Peter Rosegger Museums, Alpl and Krieglach

Here we go again, I thought, another visit to an Austrian farmhouse. I had seen a fascinating collection of beautifully restored Austrian houses not long ago in the Stübing open-air museum. This time it was different, however. Firstly, this house is in its original location and secondly it was the birthplace of the famous Styrian author, Peter Rosegger.

And what about this for a location! This is the nearest I’ve seen to a human version of a nest: tucked away safely, high up in the middle of the trees with no visible access route.  It turned out that the house is indeed only accessible on foot. From my experience, practically every second walking route in this country is sehr steil, very steep, but this is the first time I have seen one actually marked as such.

Gulp! This will be a tough one, I thought. I was quite glad to be comfortably installed in Her Ladyship’s rucksack while she toiled uphill from the village of Alpl.

Before entering the house, I just had to stand and take in the beautiful surroundings. Imagine how isolated it must have been back in 1843, the year Peter Rosegger was born here. Sure enough, I later read that it was a two hour walk for him and his siblings to their nearest school. Each way! Weak and in poor health, he didn’t make it to school too often, not surprisingly. In fact, it was only thanks to a wandering teacher that he had any schooling at all as a child.

Although life must have been very tough, Rosegger’s childhood and early years in his Waldheimat, his ‘forest homeland’– a phrase he coined himself – had a huge influence on his writing. Nowadays, Waldheimat is the name given to the Alpl/Krieglach area with Rosegger associations.

We later visited a second Peter Rosegger museum: his country home in nearby Krieglach. I was fascinated by his study and the bedroom where he died which have been left unchanged since his death in 1918.

Here, I learned that Rosegger was very open to and enthusiastic about modern technology while at the same time warning of the dangers it posed to both man and nature. I suppose you could say that he was an early environmentalist, a man ahead of his time. And not afraid of ruffling a few feathers in the process!

A poet and author beloved the world over, his works were translated into over 20 languages. After Jules Vernes, he was the most popular author of his time and was even nominated for the Nobel Prize. He travelled extensively, was fêted by influential people from academics to aristocrats, but he never lost touch with his roots. He used his influence to raise money to build a school in his home village of Alpl for example, and he returned to the area whenever he could in order to be near his beloved Waldheimat.

His poetry and literature are way over my head, but there is one thing I can say for certain about Peter Rosegger. He was a real homebird.