfolded throughout the years in spite of persecution under the Nazi regime and a period of trial during which the Church investigated the Movement.

In 1947 the Church officially recognized the Schoenstatt Shrine as a place of pilgrimage. Since World War II more than 160 exact replicas of the shrine have been built on five different continents.