The Murder Monk in Franziskaner-Klosterkirche

In the ruins of the Franziskaner-Klosterkirche in Berlin, there is a legend of a murderous monk haunting the place, after he ended up murdering his own son.

The old ruins of the once great Franziskaner-Klosterkirche was a Franciscan monastery since the 1200s and was before its destruction the most important medieval building in Berlin.

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Franziskaner-Klosterkirche was bombed to ruins by the allies during the last day of the second world war in 1945. It was probably one of the oldest buildings in the city. Still today it is a part of the city landscape though, just by the Alexanderplatz in the city center of Berlin.

The Runaway Knight Roderich

But the monks of Franziskaner-Klosterkirche have been gone for years and the only ones living there now are ghosts. The most famous ghost in the ruins of the monastery was once a knight named Roderich. He became a monk when he was running away from the father of his one night stand. The father was enraged as he had dishonored his daughter and was after him.

In the ruins of the Franziskaner-Klosterkirche in Berlin, there is a legend of a murderous monk haunting the place, after he ended up murdering his own son. — **Franziskaner-Klosterkirche:** The monastery was also called Graues Kloster (The Gray Monastery) and was in use even after the reformation and used as a school. This is from a postcard around 1910.

On the run, the knight turned monk broke his leg and kept walking with a limp. From then on everyone called Roderich the limping monk, and he was not a popular one.

Because of his injury and his unfortunate circumstances isolated in the monastery, Roderich grew bitter over the long years. He didn’t get along with the other monks either and paid two criminals to murder one of the other monks in the monastery. He blamed the murder on some Knights Templar who ended up being executed for it.

The Murderous Monk in Franziskaner-Klosterkirche

Another monk was sent to the Franziskaner-Klosterkirche called Bernhard. He entered because of the grief he had of his miserable love that turned out badly. He loved and wanted to marry a woman, but as the cruel fate would have it, it turned out she was his sister, and he was unable to go on outside of the monastery.

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Bernhard was a skeptical person though and had his own theory of the murder of the monk Roderich had killed in Franziskaner-Klosterkirche. When Bernard met Roderich he told him that he didn’t believe that the Knights Templar was behind the murder of their fellow monk brother.

This was the nail in the coffin for Bernhard and Roderich locked him up in a dark cellar of the monastery to cover his crime when he was found out, ending up killing him so he wouldn’t spill his secret.

The Ultimate Sin

While this is going on, the two criminals Roderich hired came clean and confessed to what really happened when they murdered the monk and it was in fact Roderich that was behind it all. The anger and rage against Roderich grew and an angry mob stormed the monastery, searching for Roderich to put things right.

The angry mob found him kneeling in the cellar next to the dead body of Bernhard. After he had killed Bernhard, Roderich went through Bernhards stuff and found a letter from Bernard’s mother. This was a woman who Roderich knew intimately and it was Roderich’s former lover telling him that Roderich in fact was the father of Bernhard.

Overcome with grief and regret he confessed at once and was killed on the spot without a trial.

Since then, Roderich has been haunting the Franziskaner-Klosterkirche, even after it all turned to ruins. He can be heard wailing in the night from the outside of the monastery, unable to atone for his sins of killing his own son in cold blood to cover his own tracks.