Brothers’ Hall @museum.de

M 1: This room is now known as the "Brothers’ Hall". It’s one of very few rooms in the monastery that has a fireplace. So it’s fair to assume that whatever the canons did in here, it didn’t involve moving around to keep warm. Perhaps this space, with its massive central column, served as a scriptorium, or a classroom for novices – the future canons. In an illiterate age, monastic foundations were a haven for the culture of writing – places where letters were inscribed on parchment with a quill, religious texts copied from folios, and business and legal documents drawn up and signed.

F 2: After the dissolution, this room remained in use, of course – though in completely different ways. First of all, it became the bake-house for the demesne. Later, in the 19th century, the place where the monastic scribes had once sat became home to four large fermentation vats. They were set up on specially built foundations. Take a look at the floor, where remnants are still visible. The vats belonged to the distillery. For almost 200 years, grain was distilled into alcohol in Jerichow. The alcoholic vapours escaped into the former cloister through a vent. The alcohol was not just used as to make schnapps, but also as an ingredient in products such as perfume, cleaning agents, paint and medicines. After the fermentation vats were removed in the early 2000s, archaeologists uncovered the medieval floor, assisted by pupils from a secondary school in the small town of Genthin nearby. If you look at the central column, you can still see where the floor level used to be.