Ebersberg

Ebersberg lies south of a broad forest in the Bavarian countryside east of Munich. Its history is closely bound to the Benedictine monastery founded in 934 by the counts of Sempt-Ebersberg. From the fourteenth century the monastery exercised local jurisdiction, and its church became a place of pilgrimage dedicated to Saint Sebastian, drawing worshippers to the settlement.

In 1595 Pope Clement VIII dissolved the Benedictine house and transferred it to the Jesuits. The Thirty Years' War reached Ebersberg in 1634, when imperial troops defeated poorly armed local peasants, killing about two hundred; local authorities later held that their leaders had acted in self-defence. The Knights of Malta took over the monastery buildings in 1773. After its final dissolution in 1808, the buildings passed into public and private hands.