In 1992 the golf chapter in Maria Bildhausen was opened with the founding of the Golf-Club Maria Bildhausen e.V. A year later, the Ursberg St. Joseph Congregation built one of the most varied and spacious golf courses in Germany on the 140 hectare former agricultural site of the Maria Bildhausen monastery. The golf course in Maria Bildhausen is one of the largest in Germany. A good 43% of these are pure play areas, the rest are cultivated fields, biotopes and green spaces. April 2016 brought an important change. The entire grounds of the GC Maria Bildhausen were sold by the Congregation of St. Joseph to the Rudolf and Marco Weigand families - the golf course thus passed from monastic to private ownership.
You can read the history of the Rindhof on information boards on site. "When the Bildhausen monastery was founded in 1158, the monks used an existing farm and expanded it into a "grangie" called "Rindhof" typical of Cistercian monasteries. There, lay brothers were active in agriculture under the supervision and administration of their monk brothers. Early on, the Surpluses generated there were sold to the monastery town farms. The cattle farm always remained part of the abbey's own property and was managed by tenants or managers under the direct supervision of the monastery busar." The term Grangie (Latin granum = "grain", derived from granicum or grangium = "granary", "storage house"; originally referred to a granary, then an enclosed courtyard and later an agricultural estate complex of a secular or spiritual ruler.