Culture & History in Heiligenblut am Grossglockner

The emperor's daughter is also horrified. She asks Briccius to take the holy relic with the blood of Christ with him - it would certainly be in better Christian hands in his homeland. But Briccius gets lost in the Hohe Tauern. He gets caught in a storm and dies.
In spring, farmers find the dead man and recognize a saint in him. The name of our village was also found with the holy blood
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The names of all those who have lost their lives in our mountains are written in the "Iron Book". For two centuries. Even back then, intrepid farmers' sons were willing to accompany scientists and mountaineers on often daring tours.

A new task, a new trade, was born. As the "mountain guides of Heiligenblut", they brought those entrusted to them safely to their destination and in this way earned themselves a legendary reputation. The prerequisites were experience and local knowledge, knowledge of the necessary equipment and, above all, the ability to respond to those in their care.

The Pallavicinis belonged to the Italian nobility as early as the 11th century. In 1731, Gianluca Pallavicini came to Vienna as Genoa's diplomatic representative, and from then on there was a close relationship with the imperial court. Alfred von Pallavicini was also an officer in the service of the emperor. His mother was a Countess of Erdödy.

Pallavicini is considered one of the best mountaineers of his time. On August 18, 1876, the Margrave - accompanied by the Heiligenblut mountain guides Tribusser, Kramser and Bäuerle - conquered the "Pallavicini gully" named after him.

The gully is still feared today because of the rockfall. Pallavicini died on June 26, 1886 during a tour of the Glockner.

For a long time, big names have shaped the image of winter in Austria - with ski lifts in extensive ski resorts. Heiligenblut am Grossglockner learned about this during hibernation. Few could have imagined that Heiligenblut would one day be "ready for winter".
Josef Schmidl and the first cable car projects marked the beginning and the turning point in 1964. Further decisions followed at the right time - far-sighted and, above all, infrastructurally necessary projects. The Fleiß was developed and the monocable gondola was built on the Schareck. It remains to be seen whether the time has come to try something new again.

Civil engineer Franz Wallack, planner and builder of the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, calculated the cost of this project at 85.8 million euros in 1930 (monetary value 2016). In 1936, Wallack presented the final bill: 85.1 million euros - 700,000 euros less than estimated. The guiding principle of Wallack, an engineer and experienced high Alpine climber, at a time that was not yet ecologically sensitive:

"The Glockner Road must technically outshine all famous Alpine roads and be suitable for large-scale traffic. It must blend harmoniously into the landscape, because in this sublime mountain world it would be presumptuous to try to outdo nature with the means of technology."

This is why Wallack also had the vegetation removed from the construction route in order to heal construction wounds afterwards. And he created "plant gardens" to grow alpine seeds appropriate to the location. So in 1930 / 35, Wallack built the ideal feeder road to the Hohe Tauern National Park, which was founded in 1981 / 83, half a century ahead of its time.

Wallack was also ahead of his time as a traffic engineer: he wired a telephone with 16 emergency call pillars next to his road and developed the "rotary plough", which was able to cope with the masses of snow in the high mountains and is used worldwide today.

Wallack was the first to lead his high alpine road not up to the glaciers, but high above them. As a result, 64 million visitors had experienced the view of the Pasterze, Austria's largest glacier, by 2015. Together with Schönbrunn Palace and the Hohensalzburg Fortress, this high alpine road forms the top trio of tourist attractions in Austria.

In 1980, Austrian architecture pope Friedrich Achleitner used Wallack's work as a benchmark for an ecologically highly sensitive time: "Proof that economic interests and technical understanding do not have to destroy a landscape." Wallack took stock in 1960 on the 25th anniversary of his road: "The many thousands of workers and engineers who worked tirelessly here will be forgotten. But one thing will remain: The road." Perhaps forgotten - but all those who built this road will be thanked.

On average, between 2000 and 3000 people were employed in the construction of the Glocknerstraße from 1930 to 1935. The modest weekly wages of 230 euros for 48 hours of work corresponded to the collective agreements of the construction industry. At that time, a kilo of brown bread cost 1.90, a half pint of beer 1.52, a haircut 6 euros and a roll 22 cents. However, wages were supplemented by bonuses: Depending on the level of the job, up to 12 percent as well as 25 percent each for overtime and work on Sundays.

In 1872, 155 people from Klagenfurt founded a section of the Alpine Club with the ambitious goal of making access to the Grossglockner in Carinthia much easier. The association's own civil engineer Heinrich Pierl developed a concrete plan for this: "2500 meters of ascent from Heiligenblut to the Glockner cannot be completed in one day. But there would be a flat spot for a hut halfway up. Heiligenblut already offered 111 guest beds in three good hostels. Nothing could go wrong. And so we started building the Glocknerhaus as early as 1874."

However, the construction of such a hut with 40 beds, only accessible from Heiligenblut via a narrow path in three hours, weighed heavily on the association's finances. The resourceful people from Klagenfurt therefore organized a lottery, which raised two thirds of the construction costs of 176,000 euros (monetary value in 2016).

Above all, however, the construction of the railroad in 1875 through the Drau Valley and the Pinzgau region of the Glockner Group opened up the tourist potential of large cities such as Munich and Vienna. The people of Klagenfurt therefore planned to sustainably improve the ascent from Heiligenblut to the Glocknerhaus. They spent 2.7 million euros and built an 11.2 km long and 2.5 m wide "Glocknerstraße" from 1900 to 1908 according to Heinrich Pierl's plans, so that tourists could even travel up comfortably in two-horse carriages. From 1927, ten-seater post buses were already running between Heiligenblut and the Glocknerhaus.

Heinrich Pierl had a bold idea at the time: a road over the Hochtor following in the footsteps of an almost 3000-year-old trade route. It was intended to open up an attractive tourist route to the Grossglockner. Pierl drew up a route in 1895, but the plan never made it off the drawing board due to a lack of money. It was not until Franz Wallack took up this project again in 1924 under completely different circumstances that it was successful.

For some ideas, the time seems to be ripe only after many years. In 1918, Alberth Wirth ceded the entire Glockner area to the Austrian Alpine Association - the Hohe Tauern National Park was founded in 1981.