Friends sharing Neelum Saran Gour Mams status update : For all SMC-ites! St. Marys Convent Allahabad is planning a grand celebration in 2016 - its hundred and fiftieth year. I was tasked with the job of researching and writing its history. A great pleasure. Here it is: Brief History Of St. Mary’s Convent Allahabad ‘Women in times to come will do great things,’ was what was predicted in 1609 by the Venerable Foundress of St. Mary’s Convent, Mary Ward. Born in England in 1585, she envisioned a monastic order for women, travelling to Flanders, Rome, Munich and Vienna to establish convents of the order in the teeth of religious persecution and bitter oppositions from orthodox lobbies. Initially called the Congregation of Jesus, the organization grew into what is known as the IBMV, the Institution of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In course of time, convents of the order dotted the major countries of Europe, with the greatest concentration in Bavaria in Germany. Political upheavals of the times affected the fortunes of the order, from the English Civil War in the middle of the seventeenth century to the French Revolution and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, all of which adopted an oppositional posture towards this Catholic order. It was in the early nineteenth century that the order found patronage and stability, when in 1835 King Ludwig of Bavaria gifted part of his palace at Nymphenburg in Munich to the order. Nymphenburg came to be the Mother-House or Headquarters of the IBMV. The advent of the order in India owes its origin to the efforts of a remarkable man, born Joseph Louis Hartmann in a Swiss village in the canton of Luzerne, and known as Brother Anastasius Hartmann on assumption of the monastic life. He came to India in 1843 and served as chaplain in Gwalior. A reputation for great piety and commitment led to his elevation to the position of Bishop of the Patna Diocese and also Bishop of Derbe in 1846.Bishop Anastasius Hartmann conceived the idea of opening convents in North India, starting with Bankipore near Patna, which grew to become St. Joseph’s Convent, Patna.. He approached the Nymphenburg Convent for volunteer nuns who wished to come to India. The first batch of sisters came from Burghausen, through Calcutta. A second batch in 1853, destined for Patna , disembarked at Mumbai and undertook an arduous journey by bullock-cart across the extensive territory of India, reaching Patna, where they helped establish St. Joseph’s Convent.Their journey across vast fields, dense jungles infested with wild animals, and across rivers where no bridges existed, crossed in wide barges which accommodated the bullock carts along with their passengers, make awe-inspiring reading. They were young German Catholics ,dressed in classic European convent winter attire – habits made of black serge, cashmere veils, starched tippets and thick stockings and they negotiated the tropical Indian climate, the unfamiliar food and the strange sights with admirable resilience and even enthusiasm. Their names were Mother Marie Groeppner, Sister Angela Hoffman, Sister Catherine Schreibneir, Sister Antoine Feth and Sister Aloysia Macher. Apart from the acclimatization, some of them even had to learn English from the basics in order to work in India. Several subsequent batches of nuns followed, women who had taken the veil and espoused a life of meekness, obedience, chastity, voluntary poverty and service of the poor and suffering. In troubled times, as in the Uprising of 1857 and times of great natural disasters, such as the Bihar earthquake, in famines and floods, these brave sisters have given of their care and mercy unstintingly to abandoned orphans, the old, the sick and the destitute. By 1866 a convent of the IBMV order was established in Phaphamau near Allahabad, through the initiative of Bishop Hartmann. Allahabad had already acquired its first girls’ school in 1863, as mentioned in the Gazette.The first sisters of the new Convent were Mother Thecla von Schmidt, Sister Seraphina Oshorne, Sister Monica Endres, Sister Medarda Baur, Sister Anastasia Weber, Tharsila Hirsch and Joanna Schoenberger.The institution was located in a beautiful wooded estate on the banks of the Ganga. Formerly the site of a gun-powder manufacturing factory, it had been auctioned by the British Government.The convent with its auxiliary boarding school started with only two pupils, Mary Elise and Nina Frizzoni. By 1869 there were 75 boarders. A day school was started at a site on Elgin Road in early 1870. In 1886 the Phaphamow estate was sold to a Nepali prince and the school moved temporarily to Lowther Castle. The new St. Mary’s Convent building on 32 Thornhill Road, now known as the Maharishi Dayanand Marg,was completed towards the close of 1887 and its Oratory formally blest on the 2nd of February, 1888. It had been built by the firm of Frizzoni and had been designed by a certain Mr. Mayer, an employee of the Kanpur-based company. The estimated cost of the building was Rs. 75,000. This spacious red brick building was built on a stretch of leased land offered to the convent by the Catholic Diocese of Allahabad. With its long, stone-flagged corridors, large, shady classrooms, refectory and residential block for sisters, its quiet little chapel and beautiful garden with its flower-decked arbour and grotto, the original St. Mary’s Convent building is now a heritage monument of the city. There were two parallel schools housed in the same campus, St. Anne’s, situated where the present Primary Section is, and St. Mary’s proper. They were run by missionaries and funded both by grants from the British Government and certain local municipal corporations and donations from organizations like the Red Cross. In 1947 the two merged and the renovated St. Anne’s morphed into the Teachers’ Training College in 1950. It later shifted to its present location, yielding space to the Primary School. The school also accommodated boys upto Class 2 and many well known senior citizens trace their first days of education to St. Mary’s Allahabad. The names of iconic Principals remain in the memories of generations of students: Reverend Mother Angela, Reverend Mother Hermine and Reverend Mother Seraphica. Teachers like Sisters Joanna, Pia, Melita, Adelaide, Elizabeth, Bernard, Mary-Paul, Margarita, Eugenia, Mary-Jude and Maria-Goretti are the subjects of shared reminiscence and anecdotage. A Junior Section was added, located on 21 Thornhill Road and started functioning in 1964. The institution celebrated its centenary in 1966. Ever committed to fostering academic competence, both traditional and progressive, alongside social responsibility and informed by an over-all ethical orientation, St. Mary’s Allahabad has produced an impressive number of bureaucrats, doctors, members of the judiciary, academics, performers, engineers, economists and women of substance which are its proud harvest. Celebrities like Smt. Indira Gandhi, Mr. Amitabha Bachchan, Mr. Arjun Singh and Shubha Mudgal are among its alumni. Sources Based on historical data drawn from ‘Records of the Fifty Years Apostleship of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in India’ and a biography of Bishop Hartmann by Father Fulgentius O.F.M.Cap.. The Gazette of 1986 supplied data about the first girls’ school in Allahabad. Personal recall of alumni and a letter from Smt. Indira Gandhi, references from the memoirs of Sri Arjun Singh and a biography of Mr . Amitabha Bachchan are also sources.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 05:24:59 +0000
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