Listening in on the Nuns’ Rebellion at Kloster Goldenstein

Bells, chants, prayers, the scrape of chairs at table, the hum of a vacuum, the splash of a sink being plunged: the soundscape of Goldenstein Cloister is equal parts liturgy and daily life. Layer onto that the laughter of eighty-something sisters sharing coffee, the creak of a chairlift, the slap of running shoes from Sister Rita’s daily 5K after prayer, and you begin to hear what’s at stake in Austria right now.

The Augustinian choir women of Goldenstein had spent their lives in this convent—decades of vows that they believed bound the Church as much as themselves. And then, dissolution. Closure. The doors shut on their home, the place where they had lived out obedience, prayer, and community. Their leader called it a “necessary act of care.” But care for whom? Care, in this telling, seems less about human dignity and more about ease of management. (There may be a plausible “other side” to the story, but when your church leader argues that orthopedic shoes are a violation of the vow of poverty, somebody hasn’t thought about how decisions about elders read in the broader universe.)

What these sisters assert is simple and radical: their vows were two-way. The Church has responsibilities here. And the sisters and their supporters are claiming them.The three Augustinian sisters—Rita, Bernadette, and Regina—repossessed their cloister earlier this month. That sparked a cascade of attention: a podcast episode, a BBC story, Guardian coverage, and a flourishing Instagram feed that pairs black-and-white habits with splashes of bright flowers and cheerful captions in German and English.

What I hear in all this isn’t only the sound of bells or the chant of the office. It’s the sound of determination, of voices raised in defense of their rights, of a community that has chosen to rally around them. On-site helpers showed up with brooms and mops to scrub the convent back into habitability. Supporters—English and German alike—comment on their posts, write emails, show up at Mass. And even when there is no priest to say Mass, the sisters sing the rosary together, because prayer continues regardless of who is willing to stand at the altar.

Why bring this story here?

First: because it’s a rare window into monastic life today, with all its joy, grit, and creativity.

Second: because some of you may want to follow them online or even donate. They’re @nonnen_goldenstein on Instagram, and their captions read like tiny table-prayers, interspersed with photos of a community refusing to fade quietly away.

Third: because it’s a living parable of resistance. For those of us who study monastic history, it’s not every day that we get a real-life #NunsOnTheRun story unfolding in our time. These sisters have claimed their right to remain, to pray, to belong. The least we can do is listen, and perhaps add our voices in support.

Their own social media team has a bouquet of hashtags: #nunsontherun #goldenstein #augustinerchorfrauen #churchfluencer #nonnen #klosterleben #elsbethen #fyp #gästebuch #guestbook #willkommen #youarewelcome. Give them a follow. Raise up your voice for the dignity and self-determination of those who have faithfully served. Support their renewed convent soundscape. After all, the soundscape of Goldenstein is not just liturgy or rebellion—it’s the sound of life insisted upon, carried forward, and sung into being.

RESOURCES: 

Bethany Bell, “Defiant nuns flee care home for their abandoned convent in the Alps,” BBC, 12 September 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y8r2gk0vyo

Kate Connelly, “‘We were obedient our entire lives’: the nuns who broke back into their convent,” The Guardian, 26 Sept 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/26/we-were-obedient-our-entire-lives-the-nuns-who-broke-back-into-their-convent

Kloster Goldenstein: 

• Instagram Account: @nonnen_goldenstein, https://www.instagram.com/nonnen_goldenstein/
• Their gofundme is at https://gofund.me/6f2f1838c 
• A taste of their community worship: https://www.instagram.com/p/DPGUpStCADw/
• Convent website: https://goldenstein.cc/

When the Gestapo Came for the Sisters

In June 1945, just weeks after World War II ended in Europe, Bishop Paulus Rusch of Innsbruck wrote a sworn account of how Nationalsocialism had targeted the Catholic Church in Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Buried in the Nuremberg Trial records, his testimony gives us a stark glimpse of what happened to nuns and other women religious under Nazi rule.

The crackdown began early. Already in Spring 1938, the ever-popular Corpus Christi processions were banned, and over the course of the summer Catholic schools shuttered, and priests began to be jailed. This crackdown extended to charitable work. One priest was imprisoned simply for giving bread and coffee to two hungry Dutch prisoners. Such gestures of compassion were deemed “favoring elements foreign to the race.” But by 1939, the regime turned directly against convents.

The Nazis expelled the Dominican Sisters of St Peter’s in Bludenz, closed their convent, and partly demolished the interior of their church. The Innsbruck Sisters of Perpetual Adoration fared worse; they were dragged out of their cloister one by one by Gestapo officers. Their church was seized and turned into a military installation.

This parallels actions elsewhere; Convent churches were closed, desecrated, or turned to military use. In Bregenz, the Abbey of St. Gallus saw its church gutted; at Mehrerau, the abbey and sanatorium were seized. And yet one local consultant, a Josef Gschwilm, thought it was funny; he liked to dress up as a priest and get himself photographed during these monastery closures (Pichler 253).

Layfolk were impacted just as dramatically. Across Vorarlberg, 348 Catholic associations and congregations were disbanded (Pichler 252).

Even schools for girls -- the lifeblood of these communities and the social safety-net for orphans -- were dissolved. In Bregenz alone, the three girls schools of Thalbach, Marienburg, and Riedenburg were all forced to close. In short, the infrastructure that had sustained Catholic belief and practice for generations was systematically dismantled.

These stories remind us that the Nazi assault on faith was not abstract. It reached into classrooms, chapels, and convent walls, stripping women of their vocations, demolishing sacred spaces, and silencing communities of prayer.

What Bishop Rusch called “the fighting of Nationalsocialism” was, for these sisters, a fight simply to exist. And yet, exist they did. Though their convent walls were broken and their schools closed, their witness of faith and service endured beyond the war years -- a quiet defiance that outlasted the regime that tried to silence them.

NOTE ON SPELLING:

I follow the one-word, no-hyphen spelling of “Nationalsocialism” adopted in the Nuremberg Trial documents.

SOURCES:

Meinrad Pichler, Das Land Vorarlberg 1861 bis 2015, Geschichte Vorarlbergs Bd 3. Wagner Universitätsverlag, 2015.

Bishop Paulus Rusch, “The Fighting Of Nationalsocialism In The Diocese Of The Apostolic Administration Innsbruck-Feldkirch, Of Tyrol And Vorarlberg,” translated and published in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 5, aka the “Blue Series” of the Nuremberg Trials (1945), books.google.com/books?id=iGN2rIerJR0C&pg=PA1077