Rein Abbey

Rein was founded in 1129 by Margrave Leopold I of Styria, and because the older French mother houses - Cîteaux, La Ferté and Pontigny - were all suppressed at the Revolution, it is the oldest surviving house of the order anywhere, a claim it advertises as the cradle of Styria. The distinction matters and is worth stating precisely: Rein itself was confiscated in 1941 and its monks returned only in 1945, so it is the oldest Cistercian abbey still in existence but not the longest continuously inhabited - that is Heiligenkreuz, founded four years later and never interrupted. The medieval church was rebuilt in the eighteenth century by Johann Georg Stengg into a baroque interior with frescoes and stucco, though the Romanesque outline is still legible in the plan. The library holds around a hundred thousand volumes and a significant manuscript collection. The abbey runs a grammar school and a working forest estate. Nearby Strassengel has a fourteenth-century Gothic pilgrimage church with an openwork spire, usually visited on the same trip.

History

Margrave Leopold the Strong of Styria founded the abbey in 1129 with monks from Ebrach in Bavaria under the first abbot, Gerlacus; it was the 38th Cistercian house, and all 37 before it have since been dissolved, which makes Rein the oldest surviving one in the world, interrupted only by a few years of exile in the Second World War, until the monks returned in 1945. It was the mother house of Wilhering in 1146 and later of Stična and Neukloster, and on 19 September 1276 the nobles of Styria and Carinthia swore allegiance here to Rudolf of Habsburg, the Rein Oath that helped bring the Habsburgs to power in Austria; from 1950 to 1990 it also sheltered the exiled monks of Hohenfurt (Wikipedia, Rein Abbey, Austria).

What's there

• The oldest surviving Cistercian house - founded 1129, with one break from 1941 to 1945.
• A baroque rebuilding - Stengg's eighteenth-century interior over a Romanesque plan.
• A hundred thousand volume library - with a significant manuscript holding.
• Strassengel nearby - the Gothic pilgrimage church with its openwork spire.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Practical notes

Access to most of the abbey is by guided tour at set times, in German. It is a working monastery and school with closed areas. Winter opening is minimal.

Nearby

Strassengel church is close; Graz is a short drive south-east.

Key facts