Due to a lack of progress on the Benedictine house, Kuno I von Münzenberg eventually contacted the abbot of Siegburg Abbey, Nikolaus, and managed to convince him to withdraw the monks from Altenburg. By then he had already made advances to the Cistercians to found an abbey for several years. A preferences for that order was in keeping with the times, as rulers of the 12th century tended to favour the "reform orders". They also refrained from exercising the rights of ownership over newly founded abbeys, leaving them to the responsible (Arch-)Bishop. Cistercians also usually asked to be exempted from the Vogt system, whereby the secular ruler retained some administrative or judicial rights. Kuno gave the Cistercians the property of the former Benedictine monastery as well as his old castle of Arnsburg. He had come to an agreement with abbot Pontius of Clairvaux as early as February 1171. The general chapter of the Cistercians then ordered the abbot of Eberbach Abbey, Gerhard, to send monks to Arnsburg. On 16 July 1174 in a formal meeting in Münzenberg Castle, the founding document was presented to the monks.
