In the 16th century it became Protestant, thereby retaining its property and wealth until the agrarian reforms of the 19th century, when it was included in the territory of the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, otherwise Hanover. Since 1891 the monastery has also operated as a Protestant seminary and academy, a tradition going back to the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The title of "abbot" is retained, anomalously.