The winery "Marienhof" was founded in 1899 by Carl von Lamprecht, a successful supplier to the austrian royal and imperial army, also owner of a bank and full of entrepreneurship. In those days the country "Burgenland" belonged still to Hungary and not to Austria. The Wines from Hungary have been very famous in Austria and in due to high demand Lamprecht developed the idea to found a winery in Hungary. He had a big advantage, his wife came from there. They created a building wich looks at the first sight characteristically for his period, but the entire arrangement also exhibited a convincingly functional scheme that did great justice to all operational considerations. Perhaps, a forerunner of the "Designer-Winerys" of our days?

A few years bevore the Lamprechts started to developed their wine business a captain (master) of the austrian royal and imperial navy was promoted to an admiral of the navy. His name was Leopold Sellner and he got a very exclusive job. The "captain" of the royal yacht named "Miramar" and this steamboat had only one passenger, Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The death of her only son, in a murder-suicide at his hunting lodge at Mayerling, was a tragedy from which Elisabeth never recovered. It was told, that she was during her whole life bevor a little bit idiosyncratic but after this disaster she withdrawed from court duties and practised her live aside from the protocol more than bevor. She started travelleing widely, unaccompanied by her family. Restless through the Ägais, the Mediterranean Sea and also up to Egypt. Leopold Sellner was not only her "captain on duty", during the long journeys he became a kind of trusted friend and sometimes just a buddy, when the empress had her devious ideas. Sometimes, when there a heavy storm came up, she wanted to be fixed on the mast of the ship to witness the whole power of the elements, Sellner fulfilled this and other crazy wishes of his empress. At last she had a tattoo with a blue anchor at on one of her shoulders, her husband, the emperor, was not really amused. In 1998 Elisabeth died after an assassination in Geneva, Leopold Sellner lost his only passenger and he retired laudable.

A few years later Leopold Sellner came to Rust, perhaps he had known Carl von Lamprecht from the good old times when Lamprecht has made his big deals with the army. Sellner dropped his last anchor and married the daughter of Carl von Lamprecht. They got a son, he took over the winery in 1935. This part of the history of our house ist he reason why we, only in espacially good years, give the best red wine the name "Alter Admiral".

1945, immidiatly after the war and in a fully destroyed country, a big part of the economy and sometimes simply the way of survinging depended on a smart chain of barter transactions. So my grandfather came to Rust and tried to change salt against wine for his tavern in Lower Austria. He had a random encounter with Sellner jun. and they started talking about this and that, Sellner jun. was frustated about his private situation and my grandfather was a real entrepeneur. Suddenly he was very fond of the the region and her opportunities. A few weeks later they met again, at the bar in the destroyed trainstation in Wiener Neustadt, and there they signed a lease agreement about the winery "Marienhof".

My grandfather was a very creative and smart guy, he had always a feeling for promising markets. He tried, during this turbulent and poor years, always to offer services and products far away from the usual and after 1945 state regulations have not been the first goal of the goverment. My grandfather has the ideas and my father worked. At first they started with a mobile distillery, with the earned money they could by a new tractor in 1947(!). This engine was used for paid work, like the clearing of the land for building plots, fort he harvest of reed and much more. In the meanwhile the distillery was technical upgraded and legalised, and in the year 1953 they earned enough money, just with their brandy, that the lease agreement with Sellner jun. could be cancelled and the "Marienhof" bought and so completly acquired.

Now they focussed the wine business, with a big finding from the brandy experience. The economic success before was caused by the top quality, and so the business plan was fixed. To become independant from the dependency from any marketplaces, there is only one solution - absolute quality. That was my fathers part. At this time his knowlegde as a winemaker was a mixture of try and error and at last, good advices from the neighbours. He ordered every book that the famous institutes in Geisenheim and Klosterneuburg offered, he practised also an active correspondence with this institutes. Later on Prof. Haushofer, the austrian "pope of wine", was interestet in this special guy, our Bouvier is a kind of estate of this friendship. So tried my father to become one of the best winemakers by the way of "Second Education".

My father started to establish new vineyards using the "new" Lenz-Moser way of cultivation, he developed his own machines for plant health in the vinyards and thought a lot about processing with the grapes as careful as possible. He renovated the whole cellar-arrangement, built in a cooling system and experimented yet as this time with cold fermentation. He was a technology freak and always looking for tools helping him to make wine more cleanness and elegant in combination with probably minimising unnecessary interventions in the product. In those days it was a welcome diversion that Yul Brynner stopped over briefly, taking some scenes for his movie "The Journey". That was in 1959, the movie dealed with the hungarian uprising from 1956 and so a shade of major world politics and cold war quickly moved through Rust.

At the end of the last century i had the great luck and honor of following in the footsteps of my father. I see my responsibilities in the combination of taking care of the health of our vineyards and our important partners there, the worms, the insects and all the micro-organisms. And also to continue along the path of making wine with minimising interventions and best quality. And at last establishing newest technologies, of course always with consideration of maintaining the historic building. We are still a family owned winery, run by me and my wife, supported by our daughters and our son in law.