ADELHAUSEN. - A Dominican convent and mystical centre near Freiburg im Breisgau. The community of Beguines existing there since 1232 was declared, on 12 Dec. 1234, by Bishop Heinrich I of Constance, exempt from the parish and governed by the Rule of S. Augustine and by the Dominican constitutions. Innocent IV, on 19 July 1245 and 18 May 1249, incorporated the convent into the Dominican Order. S. Albert the Great visited it and consecrated the church under the title of the Annunciation in 1263. In the 13th and 14th centuries A. was one of the centres of German and Dominican mysticism, described in part in the convent chronicle of Anna von Munzingen (1318), published by König, whose leading figures are Matilde Tuschelin, Elisabetta di Neustadt, Adelaide di Breisach, and Agnese di Nordera.
After the fire of 1410, the noted Dominican chronicler Giovanni Meyer introduced (1485) the observant life into the convent. Following the devastation caused by the French in 1677, the convent was transferred from the suburb into the city and united with the houses of S. Caterina, S. Agnese, and others. In 1806 it was converted by the government of Baden into an educational institution and, in 1867, despite the protest of Catholics, suppressed.