According to documentary tradition, seven monks, who had been sent to Brauweiler by the reform abbot Poppo of Stablo, turned the first spade of earth on April 14, 1024. Four years later, the Romanesque monastery building and the Church of St. Nicholas with its distinctive western tower could be consecrated. In 1802, the monastic glory came to an end. During the secularization, the monastery was dissolved – the Prussian government established a poorhouse depot and a work institution here. St. Nicholas henceforth served as a Catholic parish church.
Anything but a tale of glory is the history of the former abbey in the first half of the 20th century. Where monks once gathered to honor God, the Cologne judicial administration set up a "preservation house" and "cell building" in 1920. The Nazis turned it into a concentration camp in 1933, which was converted into a prison for the Cologne Gestapo after a year. A memorial on the grounds has been commemorating this sad chapter in the abbey's history since 2008.
Since 1954, the Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR) has been the host on site. The medieval and baroque buildings house, among other things, the archive of the association, the LVR Office for Monument Preservation, and the archive for artist estates.
