"Urbars" are systematically arranged records about assets and income of landowners, done over a certain period of
time.
Some of such "Urbars" are kept within the archives of the Cistercienser monastery Zwettl, located in the federal
state of Lower Austria, Austria. Nowadays the "Urbar 1457" is held by the N0e Landesarchiv (KG Krems 275.1).
It shows in more than 2200 entries from about 200 villages the assets of the monastery. For the very first time the
names of the landowners are listed besides the sizes of the estates and the compulsory labour. A comprehensive
evaluation - in schedules and general charts is basis for a calculation of the sources of income created out of real
estate. It is very difficult to estimate a monetary value of the natural products due to lacking equivalents.
The compulsory labour of ca. 1800 rural subservients alone would have not been enough in the tough times of the
15th century (war, inflation) to secure the existence of the monastery and create a fresh pecuniary impetus to a
prospering landownership.
This submitted assignment shows for the very first time for how long the monastery was the actual owner of all the
villages, listed in the "Urbar 1457". In 1530 an entire quarter of all estates had to be sold to the sovereign to pay
the taxes.
Further issues of this assignment`s first part are: the submission of land registers to the new jurisdictions due to the
termination of landownerships, the listing of administrative districts, the mills and wildernesses and currency
standards, mints and measuring units. The second part refers to the edition of the original " Urbartext" including an
index of places and names, part three deals with the charts and schedules.