Uta of Uttenweiler

Uta of Uttenweiler was a blessed woman of Germany, who reposed in 722 at Uttenweiler in Württemberg. She is honored in the Western Church as blessed, without synodal canonization.

Little is known of her life. According to one legend she was of noble birth, according to another a servant girl. The name of the commune of Uttenweiler, lying below the Bussen mountain, is said to come from her. Several sources speak of a special love for children. In 1449 Berthold vom Stain, a devotee of the blessed Uta, founded the Augustinian monastery at Uttenweiler, now vanished; the Augustinians had a distant relationship with the cult around her, and the foundation charter makes no reference to her, as was formerly believed. A chapel dedicated to her is attested in 1620; near it lived a hermit named Brother Klaus and later Johannes Speth, who died in 1737.

Her grave, beside the baptismal font of the present parish church of Saints Simon and Jude, was the goal of an annual pilgrimage in which help was asked for sick children; the pilgrimage was forbidden in the time of Josephinism. In 1875 a new chapel in her honor was consecrated on the Dautenberg near Uttenweiler, rebuilt in 1950.