Fritzl's Summer Holiday: Schönberg am Kamp 1913

 

I am slowly exploring my grandmother's diary. Slowly. Because it is in German, and Sütterlin script or something like it. 79 years of age is not the best time to try to 'learn a new language', but I'm trying, and making slow progress .. and bits are yielding ...

I'm up to the summer of 1913. Father is two and a bit years old. And the family is having their Summer (everyone who was able fled the city in the hot months) in the 'Sommerfrische' market-town of Schönberg in Kamp. Why? Not for its wine, I am sure, but because the area boasted some fine tramping tracks ... and the family were first and foremost trampers!

I can't find out a great deal about it, because Google defaults one directly on to the useless Wikiplegia, and nearly all other mentions of the town are attempts to sell 21st century hotels or voyages. Anyway, it is in Nieder Österreich, has an Ortskapelle (1836) and an ancient ruined Hof, doesn't seem to have been very big (580 folk in 1871), and rarely photographed ...

Well, I shall add a few -- less geographic -- photos to the little store of existing documentation. Interesting ones, taken by Rudi Ganzl ...

The first thing that grabbed me was that the Haus where they stayed was designated only by a number. Which speaks volumes for the size of the town in 1913.

Secondly, the church is clearly the one on the left in the 1900 postcard picture. Going by the roof, it is the Catholic parish church and still extant. I doubt if number 55 is.

Anyway, little Fritzl clearly had a nice holidaywith his family 'in Hof, Garten und Wald'...  picking forest strawberries ...  and some other incomprehensible things ... for three and a half months, until it was time to head back to Vienna

Fritzl and Tante Minna im Garten

The first climbing experiences

Papa als Putti!

And so, we say goodbye to Schönberg ...  

But they're soon off again for Christmas, this time to Aussee and Mitterndorf outside Vienna ... where the assembled company signed Fritzl a christmas card ...

Father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, Aunt Minna and her new husband, Richard, and ... 

The newlyweds: Minna and Richard

And Onkel WHO?.  Onkel Gustav? I see little Fritz was loaded with gifts .. a toy car, a stuffed bear which he named 'Martin' ... and went sledging ('schlitterfahren') and snowballing ('Schneeball')

And so it went on, as war loomed on the horizon ...

and I begin a new blogchapter ..