Lilienfeld

Lilienfeld lies in the Traisen valley, on the pilgrimage road to Mariazell. Its Cistercian abbey was founded in 1202 by Duke Leopold VI of Austria and Styria as a daughter house of Heiligenkreuz. The abbots served as councillors to Austrian rulers, and the monastery grew wealthy through this connection.

In 1683, as Ottoman forces advanced towards Vienna, Abbot Matthew Kollweis fortified the abbey, stationed a garrison there and sheltered many fugitives. Baroque additions enlarged its medieval buildings, and in the eighteenth century the library, tower and church interior were refashioned. Emperor Joseph II suppressed the monastery in 1789, but his successor Leopold II reopened it in 1790. A fire destroyed much of the abbey in 1810, and Abbot Johann Ladislaus Pyrker oversaw its subsequent rebuilding.