Lehnin

Lehnin, a village and health resort of Germany, in the Prussian province of Brandenburg, situated between two lakes, which are connected by the navigable Emster with the Havel, 12 m. S.W. from Potsdam, and with a station on the main line Berlin-Magdeburg, and a branch line to Grosskreuz. Pop. (1900) 2379\. It contains the ruins of a Cistercian monastery called Himmelpfort am See, founded in 1180 and dissolved in 1542; a handsome parish church, formerly the monasterial chapel, restored in 1872-1877; and a fine statue of the emperor Frederick III. Boat-building and saw-milling are the chief industries.

See Heffter, Geschichte des Klosters Lehnin (Brandenburg, 1851); and Sello, Lehnin, Beiträge zur Geschichte von Kloster und Amt (Berlin, 1881).

The Lehnin Prophecy (Lehninsche Weissagung, Vaticinium Lehninense), a poem in 100 Leonine verses, reputed to be from the pen of a monk, Hermann of Lehnin, who lived about the year 1300, made its appearance about 1690 and caused much controversy. This so-called prophecy bewails the extinction of the Ascanian rulers of Brandenburg and the rise of the Hohenzollern dynasty to power; each successive ruler of the latter house down to the eleventh generation is described, the date of the extinction of the race fixed, and the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church foretold. But as the narrative is only exact in details down to the death of Frederick William, the great elector, in 1688, and as all prophecies of the period subsequent to that time were falsified by events, the poem came to be regarded as a compilation and the date of its authorship placed about the year 1684. Andreas Fromm (d. 1685), rector of St Peter’s church in Berlin, an ardent Lutheran, is commonly believed to have been the forger. This cleric, resisting certain measures taken by the great elector against the Lutheran pastors, fled the country in 1668 to avoid prosecution, and having been received at Prague into the Roman Catholic Church was appointed canon of Leitmeritz in Bohemia, where he died. During the earlier part of the 19th century the poem was eagerly scanned by the enemies of the Hohenzollerns, some of whom believed that the race would end with King Frederick William III., the representative of the eleventh generation of the family.

The “Vaticinium” was first published in Lilienthal’s Gelehrtes Preussen (Königsberg, 1723), and has been many times reprinted. See Boost, Die Weissagungen des Mönchs Hermann zu Lehnin (Augsburg, 1848); Hilgenfeld, Die Lehninische Weissagung (Leipzig, 1875); Sabell, Literatur der sogenannten Lehninschen Weissagung (Heilbronn, 1879) and Kampers, Die Lehninsche Weissagung über das Haus Hohenzollern (Münster, 1897).