The aim is not to preserve lifeless buildings from the past, but to protect intangible goods such as cultural values, origin and tradition.
In 2000 and 2003, The European Heritage Project acquired two historic and regionally unique early 17th century isolated farmsteads in the Tyrolean community of Reith near Kitzbühel, Austria. Located on the Astberg at an altitude of 1,200 metres in the eastern alpine highlands, in the immediate vicinity of the Wilder Kaiser mountain, the farmsteads constitute a rarity regarding the rather atypically high altitude of their location. The mountain farmsteads are witness to extremely poor and inhospitable living conditions of the past, dominated by infertile land that was only suitable for grazing cattle.
Only a few of these high alpine mountain farmsteads have been preserved. It was a rare stroke of luck being able to acquire two neighbouring farmsteads, Vorderasten and Hinterasten. Architecturally, they are especially impressive due to the complex interplay of solid wood and stone structures. The wooden components of the log construction which survived more than three centuries due to the oversized logs, as well as the solid foundations built deep into massive rock, are particularly impressive. Although severely damaged at the time of the acquisition by The European Heritage Project, it is nevertheless a unique ensemble worth preserving.
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The entire region, which once belonged to the manorial rule of the Berchtesgaden Monastery, was famous for its silver and copper mines, and thereby was able to amass considerable wealth between the 15th and 18th centuries. Yet, it was not only mining that shaped the local mentality, culture, and architecture; the rugged mountain landscape, the harsh climate, and the simple life also made a significant contribution. Thus, the Kitzbühel area was shaped decisively by the unique mindset of the persistent and humble mountain farmer and his rugged alpine pasture.
The aim was and remains to preserve the heritage of the Tyrolean region and to respect its down-to-earth attitude in order to honour a legitimate sense of deep rootedness and local loyalty.
PURCHASE SITUATION
In 1999 the mountain farmstead to the east, Vorderasten, was in an extremely neglected condition. The owner at the time, heavily indebted and an alcoholic, had massively run down the 17th century building over several decades, leaving the interior practically uninhabitable in terms of hygiene. The entire structure was in acute danger of collapsing. The European Heritage Project was able to acquire the building in the summer to extensively restore it.
As the first listed building acquired by The European Heritage Project, this marked the beginning of a sustainable commitment to the preservation of European culture and architecture.
After the successful completion of the restoration measures, The European Heritage Project in 2003 acquired the lower-lying barn originally belonging to the mountain farmsteads. In 2010, the older neighbouring farmstead was added after it was offered for sale by its Münster-based owner. The previous owners had used the property as a holiday home. It was largely in good condition.
REAL ESTATE FACTS & FIGURES
The early 17th century isolated farmsteads, when viewed as a whole, form a so-called Streuhof (scattered farm). Consisting of two detached larger buildings about 30 metres apart, separated from one another by a small stream, a hut in between them, as well as a barn lower down, the complex is largely isolated. The next inhabited building, the Plattlhof, is several hundred meters away. Only a narrow path leads into the valley.
The alpine farms are in the Tyrolean community of Reith near Kitzbühel in the eastern alpine mountains at an altitude of 1,200 metres. The two main buildings are respectively two and three storeys high. The living and usable areas distributed over the four buildings amount to 610 square metres, whereby the property situated on an elevated alpine meadow with its pastures and adjoining forest covers 7.2 hectares.
HISTORY
An austere life in a harsh climate
Princes, nobles, churches and monasteries determined the power structures during the late Middle Ages. They were the landlords and at that time administered more than two thirds of all property in Tyrol and allocated land in return for a corresponding payment of interest.
Since time immemorial, self-sufficiency has been the incentive for peasant work and life. The farm was both a centre and a business location where a wide variety of food, clothing, everyday objects and much more were produced. Intensive dairy farming was practised in the arid regions of the countryside where farmers could cultivate little or no grain at all. The landscape, which was more or less fertile depending on the altitude, provided the economic framework for the Tyrolean alpine region.
Life was particularly bleak on the isolated farms in the high mountains where the poorest of the poor lived. All in all, the ancient and seldom preserved mountain farmsteads are a rare testimony to the poor rural life of Tyrol, especially at such altitudes. They tell the story of the mountain farmer, who was ever at the mercy of nature and the barren mountain landscape and yet defied it with respect and the iron will to survive.
The mountain farmers at the time were self-sufficient, but how successful they were was determined by the climatic conditions and the weather. In bad harvest years, when the yield had been more than poor and supplies did not last through the winter, there was always the threat of famine. The aristocrats, who leased farms to farmers, were rich in comparison. They demanded their share of the harvest, regardless of whether the harvests were good or not; they did not care whether the inhabitants of the farm were fed. This exploitation only came to an end when feudalism was abolished in Tyrol in 1782 under Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790).
The farmers’ clothing was also rather scanty until the introduction of the more skin-friendly and pleasant industrially processed cotton at the end of the 19th century. The mountain farmers wore mostly flax fabrics; they even wore coarse linen in winter, as wool and leather were unaffordable for the rural population. This flax was cultivated in the lower valleys and later spun and processed into fabrics by the farmers’ wives.
Hygiene was also inadequate in most cases, as there were neither bathrooms nor running water. Consequently, people rarely bathed; they only washed their hands and faces, and even laundry was rarely washed. This lack of hygiene often led to infections, sometimes even fatal, because there was no medical care on the particularly remote farms. For many of the mountain farmers, medical treatment was inconceivable given their precarious financial situation. Storing food, too, was a major problem affecting the health of the local population.
In the case of the mountain farmsteads on the Astberg, the land was only suitable for grazing cattle; the soil was virtually infertile making agriculture impossible. Even dairy production was extremely limited, even though it was mostly the only source of food. The stable at Vorderasten had only enough space for two cows!
The confined rooms were often overheated and fully occupied in winter, as work such as sewing, knitting, repairing tools, and flax spinning, which could not be done in the summer months, was carried out here. As there was hardly any ventilation, there was always a lack of oxygen. It is said that many a spinner fell unconscious from a chair due to shortness of breath while spinning. The German expression “sie spinnt” (literally translated meaning “she spins”, but used in the sense “she’s crazy”) is said to have originated from the fact that the person who fell from the chair became unconscious or was dazed due to the lack of oxygen and was therefore proverbially no longer quite with it.
Family life on the mountain farmsteads
Gavelkind, the division of land amongst all descendants, did not apply universally in the Tyrolean uplands. Gavelkind farms were often designed to be larger since several families lived there together. The land was divided among all of the sons and over time large fields became narrow strips that could barely produce enough crops. This was a poverty trap that was probably a bitter reality in this area as well.
In the 16th century, after the death of their father, two brothers are said to have quarrelled and ended up dividing the farm and the land which they had inherited. According to the story, they never spoke to one another again. A small stream that flows between the farms still serves as a natural border today.
Not getting along very well, and yet having to get along on a day-to-day basis, must have had a decisive influence on the lives of mountain farmers. The poorer the people, the more likely marriage was considered a mutual support arrangement; love or personality played no part. One simply had to get along for a lifetime.
Living together unhappily was therefore often part of everyday life. And there was only one maxim to follow: “Till death do us part”. If, for example, the farmer’s wife died, he often married the sister of the deceased. Marriage in this social class was therefore an economic necessity as it was a matter of sheer survival. In particular, the women were likely to have had a hard time, as they had hardly any say in marriage matters. Legally, men were the guardians of the women, regardless of whether they were father, brother, or husband. Women were primarily responsible for raising the numerous children and for the household. They did not really have any opportunity for self-realisation. Only in the case of gross misconduct by the husband which acutely endangered the economic situation of the farm and family life, such as drunkenness or mental illness, did the wife have a right of objection and, in the most extreme case, was allowed to take over the administration of the estate.
Clear social conventions were necessary to regulate coexistence in an extended farming family. Three generations of a family usually lived on a family estate. An extended Tyrolean family housed under one roof where they all worked and lived together. This proximity and the close coexistence from birth to death created strong bonds and great emotional ties between family members.
The youngest in these impoverished areas of Tyrol often suffered a tragic fate. The ubiquitous poverty and frequent famines brought the mountain farmers to their knees for several generations, as they were temporarily unable to feed most of the children on the farm. The farming families of the isolated mountain farmsteads were particularly hard hit. Their children between the ages of 6 and 14 were usually brought to the child markets where they would be purchased or “rented” by farmers to herd cattle in Swabia or to work as harvesters. They received no wages for their work; their remuneration was just free food and lodging. These so-called Schwabenkinder (Swabian children) not only suffered from homesickness, but did not receive an adequate education and were often exposed to abuse and the arbitrariness of strangers.
THINGS TO KNOW & CURIOSITIES
The Schwabenkinder – poverty and child labour
The Schwabenkinder (Swabian children), also known as Hütekinder, were peasant children of poor mountain farmers from Tyrol, Vorarlberg, Switzerland and Liechtenstein who, due to the poverty of their families from the beginning of the modern age to the early 20th century, travelled to the Kindermärkte (child markets) every spring where they were purchased or “rented” by farmers as seasonal workers in the rural regions of Württemberg and Baden.
The undertaking itself was referred to as Schwabengehen (going to Swabia), first mentioned in the 16th and 17th centuries, and most widespread in the 19th century. It is estimated that at that time five to six thousand children a year worked on foreign farms as shepherd boys, maidservants, or farmhands. This was due to the extremely low soil yields in the Alpine regions and the associated poverty, which drove the parents to send one or more of their numerous children away.
The routes from Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Switzerland to Upper Swabia were often long and arduous. Some of the children had to cross mountain passes such as the Arlberg, which were usually covered by snow in March, with inappropriate shoes and meagre clothing. Usually an adult, sometimes a priest, accompanied them to ensure that the children slept in warm stables; they also negotiated prices at the markets. The journey became easier for the Tyrolean children when the Arlberg Railway was built in 1884.
The child markets in Upper Swabia mostly took place in March and the children returned home between the end of October and the middle of November. They usually carried two sets of clothing and, depending on the age of the child workers and the negotiated price, a few guilders.
The child markets were abolished in 1915 when the children were needed at home to replace the soldiers called up in the First World War. However, Schwabengehen only declined sharply in 1921, after the introduction of compulsory schooling for foreign children in Württemberg. The 1989 novel by the Austrian writer Othmar Franz Lang (1921-2005) ”Hungerweg. Von Tirol zum Kindermarkt in Ravensburg” for young readers tells the story of the Swabian children using an example.
In 2012, as part of a cross-border EU project, the recording of the paths, individual fates and living conditions of the Schwabenkinder was initiated.
ARCHITECTURE
The mountain farmsteads Vorderasten and Hinterasten consist of housing, livestock farming, and supplies and equipment storage. The unified farmstead is a so-called Einödhof (isolated farm), as there are only two detached and otherwise isolated buildings here. The term Einöde comes from the Old High German “einōti” which literally means “lying alone” and refers to a remote or isolated dwelling. In Upper German it represented the smallest type of settlement and was first used as a definition in the “Augsburger Chroniken” in the 15th century and in the “Tiroler Landsordnung “ of 1573 as “ainöden”.
While the risk of fire was high in the more densely built-up areas of Tyrol and houses were built out of stone for this reason, there was hardly any risk of fire spreading over the whole area, which is why wood was the main building material.
Both buildings have a central corridor that runs along the roof ridge and separates the rooms. The main houses consist of a partially bricked, lime plastered ground floor built into the massive rockface, and a first floor, as well as a log construction roof structure.
Log construction has always been regarded as one of the most original construction methods in western culture. There is now ample evidence that the log construction technique was already common in prehistoric times, especially in central Europe. It has been used since the Neolithic, from the 2nd millennium BC.
This construction method has probably been used continuously to date in house building, even though the oldest still standing log houses date back to the Middle Ages. Therefore, the two mountain farmsteads are part of an overall European cultural heritage, which at least architecturally goes beyond a purely regional significance.
The log walls, each of which rests on a stone foundation and partly on a hardwood frame, were created by layering timber. The timber was utilised either as round timber, flattened timber or sawn squared timber. In the case of round timber, the thinner end is alternately placed over the thicker end to utilise all the wood. The walls layered in this way join at the corners by means of interlocking and lamellation of the individual timbers. The logs are nailed flush to each other. The inner walls are also interlocked with the outer walls and from the outside are recognisable as vertical rows of dovetailed beam heads.
This mixed use of materials and construction methods is archetypal for the region. The façades, including the massive balconies and all load-bearing elements, from the foundations to the roof structures, are made of larch wood with a dark linseed oil coating. The interiors, from the wooden planks to the wall panelling, doors, and ceilings, are made of regional Swiss pine. The roofs are traditionally covered with wooden shingles. Furthermore, the simple carved ornaments on the cornices and balconies as well as the green-painted wooden shutters are particularly striking.
One of the two dwellings has a smoke chamber, or Kuchl, and serves as a central kitchen. The original 17th century stove is a two-tier stove partially insulated with tiles. At working height, it is a stove for cooking with a metal vessel for heating water. At the top, it serves to heat the bedrooms above. This stove therefore significantly exceeds a classic oven and is a rarity in its current functional state.
STRUCTURAL CONDITION AT TIME OF ACQUISITION
At the time of the acquisition the farmstead Vorderasten, situated to the east, was in a disastrous condition. The whole house was full of debris, empty bottles and garbage. The retrofitted sheet metal roof was completely rusted through and posed a risk of collapse for the entire building due to its lack of load-bearing capacity which is necessary for the snow masses that fall in these high mountainous areas in winter. The wooden balconies were also rotten and no longer accessible due to lack of maintenance. Many of the building elements displayed signs of acute woodworm infestation which additionally endangered the entire building substance, in particular the roof truss. All power lines were dilapidated, and numerous exposed cables ran through the entire living space. The power supply and the unprofessionally installed temporary solution represented a potential fire hazard due to the inadequate insulation and exposure.
Fortunately, the farmstead Hinterasten acquired by The European Heritage Project in 2010 and also dating from the early 17th century, showed neither moisture damage nor pest infestation, although dendrochronological examination revealed that it was at least three decades older than the neighbouring farm. Nevertheless, the condition of its statics was cause for concern. The façade leaned forward resulting in the misalignment of the entire building which was visible in the ceilings, floors, and walls. In addition, the façade showed signs of misappropriation, from colourful paintwork to climbing stones attached to the walls.
RESTORATION AND CONSERVATION MEASURES
As part of the restoration process, dendrochronological examinations were carried out to professionally determine the age and types of woods utilised.
The European Heritage Project initially cleaned and dried out the premises of the farmstead Vorderasten and removed all the debris in order to take pest control measures. Damaged and splintering wooden elements were restored throughout the building which included, in particular, sanding and sealing with natural linseed oil on the exterior and beeswax in the interior. The wood damaged by woodworms or destroyed by moisture was replaced by reconstructions.
A regionally renowned carpenter who was particularly familiar with traditional techniques and materials was commissioned to carry out all the work. After the roof structure was restored and stabilised, the rusty tin roof was replaced by a historically accurate shingle roof reconstruction.
All power lines in the entire house were reinstalled to ensure reliable power supply. Subsequently, the four-hundred-year-old stove, which was mostly well-preserved, was restored by repairing flaking on some of the tiles.
On the façade, the stone walls were partially re-grouted and plastered with lime. In addition, the shutters and window frames were repainted and partly realigned and adjusted. The windowpanes were retained in their original condition and, on the outside, insulating glazing was installed.
In all other buildings – the stable, the cabin and the second mountain farmstead – severely damaged wooden elements were reconstructed. Further obligatory repairs and treatment of timber were carried out to a similar extent as mentioned above. The tin roofs were removed and replaced with wooden shingles.
The biggest challenge posed by the mountain farmstead on the left, which was acquired in 2010, was to correct the massive misalignment of the floors and the extreme inclination of the front façade. This was achieved by meticulously securing all load-bearing walls as well as the roof truss by excavating and straightening the entire foundation. Cracks in masonry and wooden structures were repaired, the wood paint used by the previous owners was gently removed from the façade, the previously attached climbing stones removed, and the resulting holes filled.
Previously, power pylons and overhead lines ran directly through the property. After consultation with the local public utilities, however, the power lines were laid underground, creating a more harmonious overall appearance as well as restoring the original historical state and creating a natural unity between the alpine pastures and the farmsteads.
During restoration work, a water source was found which is now used for the water supply of the farm complex. To improve hygienic conditions and ensure the proper removal of wastewater, the soakaways in all buildings were rebuilt using modern biological techniques.
PRESENT USE & FUTURE PLANS