Ernst Karl von Hoyos-Sprinzenstein

Ernst Karl Heinrich, Count Hoyos-Sprinzenstein (18 June 1830, Vienna - 21 August 1903, Ternitz) was an Austrian nobleman, landowner, and politician.

[1] He was an Imperial-royal Chamberlain and, in 1861, was appointed by Emperor Franz Joseph I as a hereditary member of the Herrenhaus of the Austrian Reichsrats.

In 1864, he agreed to donate the "Stixensteinquelle" (spring), near the Burg Stixenstein [de] in Lower Austria, to the City of Vienna.

This made it possible to build the First Vienna Mountain Spring Pipeline, the city's first major source of safe drinking water.

The restorative work, which was partially based on representations from the Topographia Windhagiana [de] (1673), was begun in 1859 and lasted for over two decades.