When Georg I. Heinrich died in 1904, the company passed to his sons Theodor I. and Georg II. Anton, who are subsequently regarded as the actual founders of the Mautner Markhof business empire. In 1913, after the merger of the Sankt Marx brewery with Schwechat, Georg II became head of the family and his sons Georg III ‘Buwa’ and Gustav I took over his share in 1934 after his death. Theodor I, who was 65 years old at the time, was ready to withdraw more and more from the company and hand over responsibility to his sons Gerhard and Manfred I.. These four fourth-generation Mautner Markhofs, cousins of almost the same age, formed the so-called ‚Quadruplet’ and ran the family empire from this point onwards. They met once a week at the Grand Hotel in Vienna, had equal rights in every respect and could only make unanimous decisions. The Quadruplet was, so to speak, the authority that coordinated the individual businesses economically and also determined whether and which family member was given a position in the company. Gerhard and Gustav were responsible for the brewery operations, Manfred was in charge of Th & G Mautner Markhof GmbH and Georg III was in charge of Vereinigte Spiritus- und Hefefabriken.
As there were no longer any individual entrepreneurs as a result of the Quadruplet – previously the business had been run autonomously and patriarchally by Adolf Ignaz, Carl Ferdinand, Victor and Georg I. Heinrich – all decisions had to be negotiated within a group of owners. It is worth mentioning that, although no minutes were kept until 1947, there was never a single further discussion about a decision once it had been made. The first period of the four-man procession formally ended in the summer of 1939, with the relocation of Georg III (Werder near Potsdam) and Manfred I (Berlin).
After the war, the Quadruplet continued to consist of Georg III Buwa, Gustav I, Gerhard and Manfred I. In 1968, on his 65th birthday, Manfred I handed over his seat to his son Manfred II and at the same time Georg III transferred his agendas to his son Georg IV J. E.. Heinrich also succeeded his father Gerhard in the 1960s, and when Gustav I died in 1970, his son Gustav II took over his seat. The second generation now met in a room specially provided for this purpose, in the Schwechater Hof (formerly Drehers Etablissement) at Landstraßer Hauptstraße 97. In 1979, as the ownership structure had changed due to the merger with Brau AG and there was therefore no longer a basis for balancing the companies’ interests, the Quadruplet was dissolved.
