Berchtesgaden - Provostry

The Berchtesgaden monastery was founded in 1102 as community of Augustinian Canons by Count Berengar of Sulzbach, a friend of Henry V. The Canons felt nor safe and comfortable in the wild, wooded area - and gave up the place soon after.

They returned with the first Provost Eberwin around 1120 - and started a success story. The monastery became an Imperial abbey in already 1194. In 1380 the provosts achieved the status of an ecclesistical "Reichsfuerst" and in the 1550s they even held a direct vote in the Reichstag assembly as "Prince-Provosts". From the very beginning upto the secularisation of the monastery in 1803 it was open only for the offsprings of noble families, what actually created this political power. In 1810 the territory of the former monastery fell to the newly established Kingdom of Bavaria, so that the House of Wittelsbach could finally transform the monastic buildings into a summer palace.

The former collegiate church "St. Peter and St. John the Baptist" serves as a parish church since 1803.

The most important piece of architecture (for me) is the cloister. Most of the structure survived all the time, and even when the House of Wittelsbach converted the provostry into a summer palace, the old closter stayed untouched. The carving style here is very rough and differs from the sophisticated works seen an St. Zeno, less than 20 kms south. The motifs and symbols found here are very graphic.

Here is a (heraldic?) flower on top. In the center is a mermaid, holding her overlong tail fins with tiny arms. Small fins seem to cover her body like a shirt.
The figure below is even stranger. A human head, with a spiral in the neck (a bandeau?). A fur has grown on his shoulders and the arms end in paws. Actually I have the impression, that this pillar was longer once, as in the right corner may be a part of another paw, what would mean, that the lower part of the body is cut off. A lion/man?