Marienstern

Saint Marienstern is a Cistercian convent in Upper Lusatia, founded in 1248 by the lords of Kamenz. Its estates included more than two dozen villages, many of them Sorbian, as well as the small towns of Wittichenau and Bernstadt. The convent remained Catholic through the Reformation, as did several local parishes under its ecclesiastical patronage.

When Upper Lusatia passed from Bohemia to electoral Saxony in 1635, an agreement protected the Catholic foundation under its new Protestant ruler. The devastating Thirty Years' War nevertheless reached Marienstern: Swedish soldiers plundered and damaged the convent in 1639, and the nuns fled to Blesen in Poland. The community of nuns survived the war and continued its religious life even after other monasteries nearby were dissolved during secularization.