The Kuenringers - the birth of the province of Lower Austria

“Rescuing the honor of the Kuenringers is not merely a question of historical justice towards a long-gone family. The picture of Lower Austrian history should be set straight: It was not the princes, emperors, kings, dukes, margraves etc. alone who shaped the country. At their side were important men with their followers and dependents, right down to the simple peasant,” wrote Karl Brunner about the Kuenringers, who were the focus of the 1981 provincial exhibition.

The venue was the Cistercian monastery in Zwettl, and for the monastery this major exhibition was an honor: “The house will be forced to carry out long overdue improvements and renovations that will benefit the monastery for centuries to come,” said Abbot Bertrand Baumann.

This provincial exhibition has been eagerly awaited for a very long time, even though it is only a very regional topic, wrote the new governor of Lower Austria, Siegfried Ludwig, in the catalog. The Kuenringers built and shaped the country as it still is today: “They were the ‘spatial planners’ of the Middle Ages, but also lent a hand themselves and accomplished achievements that still have an impact in modern times and demand our full respect,” said the governor.

No other ministerial dynasty left its mark on the nascent province of Lower Austria to the same extent as the Kuenringers. Through the organization and development of the Waldviertel, the expansion of the Waldviertel towns and, last but not least, the founding of Zwettl Abbey, “they have probably earned themselves a place in the history books”, explained historian Falko Daim.

However, it is ironic that they owe their popularity to the opposing propaganda, the Habsburg character assassination: “No student who has been to the Aggstein ruins on a hiking day will forget the Kuenringers as robber barons and lords of Aggstein, who stretched a huge chain across the Danube to take away the cargo of peaceful merchant ships and left their captives to starve to death in their little rose garden” (Daim).

It is not only the political losers who are denied a voice in the medieval written sources, said Daim, but also the masses of the population, the farmers, merchants and craftsmen. The provincial exhibition therefore also reconstructed medieval life: the different areas of life - country (peasant) - town (burgher) - monastery - castle (nobility) - as well as the technical and economic developments that had a major influence on the social structure of the Middle Ages.

The exhibition shows the development of the Waldviertel, the work of the farmers and the change in the settlement structure, life in the towns and the ideas of the nobility, but also the development of the natural sciences, the importance of faith and monastic life as well as the development of Zwettl Abbey.

Zwettl Abbey