some questions regarding the poor claers....

[Daniela99]

Hi, I m Daniela from Germany, I’m no native speaker, please excuse my bad English, also my father helped me with the English I am not good in it. I am also quit sure I'm in the wrong part of the forum. So I ask forgiveness for my errors. I was seeking clues with google picture search when I stumbled into the hunt for the group of poor clares nuns some days ago here on PATHMASS. So I tried to sign up, but then the PATHMASS forum asked me of the mother of good, sure Maria von Nazareth, or in English the Virgin Mary, but, by all my wits, I did not come up with the right answer for the watch (bot) dog, so I decided that’s it not me but the bot that’s nuts and created a facebook account to sign up here. It’s truly my first one, and I will delete it afterwards, as I think very strongly about privacy also I’m a bit lonely with this point of view in my generation but my father is fixing security problems for IT systems, and he is very willing to show me at every opportunity what freely available information could be used to, especially in regard to youthful girls like me, as he puts it *roll eyes*, so sorry there is no information inside my facebook account. But I would like to recomend a checkup for the watch dog. If you have any questions feel free to ask via PM I will answer any reasonable question via PM.

 

Well, the reason why I tried to sign up with PATHMASS, I’ve got a few questions for you obviously very knowledgeable people. We do a play, or rather we still rehearse it, with our theater class performing for our school, covering the rumors of the foundation of the first school in the very same place some 300 something years ago. The reason the school was build on this very same spot was, according to the rumors, a poor clares nun. As I am hopefully going to play this nun character, I have some questions, as I have no clue as to how a poor clares nun would speak and act, and since the plot was written by some of my class mates, although I think they have done it the best way they could, its surly far from the truth. Also as I am good in cutting and sewing, I opted to make the stage habits for the nuns in the play, but for all I tried, I did not find a close to original way of sewing the veil. I even almost have hade me killed by wearing the veil the way I did sew it on an early try, a gust did come into the stage as somebody opened the big barn door style doors back stage and the veil did fly up over my head and blindfolded me, I stumbled over the front of the dress and some stage equipment and dropt 6ft deep to the area in front of the stage… but thanks god he took good care of his “nun”, no harm done. I got his broad hint and started to research the subject more closely, now here I am.

 

So maybe some of you could either direct me to the right area to ask this kind of questions or may have right away some answers, pictures, advice or even a genuine cutting for a poor clares nuns Habit.

 

From the pictures I found I could sew most of the habit so it looks almost like an original old style Habit, but I definitely need some big help with the veil and hair & head covers. Also I was just wondering from the pictures the veil look like its kind of a blinder for the women wearing it. Was this by intention? I could not imagine how my life would be wearing blinders at all times; I really find it very disturbing while wearing the veil during our rehearse sessions, I always startle if someone walks up to me from the blind spots. An other point I am quiet unsure about, do I sin while wearing this habit, since I’m not a nun, or would it be ok to wear it on stage and maybe off stage for promotion? At least for police and military uniforms it’s prohibited in Germany to wear them, just on stage would be ok, if you ware them outside, you’ll be fined as imposter, but I have no idea if this also fits to a nun habit.

 

My parents are non catholic and very open minded people, they encouraged me to find the right religious believing for my self, and I’m not jet set, basically I don’t know who to ask about such things.

 

In case you’re interested here is a short summary of the plot. There was a catholic family with 2 children a boy and a girl. The kids where really close, so when the girl did fall in love with one of the employees of her father, a very poor but bright guy with a bad family history, and her father did send her off to the poor clares nuns to have here reeducated and had her beloved one fired, naturally her brother opposed his father. As he was already part of the company management, and since he didn’t agree with his father, he did spend the biggest part of his personal money to keep the poor boy working form him personally without his father knowing and also befriended him during this time. He had discovered that this young man was exceptionally smart, handsome and gentle, and he did know they loved each other deeply so he tried to get his sister back and keep his friend and hopefully bother in law. Also, he was dead on about the guy being really bright, as this guys invention made the company survive some bad time later on. After his father died he made his then best friend a partner and tried to get his sister back from the nuns, but the Abbess did not concur, as the girl was declared insane by then, she had tried to kill herself for a number of times. When some months later the Abbess, a class mate of his father, died a sudden death, he tried again, and the new Abbess agreed to have her transferred to a school for poor kids he had to finance in return. So he founded our school for the kids of his employees and the other kids around the school, and his sister was transferred to the school, but not on active teacher duty. She finally, in the company of her beloved family and never to be husband, recovered from the mental ill state. Also she did not leave the nuns and did never marry; she became the good soul of the school and did care for all those kids who had no loving parents, or where the parents simply had no time to care for them.

 

Long after all those people died, our school got totally destroyed in WWI and again in WWII. So this story is based on rumors and hearsay from the old timers. We thought we make the rumors into a play and show it to our school mates.

 

I like the character of this very nun :-) it covers big parts in acting, loving, being lovely, insane, hate, sickness, and recover to become the caring old women. I want to portray it in good style!

 

Thanks for your help

Daniela

[He is Risen!]

Welcome to Phatmass Daniela!  Have you been to this website yet? http://www.kontemplativ.de/index.php?cat_id=11035 This website looks like lists the Poor Clare communities that are in Germany.  I don't know if any of these are near you, but most communities would I am sure welcome a visit or phone call, especially if they know about your project. They might even have some good information about this specific sister, it sounds like she was a remarkable woman.