Waldsassen Abbey (German: Abtei Waldsassen) is a Cistercian nunnery, formerly a Cistercian monastery, located on the River Wondreb at Waldsassen near Tirschenreuth, Oberpfalz, in Bavaria, Germany, close to the border with the Czech Republic. In the Holy Roman Empire it was an Imperial Abbey. History First foundation The monastery, the first Cistercian foundation in Bavaria, was founded by Gerwich of Wolmundstein, a Benedictine monk of Sigeberg Abbey, with the permission of his former abbot Kuno, then Bishop of Regensburg, and built between 1128 and 1132. The original community was sent to Waldsassen from Volkenroda Abbey in Thuringia, of the line of Morimond Abbey. The first abbot was elected in 1133, making this one of the earliest Cistercian foundations. Soon the abbey became one of the most renowned and powerful of the times. As the number of monks increased, several important foundations were made at Senftenberg and Osek in Bohemia, at Walderbach, near Regensburg, and in other places. In 1147, Conrad III, King of Germany, granted it reichsunmittelbar status, making it an Imperial abbey. Several of its thirty-seven abbots up to the Reformation were noted for sanctity and learning; of them, Herman, the seventh abbot, and John, the seventeenth, as well as Gerwich, its founder, and Wigand, the first prior, are commemorated in the menology. From the middle of the 14th century, Waldsassen alternated between periods of prosperity and decline. Wars, famines, excessive taxation, and persecution by the Hussites made it suffer much. During the Bavarian War (1504) the monastery, church, and farm-buildings were burned, but immediately afterwards rebuilt, and the new church was consecrated in 1517. In 1525, during the German Peasants' War, part of the buildings were again destroyed, and were restored by Georg III (1531–37), the last of the first series of abbots. From 1537 to 1560 in the course of the Reformation administrators were appointed by the civil authorities: Frederick III, Elector Palatine, named his brother Richard for this office. The monks were then forced to apostatize or flee, or were put to death. As a result, in 1543, the abbey lost its imperial immediacy to the Electorate of the Palatinate. For about a hundred years it remained in this condition, during which time it was almost completely burned down in the Thirty Years' War. After the Peace of Westphalia Roman Catholicism was restored in Bavaria. In 1669, Waldsassen was restored to the Cistercians, and in 1690