 In 1129 Margrave Leopold the Strong of Styria called upon the Cistercians to develop his recently acquired March which bordered Austria on the south.He granted monks from the Ebrach Abbey in Bavaria an area of land just north of what is today the provincial capital Graz, where they founded Rein Abbey.At the time, it was the 38th Cistercian monastery founded but, due to the dissolution down the centuries of the earlier 37 abbeys, it is today the oldest surviving Cistercian house in the world.