Altenmarkt im Pongau is a market town with 4428 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020) in the Austrian state of Salzburg.
The Regional Museum, or Museum of the Motherland, in
Altenmarkt-Zauchensee is located in one of the oldest buildings in
Austria. The current "Hoamathaus" was built in 1408 and for a long
time served as an inn where miners found refuge. Later the building
was used as a nursing home and was called "Bruderhaus". In 1970, the
nursing home moved to a new modern building and the Altenmarkt
authorities decided to establish a museum in the former Bruderhaus,
telling about the history of the region. The institution immediately
became quite popular and in 1998 it was decided to expand it.
The museum is a two-storey building, traditional for these
places. The first floor is made of stone and whitewashed with lime,
and the second is wooden, and the attic is decorated with a
miniature bell tower.
Museum visitors are presented with
exhibits that tell about what happened in Altenmarkt and its
surroundings in former times. The most significant exhibit is
considered to be a nativity scene created by Altenmarkt craftsmen
over 250 years ago. The heroes of the biblical plot are surrounded
by village houses and recognizable buildings in Jerusalem. The
composition consists of 120 figures, 80 of which are movable.
Each room in the museum is decorated in a special style. Here
you can find a peasant room, a black kitchen, a sacred room, a
school class, a costume hall, as well as a room dedicated to Perkhta
- a magical character - the prototype of the Slavic Baba Yaga. In
the Bavarian-Austrian folklore, Perchta (Berta) goes from door to
door during the Christmas time and checks how diligent and
hardworking the children were in the past year.
The shed
attached to the museum allows you to see old carts, tools and other
devices used in the life of the peasants.
The Roman Catholic parish church of Our Lady Birth is a church building in the market town of Altenmarkt im Pongau in the province of Salzburg. The ensemble includes the Anna Chapel, the Lourdes Chapel, the Market Chapel, the Tannenkapelle as well as the Dechanthof and the Dechanthofstadel.
It is
assumed that the oldest church in Altenmarkt is located under
today's church and was built in the second half of the 9th century.
In 1074 Archbishop Gebhard also donated goods in the Rastat parish,
today's Altenmarkt, to furnish the Admont Monastery, which he
founded. This name can probably be traced back to a rest stop on
Tauernstrasse. The pastor Reicher von Etling can be traced here from
1369 to 1399. He also worked at the court of Archbishop Pilgrim II
as chaplain and later as court master and was mentioned by name in
the songs of the “Monk of Salzburg”. He obtained a number of
indulgences; this suggests that there was lively building activity
under him from 1393 onwards.
From 1398 the income of the
Altenmarkt parish is used for the table of Archbishop Gregor Schenk
von Osterwitz. The parish is led by world priests, only from
1623–1628 Benedictines were active as priests here. The church was
probably damaged in the Peasants' Wars (1526) and then changed
significantly through repeated additions and renovations.
From 1753 Altenmarkt is a deanery with ten parishes (1857: St.
Martin and Wagrain; 1858: Flachau and Filzmoos, 1859: Radstadt,
1891: Kleinarl, Hüttau, Untertauern and Forstau, 1954: Eben) and
today 14 churches.
From 1867 to 1875 the church was
thoroughly restored in line with the neo-Gothic style. During the
last interior restoration from 1988 to 1990, the accompanying
paintings in the vaults were renewed. The entire exterior was
renovated in 1985/1986.
The 42 m long and 22
m wide rectangular church building is divided by buttresses on the
outside, which are only missing in the southeastern area. The
presbytery is designed as a shallow 3/8 end; to the side of this is
a small secondary apse. In 1764 Matthias Pichler's Gothic tower was
replaced by the onion tower that exists today.
The seven-bay
interior shows an open order, one yoke of the central nave
corresponds to one of the side aisles. All yokes are vaulted with
cross ribs. The unusually deep-seated choir arch (between the fourth
and fifth yoke) separates the architecture of the room. The
Romanesque forerunner presumably only comprised the masonry of the
central nave that reached this far, while the remaining three bays
and the chancel were added in the last decade of the 14th century.
Both side aisles were two yokes shorter in the 16th century; on the
north side was the chapel consecrated in 1502 in honor of hll.
Andreas, Wolfgang and Ursula, in the south aisle were the Joseph
chapel and the sacristy. In 1638 these were extended to the current
length. The access to the small crypt under the south aisle, located
under today's sacristy, was walled up so that it had to be filled
in. The decorative paintings in the vault of the church also date
from this period.
Under the dean Sebastian Vorderegger, the
church was given a baroque interior in 1762. At that time, two
cumbersome wooden galleries protruded into the central nave. This
had dean Thomas Furthner removed from 1867–1875 along with most of
the baroque furnishings. He opened the three front bays of the
aisles to the nave so that they were the same length as the nave. He
had these furnished with the neo-Gothic cross-ribbed vault and the
windows with tracery. The gallery, paving, church chairs and the
pulpit also come from this redesign.
The main accent of the
church is determined by the brightly colored windows that Josef
Widmoser from Innsbruck painted in 1954. The central window shows
two angels at the top with the symbols of the lily and the crown,
then the birth of Mary, the Annunciation and the Lamentation of
Christ. The left window deals with themes from the life of St.
Elisabeth of Thuringia; the right one is dedicated to the diocesan
patron Rupertus.
The high altar was redesigned in 1972 based on a design by Clemens Holzmeister. Next to the Baroque cross by Sebastian Eberl are the two assistant figures Johannes and Maria, probably created by the Tyrolean sculptor Josef Martin Lengauer (around 1760). H. Baudisch made the tabernacle.
The marble communion grille comes from the baroque redesign of
1762. The sculptures of St. by Sebastian Eberl also come from this
period. Sebastian and the hll. Katharina and Barbara. The sheet of
the former Joseph altar in the rectory and the portrait of
Archbishop Sigismund III. Christoph von Schrattenbach is assigned to
his valet Benedikt Werkstätter.
The two side altars (left
Mother of God Altar, right Joseph Altar) from 1902 come from Johann
Piger with the collaboration of the cabinet maker Johann Ripper. On
the left side altar is a copy of the Altenmarkt Madonna of Mercy,
next to it the figures of St. Dominic and Catherine of Siena. The
statues on the right side altar show St. Joseph, flanked by Mary's
parents, Anna and Joachim.
The Altenmarkt Madonna is a famous
example of so-called beautiful Madonnas. The 88 cm high Gothic
sculpture was carved out of paving limestone by an unknown Bohemian
artist. On August 14, 1393, the Papal Nuncio Ubaldinus da Torres
wrote a letter of indulgence on the Vyšehrad in Prague, stating that
everyone who prayed in front of the statue received an indulgence.
As the Madonna in front of the fir tree, she stood behind the choir
head for a long time, but was moved to its own altar in the church
in 1638.
The second famous sculpture around 1400 is the
Vesper picture. This Pietà, made of artificial stone, is one of the
most important examples of a three-handed Pieta: one hand of Mary
rests on the crossed hands of the dead Savior, with the second she
supports his head under his neck.
In 1976 the confessionals
were redesigned according to plans by Clemens Holzmeister. The
pulpit was made in 1872 by the Salzburg carpenter Johann Ripper
based on a design by Josef Wessicken. The Way of the Cross was built
in 1873 by the Zillertal sculptor Matthäus Schiestl the Elder based
on a template by J. Führich Ä. accomplished.
In 1903
Albert Mauracher extended the organ from 1846 and received a
neo-Gothic case. On the occasion of the 900th anniversary of the
parish, the second organ loft was demolished in 1974 and a new
"anniversary organ" by the Dreher and Reinisch organ builders was
placed on the first loft and equipped with a new work.
Peal
Three of the four bells of the “Salve Regina” ring (c - es - f - g)
were cast in 1949 by the Pfundner bell foundry in Vienna; the fourth
is from 1920 (Oberascher bell foundry, Salzburg).
In 1395 the pastor Reicher von Etling donated the Anna chapel "on
the Karner" in the cemetery next to the parish church. But it was
not until May 28, 1418 that Bishop Engelmar Chrel von Chiemsee
inaugurated it. This Gothic chapel was badly damaged in the Peasant
Wars in 1526, after which it was attached to the church with a
two-story connecting corridor.
The chapel has an octagonal
floor plan that opens on one side to a narrow sanctuary. The stitch
cap vault rests on delicate struts. The originally free-standing
building was completed by a painted fish-bubble frieze on the
outside under the coffin cornice. In 1949 it was transformed into a
baptistery. The restoration, which was completed in 1989/90, did not
uncover the basement of the church, which was used as an ossuary; a
new floor could also be laid and the ribs exposed. Since then it has
served as a funeral hall (the baptismal font previously set up here
has been moved to the church).
The figural glass windows with
the themes of God the Father, Holy Spirit, Mother of God with Child
and Mother Anna with Child were designed in 1955 by Ludwine
Wildner-Eltz, who also made glass windows for the Benedictine
women's monastery in Nonnberg.
The former Karner was converted into the Lourdes Chapel in 1875. In 1949, Dean J. Fink had the war memorial designed in the western vestibule, for which Jakob Adlhart copied the Gothic Vesper picture in stone in 1974. On the west wall next to it, the Romanesque portal of the previous church is still visible. The epitaph of the Plaz family is located in the chapel.
The market chapel, newly built in 1991 to the right of the cemetery entrance, houses the restored Marian relief of the former neo-Gothic high altar. The subject of the picture is the birth of Mary, as it is shown on the central window in the church choir that was later created. The relief was made in 1871 by an unknown sculptor from the Salzburg workshop of the church painter Simon Daun. The market chapel, which originally stood further to the left, had to be demolished after it was badly damaged when the German troops marched into Austria in 1938.
At Dechantshof, south of the church, is the pine chapel, built in 1974, the year of the 900th parish anniversary. With the mural of the “Madonna of the Fir” painted at the same time, the chapel is intended to preserve “the memory and love of Mary our Lady of Altenmarkt”.
The Dechantshof is a three-story building with a
hipped roof and pilasters. Some of the windows on the first floor
have wrought iron grilles. It was rebuilt in 1755. A connecting
corridor to the parish church was also installed, which is
interrupted by arcades on the ground floor, but is continuously
designed and decorated with plastered surfaces on the upper floor.
Dechantshoftenne / Dechantshofscheune
The Dechantshoftenne
has been Altenmarkt's second local museum since 1980. The building
was erected using a timber frame construction. Among other things,
the museum has a functioning mill and a device for making roof
shingles. A still usable oven for baking bread is also part of the
property. A demonstration of flax crumbles is also possible. There
are other farm equipment in the barn (including flails, straw
shakers, threshing machines, various windmills, sowing machines and
seed drills, old wooden plows). Other showpieces are the
Altenmarkter Schön- and Schiachperchten.
The street station Ani already appears on the Roman road map. It
can be assumed that the place name Ani is related to the name of the
Enns, which was called Anisus.
The first documentary mention
was made in 1074 in the donation agreement from Archbishop Gebhard
to the Admont Monastery. The name Rastat was used until the 13th
century.
Altenmarkt covers an area of 49 km²
and has a population density of 80 inhabitants / km². The community
belonged to the Radstadt judicial district until 2004 and has been
part of the Sankt Johann im Pongau judicial district since January
1, 2005.
Church organization
The municipality used to
include the following three localities (residents as of January 1,
2015):
Altenmarkt im Pongau (3098)
Palfen (824)
Sinnhub
(523)
The community currently consists of one village (population as of
January 1, 2020):
Altenmarkt im Pongau (4428)
The community
consists of the three cadastral communities Altenmarkt, Palfen and
Sinnhub.
The southernmost part of the municipality is called
Zauchensee after the body of water there. Several hotels and the
majority of the ski lifts are located here and thus the core of the
Zauchensee-Flauchauwinkel-Kleinarl ski area, which extends far to
the west.
The majority of the area is roughly made up of the
water catchment area of the Zauchenbach, which runs from the 300 m
long Zauchensee towards NNW and flows from the right into the Enns,
where settlement is more dense. A mountain slope north of the Enns
knee, i.e. left bank, also belongs to the municipality. Even further
south than the Zauchensee and high up on the mountain is the more
rounded Seekarsee.