Alpbach
Encyclopedia
Alpbach is a village in Western Austria
in the state of Tyrol
. Its geographical location is 47°24′N 11°57′E, at 975 m above sea level. Alpbach had a population of 2,549 in 2003.
The earliest written record of the name Alpbach comes from 1150, although human settlement is known to have begun there before and around the year 1000, and a bronze axe found at Steinberger Joch (the pass leading to the Ziller Valley) in 1860 suggests that the route was already in use in the Hallstatt period.
Christianity
was first brought to the region in the 7th and 8th centuries by Irish and Scottish monks, and the patron saint
of the parish church is in fact St. Oswald, a former King of Northumbria
.
At the beginning of the 15th century, deposits of copper
and silver
were discovered on the Gratlspitz and Schatzberg and in the Luegergraben. At the time, the Fugger merchant family from Augsburg had control over mining operations in Schwaz
and Kitzbühel
, and they extended their activities to include the Alpbach valley. The Böglerhof housed the Fugger offices and was also seat of the Mining Court. In those days, Alpbach already had two inns, the Böglerhof and the Jakober Inn, where the men of the village would go to drink spirits, such as schnapps. By the middle of the 19th century, productivity at the mines had declined to the stage where they had to be closed.
Vorder-Unterberg Farm, which was built in 1636-1638 by local carpenters and was lived in until 1952, stands at the edge of the forest above the little church in Inneralpbach. Today the building is a mountain farming museum, and the exhibits include the old parlour, chapel, a combined kitchen and smokehouse, and over 800 artefacts of daily life and work.
The road leading up the valley to Alpbach was not built until 1926, and the isolated location of the village led to the development of a distinctive style of architecture and furnishings, and also enabled the local folk traditions to be preserved for much longer than in most of the valleys of the Tyrol.
Tourists first began arriving in Alpbach at the beginning of the 20th century, and by 1938 the village had accommodation for 110 visitors. In the mean time, the figure had increased to 2500 and Alpbach now attracts some 22000 visitors in summer and about the same in winter for an annual total of 300000 nights. Tourism
is the main source of income for today's 2300 local residents, but there are still 105 working farms in Alpbach, the same number as a hundred years ago.
Since 1945, Alpbach has been the venue for the Alpbach European Forum
, an annual two-week conference of leading figures from the worlds of science
, business
, the arts
and politics
. The Forum and the participation of so many people who have shaped the thinking of their times has given Alpbach the nickname
, "The Village Of Thinkers."
The first conference hall in Alpbach was built in the mid-1950s and named after the Austrian poetess Paula von Preradovic
, who wrote the words for the Austrian national anthem
. The plenary hall was named after the physicist and Nobel Prize
-winner Erwin Schrödinger
. He lies buried in the Alpbach cemetery.
In 1999, the new Alpbach Congress Centre was opened, together with the 55th European Forum. With its combination of exciting architecture and a minimum environmental footprint, the main architectural feature is a spiral shaped gallery with floor-to-ceiling glazing for a unique view of the spectacular mountain backdrop.
At the suggestion of Alfons Moser, Mayor of Alpbach from 1945 to 1979, the Council issued a local planning law in 1953, which made the traditional style of architecture in Alpbach mandatory for all new buildings.
Over the years, Alpbach has collected many awards and distinctions. In 1975, the Austrian Public Health Institute certified that Alpbach had the cleanest and purest air in all of Austria. It was voted "Austria's Most Beautiful Village" in 1983 by a television contest organised by Austrian Television. In June 1985, the Council of Europe in Strasbourg conferred upon Alpbach the right to fly the European flag in recognition of the community's services to European Unity. In 1993, Alpbach won "The Most Beautiful Floral Village in Europe" award.
Alpbach is also a well known ski resort and its quiet pistes are well groomed and provide beginner to intermediate runs with lots of off pistes as well as unpatrolled route 5 which is popular with the more advanced skiers. A new lift has been opened in 2006-2007 which is a gondola and allows people to move from Inner-Alpbach to near the top of the wiedersbergerhorn (the mountain used for all of the runs). Alpbach is also more popular with skiers than snowboarders due to the lack of extreme off piste, but is a very popular place for beginner boarders, or those looking to re-kindle their boarding passion. There is also a halfpipe for the more adventurous. There are two ski schools in the village, the first is the original Ski and Snowboardschool at Alpbach-Inneralpbach run since 1932 by Sepp Margreiter (a State certified ski instructor and ski guide). The second is the Alpbach Active Skischule, of which the HQ of the ski school run from Alpbach, the same as the original ski school.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
in the state of Tyrol
Tyrol (state)
Tyrol is a state or Bundesland, located in the west of Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical region of Tyrol.The state is split into two parts–called North Tyrol and East Tyrol–by a -wide strip of land where the state of Salzburg borders directly on the Italian province of...
. Its geographical location is 47°24′N 11°57′E, at 975 m above sea level. Alpbach had a population of 2,549 in 2003.
The earliest written record of the name Alpbach comes from 1150, although human settlement is known to have begun there before and around the year 1000, and a bronze axe found at Steinberger Joch (the pass leading to the Ziller Valley) in 1860 suggests that the route was already in use in the Hallstatt period.
Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
was first brought to the region in the 7th and 8th centuries by Irish and Scottish monks, and the patron saint
Patron saint
A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...
of the parish church is in fact St. Oswald, a former King of Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
.
At the beginning of the 15th century, deposits of copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
and silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
were discovered on the Gratlspitz and Schatzberg and in the Luegergraben. At the time, the Fugger merchant family from Augsburg had control over mining operations in Schwaz
Schwaz
Schwaz is a city in Tyrol, Austria. It is the administrative center of the Schwaz district . Schwaz is located in the lower Inn valley, and has a population of about 13,000....
and Kitzbühel
Kitzbühel
-Demographic evolution:-Personalities:*Karl Wilhelm von Dalla Torre , entomologist and botanist*Alfons Walde , expressionist painter and architect*Peter Aufschnaiter , mountaineer and geographer...
, and they extended their activities to include the Alpbach valley. The Böglerhof housed the Fugger offices and was also seat of the Mining Court. In those days, Alpbach already had two inns, the Böglerhof and the Jakober Inn, where the men of the village would go to drink spirits, such as schnapps. By the middle of the 19th century, productivity at the mines had declined to the stage where they had to be closed.
Vorder-Unterberg Farm, which was built in 1636-1638 by local carpenters and was lived in until 1952, stands at the edge of the forest above the little church in Inneralpbach. Today the building is a mountain farming museum, and the exhibits include the old parlour, chapel, a combined kitchen and smokehouse, and over 800 artefacts of daily life and work.
The road leading up the valley to Alpbach was not built until 1926, and the isolated location of the village led to the development of a distinctive style of architecture and furnishings, and also enabled the local folk traditions to be preserved for much longer than in most of the valleys of the Tyrol.
Tourists first began arriving in Alpbach at the beginning of the 20th century, and by 1938 the village had accommodation for 110 visitors. In the mean time, the figure had increased to 2500 and Alpbach now attracts some 22000 visitors in summer and about the same in winter for an annual total of 300000 nights. Tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
is the main source of income for today's 2300 local residents, but there are still 105 working farms in Alpbach, the same number as a hundred years ago.
Since 1945, Alpbach has been the venue for the Alpbach European Forum
European Forum Alpbach
The European Forum Alpbach is an annual event that takes place in August in the Tyrolean village of Alpbach, Austria. Similar to the World Economic Forum in Davos, politicians, academics, students, and decision makers from all areas come together to discuss and brainstorm new ideas and solutions to...
, an annual two-week conference of leading figures from the worlds of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
, the arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....
and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
. The Forum and the participation of so many people who have shaped the thinking of their times has given Alpbach the nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
, "The Village Of Thinkers."
The first conference hall in Alpbach was built in the mid-1950s and named after the Austrian poetess Paula von Preradovic
Paula von Preradovic
Paula Preradović , known professionally as Paula von Preradović or by her married name as Paula Molden, was a Croatian and Austrian writer and narrator....
, who wrote the words for the Austrian national anthem
National anthem
A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
. The plenary hall was named after the physicist and Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winner Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933...
. He lies buried in the Alpbach cemetery.
In 1999, the new Alpbach Congress Centre was opened, together with the 55th European Forum. With its combination of exciting architecture and a minimum environmental footprint, the main architectural feature is a spiral shaped gallery with floor-to-ceiling glazing for a unique view of the spectacular mountain backdrop.
At the suggestion of Alfons Moser, Mayor of Alpbach from 1945 to 1979, the Council issued a local planning law in 1953, which made the traditional style of architecture in Alpbach mandatory for all new buildings.
Over the years, Alpbach has collected many awards and distinctions. In 1975, the Austrian Public Health Institute certified that Alpbach had the cleanest and purest air in all of Austria. It was voted "Austria's Most Beautiful Village" in 1983 by a television contest organised by Austrian Television. In June 1985, the Council of Europe in Strasbourg conferred upon Alpbach the right to fly the European flag in recognition of the community's services to European Unity. In 1993, Alpbach won "The Most Beautiful Floral Village in Europe" award.
Alpbach is also a well known ski resort and its quiet pistes are well groomed and provide beginner to intermediate runs with lots of off pistes as well as unpatrolled route 5 which is popular with the more advanced skiers. A new lift has been opened in 2006-2007 which is a gondola and allows people to move from Inner-Alpbach to near the top of the wiedersbergerhorn (the mountain used for all of the runs). Alpbach is also more popular with skiers than snowboarders due to the lack of extreme off piste, but is a very popular place for beginner boarders, or those looking to re-kindle their boarding passion. There is also a halfpipe for the more adventurous. There are two ski schools in the village, the first is the original Ski and Snowboardschool at Alpbach-Inneralpbach run since 1932 by Sepp Margreiter (a State certified ski instructor and ski guide). The second is the Alpbach Active Skischule, of which the HQ of the ski school run from Alpbach, the same as the original ski school.
External links
- www.slopeseeker.com - An independent guide to skiing in Alpbach
- http://www.alpbach.at
- Pictures of Alpbach
- http://www.skischule-alpbach.at/en/willkommen.php
- http://www.alpbach-aktiv.com/web/index.html
- Others photos of Alpbach in Panoramio.com