for property outside town at 1,400 ducats. He could pay, thanks to Br. Zacharias’ successful promotion and learned to find his way in a country under Turkish rule.
Abbot Francis:
“The government did not employ surveyors; instead, natural landmarks such as brooks, ditches, rivers, dirt roads, peculiar trees and huge stones served as boundaries. Our property was about 700 to 800 ac (48 40 sq. yd.). Thus with the stroke of a pen, I became a notable landowner in the Ottoman Empire.”
The property Fr. Francis had acquired overlooked the Vrbas River. It proved to be rich in stone, silica, timber and firewood, while the Vrbas and the smaller Raskovac River had water enough to generate power for the trade shops he planned to build. Except for a few tenants, no one lived in Delibasino selo, the local name for the place. Fr. Francis described it in an article he sent to the “Vorarlberger Volksblatt”. (gazette) within days of their arrival:
1869: Fr. Francis Pfanner on horseback in front of the temporary shelter, the cradle of Mariastern near Banjaluka in Bosnia
“For the time being we live in a stable which belongs to one of our tenants. We plan to build a temporary monastery to enable us to observe our rule, but it cannot be done in a hurry.”
Forty years later he remembered:
“After a tough two-year struggle a stable was all I had to offer my Brothers. We moved in on 21 June 1869 and were finally able to lay our weary heads on ground we could call our own. There wasn’t much else, for there was no straw to be found anywhere. So with our pen knives we cut bracken, dried it in the sun and spread it on the bare ground as mattresses … We did not need windows, because even while the door, hewn of warped raw timbers and barely held together with wooden nails, was closed, abundant light came in through cracks and crevices … The floor consisted of hard, tamped clay. Rafters and shingles were partly burnt and black with soot, because during the winter the place served as a hideout where the tenant brewed the forbidden slivovitz (prune brandy). Tables, chairs, cupboards and armchairs were non-existent. We hung our coats and cowls on hooks or projections in the wall and kept smaller items, such as books, breviaries, ink, chalice, missal, candles and cruets inside or on top of covered corn vats. The builder had dispensed with a chimney, fearing that the smoke would get blown back in through the cracks. The stable served us as an all-purpose room where we took meals and spent our days and nights … A tree gave us welcome shade for saying our Office, while a 5 x 3’ hut, leaning against an ancient oak tree in the thick wood, served us as a chapel in which to celebrate Mass.”13
A letter Fr. Francis wrote on 23 June 1869 to the Cistercian Nuns of Marienstern in Saxony (Germany) had as sender an almost identical name: “Mariastern in Bosnia”. The choice of name was a token of appreciation to the nuns for the generous contribution of two thousand guilders they had made towards the new foundation.
Mariastern became known in no time. After only two years, letters addressed to “Mariastern in Turkey” or “Fr. Franz14 in Turkey” unfailingly reached their destination. As a capable leader Fr. Franz made sure that despite the more than primitive circumstances the rule was observed in its strictness. Contacts outside Bosnia were through the Austrian consulate; it kept open the much needed lifeline to donors and benefactors. After a very few weeks Mariastern received its first postulants: one from Baden in Germany, the other from Vorarlberg.
Not all the pioneers had what it took to face the challenges of a new foundation. An extreme climate with frost, snow and icy cold winds in winter and blistering heat in summer took its toll. Three Brothers fell ill during the first year: one with pleurisy, another with meningitis and a third with malaria. Thus from sheer necessity Fr. Franz turned “doctor”, relying on natural medicine and home cures. Soon he found himself treating not only his Brothers but also the sick, including sick animals, people brought to the monastery.
From Shed to Monastery
In the middle of the nineteenth century Bosnia-Herzegovina and the rest of the Balkans along with Greece and Bulgaria belonged to the Ottoman Empire governed by the Turkish Crescent. Bosnia was a Turkish province of mixed population: ca. 300,000 Muslims, 360,000 Orthodox Christians, 122,000 Catholics (mainly Croatians), 5,000 Jews and 9,000 Romani. Banjaluka was the residence of a mutasarrif, the equivalent of a district officer. He was anything but obliging. But Fr. Francis was not bullied. Differences and disputes could not deter him from building Mariastern on a solid foundation:
“We desperately needed a shelter against the approaching winter … But it did not take our Turkish neighbours or the civic authorities long before they suspected that since we had no wives we must be Christian dervishes.”
Budding Mariastern did not only have to contend with scarce living space, unfavourable weather and Turkish hostilities, but also and more importantly, with differences in outlook among its own members. While Fr. Franz was ready to dispense from one or the other rule on account of the circumstances, two of his priests insisted on the literal observance of the rule. To humour them, he almost immediately began with the construction of a temporary monastery by hiring an Austrian contractor who had been recommended to him by the consul. That building was ready in September 1869.
Fr. Francis:
“Our little monastery stands on the edge of the oak wood but still on forest floor. It has one door opening towards the river and another, towards our future stables. A staircase leads from a central passage to the attic. The floors at ground-level are of packed clay but the attic has a wooden floor. The boards are not sawn but hewn from oak trees and made to lie flat by huge iron nails. The roof is something else. The local custom is to save shingles by placing them, not in double rows but singly. The attic is our dormitory. Though it is not high enough in the center for a man to stand upright, it offers room for many postulants. Lying flat on your back on a clear night you can see the stars twinkling through the chinks between the shingles. However, if by bad luck snow blows across the roof, our brown beards and bed covers turn white in no time. When we rise for choir at one or two in the morning, icicles fall off our beards. They melt only in the warm chapel.”
This description speaks volumes! The monks at Mariawald and Oelenberg could not have lived more primitively than their confreres at Mariastern. But it was precisely this stark simplicity which gained them candidates. On 7 September 1869, Eduard Biegner entered. He had travelled from Vienna to Hungary by a Danube steamer and then down the river Sava to Alt-Gradiska in Croatia. Unannounced, he stood at the door of the little monastery by the river and asked to be admitted as a Trappist.15
A Novice in a Monastery
By Francis Wendelin Pfanner
I am cheerful and content, because body and soul are in the right place.
I would not leave the monastery for anything in the world; here alone I wish to live and die.
To have nothing in this world, not even a shirt or a quill pen to write with, means something, if one renounces these things for the love of Jesus. Formerly, I had enough of everything but not the peace of mind I enjoy now.
Our monastery still needs furnishing. Because we have neither desks nor tables we write kneeling on the floor.
The Bosnian winter of 1869/1870 was particularly severe. The monks installed an iron stove in the passage of their temporary monastery, but the smoke of the half green firewood, relentlessly curling its way to all the rooms including the chapel, drove them into the fresh air as soon as they got up.
Fr. Francis:
“Early
