Feast of Saint Alto of Altomünster

 Saint Alto, a wandering monk founded a small monastery Altomünster  before 760. The vita of Alto reports that the monastery was visited by Saint Boniface, who dedicated the church. Another 11th-century text notes that Boniface also dedicated the church in nearby Benediktbeuern Abbey.

Sometime before 1000 the Welfs enlarged it and made it into a Benedictine abbey. Welf I, Duke of Bavaria resettled the monks in 1056 to the newly founded Weingarten Abbey in Altdorf (now also called Weingarten), while the nuns formerly resident at Altdorf moved to Altomünster, where they lived until the monastery was dissolved in 1488 by Pope Innocent VIII. In 1496 by grant of Duke George the Rich the Bridgettines (Order of the Most Holy Savior (Latin: Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris; abbreviated OSsS) of Maihingen were permitted to establish a Bridgettine monastery at Altomünster. The monastery was dissolved on 18 March 1803 during the secularisation of Bavaria, but was later revived. At the time of its closing, it was the last Bridgettine monastery in Germany

Edited version of Wikipedia entry

A news report from 2015

After 519 years: Altomünster monastery to be dissolved

Altomünster - After 519 years, it's over. The Altomünster convent is dissolved. One Bridgettine sister still lives in the convent, 60-year-old Apollonia Buchinger.

The initial shock has subsided. "The news has spread like wildfire," says Konrad Wagner, mayor of the market town of Altomünster (Dachau district) for 24 years. Wagner is sitting in Café Mair, right in the centre of town, and orders a Pater Simon Pils. Father Simon Hörmann was once an important prior of the Bridgettine Order in Altomünster. The monastery is not only in the middle of the market town, its history is everywhere in the town. In the monastery shop, in the monastery museum, on the street signs - or even on the bottle label of the local brewery. "We were all surprised," says Wagner. A far-reaching decision was made for Altomünster, and no one in the community was allowed to have a say. The decision was made in Rome.

On Wednesday last week, a delegation brought the news from the Vatican Congregation for Religious Affairs. Sister Gabriele Konrad of the Franciscan Order in nearby Schönbrunn was charged with "leading the community on the way to the inevitable dissolution of the monastery". 

Second from right

Whereby community is living at a distance from each other: there is still one Birgitten sister living in the convent, 60-year-old Apollonia Buchinger. A second sister is housed in a nursing home in Munich. Thus, it is no longer possible to form a proper leadership, the decree says. "To train novices, the convent needs at least three sisters who also live in the convent, according to church law," says ordinariate spokesman Christoph Kappes.

The fact that the convent is running out of sisters is not new. From 1947, when 62 nuns lived in Altomünster, the number declined continuously.  (Cathcon: another victim of Vatican II) 

Two years ago, a kind of advisory group was founded, the so-called fratres et sorores ab extra (brothers and sisters from outside), with the purpose of maintaining the convent. Former mayor Wagner is one of them, as is historian Wilhelm Liebhart and District President, Josef Mederer.

Source

Many more details here of the political background

A great sign of spiritual life flickering among the ruins.  There is a blog dedicated to Sister Apollonia and the convent.