In 1093 the Bishop of Constance Gebhard III consecrated what was at first only a few buildings of the monastery in Wiblingen founded by Counts Hartmann and Otto of Kirchberg. Today the particles of the holy cross are still kept in the Monastery Church (Klosterkirche) St. Martin as a precious legacy of the founders. Rich donations and generously granted legal freedoms enables the dynamic rise of the Benedictine monastery.
A major fire in 1271 put an end to this development. The monastery complex had to be rebuilt, spiritual life became weary and the economic difficulties continued for several decades. At the beginning of the 15th century the loss of values of the order statute also became a problem in Wiblingen. Personal possessions and abandonment of the shared life in the monastery also led to economic insecurity.
In the course of the reorientation with the adoption of the Reform of Melk ("Melker Reform"), the monastery school and the writing workshop (Skriptorium) of the monastery experienced special support. From these beginnings, through continuous purchases and their own production of books, the famous monastery library resulted, where at times up to 30 monks worked. In 1757 it encompassed 15,000 volumes - more than some contemporary university libraries.
Repeated bad times and the Peasants' War lead the monastery to the verge of ruin in the first half of the 16th century. Nevertheless, the entire complex of buildings with the exception of the church was rebuilt, partially under the influence of the new monastery administrator Fugger, who had obtained the coveted property as a permanent fief from Emperor Maximilian I after the founding family died out. In the second half of the 16th century the monastery regained relative prosperity. The Wiblingen monks traveled to other monasteries as sought after carriers of the reform, where the high intellectual standing of the convent was greatly valued.
After the trials of the Thirty Years' War, rebuilding and economic recovery were accompanied by the strengthening of faith as the focus of monastic efforts. The monastery school and the cultivation of the sciences also experienced a new heyday. Following redemption from the protective rule of the Fuggers in 1701/1702 and the end of the Spanish War of Succession, a new building project that was to last 70 years began at the meanwhile very cramped Wiblingen Monastery in 1714, in the course of which the representative baroque complex was constructed.
The baroque new building planning of the monastery, which was dictated by the ideas of the Counter-Reformation, was based on the model of the Spanish monastery palace El Escorial (1563-1584). The church as the most important structure stood at the exact center on the middle axis of the overall complex and was framed by a rectangular enclosure square. This formed two symmetrical inner courtyards. A special feature of the Wiblingen complex (1714-1783) is the shifting of the middle axis of the new church. This is due to a change in the building plans toward greater monumentality, and probably also due to the need to use the old monastery church as long as possible.