Baroque treasures of Hallstatt

The wealth and faith of the salt lords

There are Baroque buildings, Baroque music, Baroque poetry, why shouldn't there also be Baroque people? I'm not thinking of voluptuous Rubens women or similar outward appearances, but of people with a baroque attitude to life. Such a person must have been the salt administrator Christoph Eyssl von Eysselsberg, who owned Grub Castle (pictured), which is enthroned opposite Hallstatt. When he died in 1668, he left behind one of the most unusual wills imaginable:

His coffin was to be taken out of the crypt every fifty years, on the day of his death, carried around the church and then driven on the lake to his castle.

Until the middle of the last century, this wish is said to have been granted, because the baroque lord of the castle had donated a crypt chapel to the Catholic parish church. In the Hallstatt cemetery, an inscription on the north side of the church commemorates this strange salt administrator. Verweser - this awakens new associations with cemetery and has at least a ridiculous aftertaste. However, a salt administrator was anything but a man to smile at. To decay does not only mean "to pass into rot", the word also has the meaning of to manage.

The seat of the office was Ischl. Our Baroque lord was one of the most prominent of these administrators, but he was little loved because of his despotism and his loose lifestyle. The administrators active in Ischl were still above the court clerks. What is a court clerk? Today, one may think of the press officers of the politicians, but a court clerk in Hallstatt had other tasks. He was the chief saltworks official of Hallstatt. Today, this function would be called a plant manager.

Just as little as we do with a salt administrator or a court clerk, we do not know what to do with the job title of salt merchant today. This was the class equipped with many privileges that took over the salt from the state mining industry as primary production, dried it, packaged it, shipped it and put it on the market. Salt administrators, court clerks and salt merchants were powerful and rich people in Hallstatt, occasionally generous ones. The baroque buildings that can be admired in Hallstatt were donated by them. However, all these foundations testify not only to the wealth of the Hallstatt salt lords, but also to their deep faith.

However, when you hear the word Baroque in Hallstatt, you must not think of magnificent castles and palaces. You will look for something like this in vain - and there would be no space available. On the other hand, you will find something like a dear Baroque in Hallstatt - if this unprofessional expression is permitted.

A Dear Baroque

Baroque in Hallstatt - that's the Trinity Column on the market square (1744), right in the center of Hallstatt, an enchanting counterpart to the colossal monuments in Vienna and Linz. Baroque in Hallstatt is little churches and chapels covered with larch shingles, Christmas cribs, wrought-iron window baskets, signs, gravestones.

Calvary church in the Hallstatt district of "Lahn"

Around 24,000 curved larch shingles were necessary to save the Calvary Church from decay. The curved roof shape was renewed true to the original a few years ago. The church dates from 1711 and was donated together with the Stations of the Cross chapels by a childless court clerk couple who also wanted to have their final resting place there. Also from this time and by the same donor is likely to be the painting "On the Life and Death of the Miner".

It is located in the building of the Saline Directorate. The office of the mining director is also adorned with a baroque gem: a picture of St. Barbara, the martyr particularly revered by the miners, to whom an altar is also dedicated. It comes from the Salzberg Chapel and can now be seen in the Hallstatt Museum. St. Barbara is therefore represented in the art of Hallstatt with three styles: as a Gothic altarpiece, in a baroque altar, as a baroque picture and as a modern sculpture.

Saint Barbara

Over the centuries, St. Barbara has played a role in Hallstatt, and fate has established strange connections between the centuries: The Krippenstein Chapel with the Barbara Altar is the memorial for the ten students and three teachers who lost their lives on the Dachstein during Holy Week in 1954. In this context, it is coincidental, but astonishing, that the number of angels in the Baroque Altarpiece corresponds to the number of deaths in the Dachstein tragedy in 1954.

More Baroque Treasures

Let's stay with the Baroque: The interior of the Calvary Church is dominated by a large carved crucifixion group (around 1710) from the working group of the sculptor Johann Meinrad Guggenbichler. Next to the Calvary Church stands the most beautiful baroque secular building in Hallstatt: the Amtshaus. With its gabled roof, it blends in particularly beautifully with the landscape. The Catholic parish church also reminds us that there were wealthy donors in Hallstatt during the Baroque period: the hood of the church tower dates from 1751, and inside the church one wall is decorated with a magnificent wrought-iron window basket (around 1650) and a picture of the Crossing (1653).

Above the neo-Gothic baptismal font is a Baroque Trinity group, presumably a Schwanthaler work, in which, however, only the figures of God the Father and God the Son are original, the rest come from the Hallstatt Wood School. On the cemetery wall sits a small chapel (Chapel of Fear) with a lattice and a group of Olives from 1730. One should also mention the crypt chapel with foundation altar (from 1652) and the baroque pieces in the Michaelskapelle at the Hallstatt cemetery.

It was not supposed to be a sightseeing program that I have put together here. Nor was it important to me to take stock of the Baroque sights, but to prove that in addition to prehistory and Gothic, the Baroque has also left its mark on this traditional and tradition-conscious place, whose inhabitants have always and at all times had a sense of beauty.

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