The moon rising over the Tuxer Alpen mountain range.
Tonight we’re having not just any full moon but a “supermoon”, so called because it’s uncommonly close to Earth right now. Not only does it appear larger and brighter than usual, but its effect on the tides will be stronger because of the extra kick of gravitational pull.
Considering how my week’s been, actually, this explains a lot.
“Landeck, in the Austrian Tyrol”, by John Mallord William Turner, 1840.
“Schloss Landeck, Oberinntal”, engraved by T. Heawood after L. Lauterbach, around 1850.
Undated postcard, Landeck.
Landeck now.
Like Monet and his haystack,
I never get tired of this ‘same old view’ of the Bettelwurf and the rest of the Nordkette.
We’ve had relentless, dry Föhn winds for days now. I was reading a bit on the Three Beten, the mysterious trio of saints who may be church-adopted regional deities, and found a reference to them being responsible for rain. After weather like this, I can see why Tirol’s early people would have wanted someone to pray to who could send them a nice downpour.
Confession — when I began blogging about 4.5 years ago, I quite honestly thought I might be out of material in 6 months’ time. In fact, the opposite has happened — the ‘to do’ list just keeps getting longer. Recent discoveries (for me) have included a lot of points south of here, in the Wipp and Stubai Valleys. Above, the length of the Stubaital, ending at the Stubai Glacier (yet another thing I need to see, especially before it melts for good.)
Today I went to Schönberg on a couple of leads, and learned more there than I had expected to. In all honesty, I didn’t know a thing about this small town, as it’s not on the rail line and doesn’t seem to have any tourist industry — perhaps it’s really an insider thing. Anyway, I had read that there is a segment of the old Roman Road (Via Raetia) on display in Schönberg, and here it is.
Note the grooves left in the stones by centuries of wagon wheels.
The Via Raetia ran from Italy over the Brenner Pass to Augsburg. The primary Roman road, known as the Via Claudia Augusta, went west over the Reschen Pass (near Graun, home of the sunken village belltower), and then further upriver along the Inn and then over the Fern Pass.
In any event, although the road did indeed pass right through these parts, it was not right here in this exact spot — these stones were dug up and laid out here — next to a large Autobahn rest stop, of all places. And that has a certain logic, the old next to the new.
Two things about Schönberg called to mind George Washington. The first was that Goethe was here, and fortunately the small town of Schönberg has a quote to prove it. (“Goethe visited here” is the German parallel to “Washington slept here.”) On his travels to Italy in 1786 (“The Italian Journey”), the great writer penned, Up on the Brenner I saw the first larch trees, at Schönberg the first Swiss pine. This little chapel is on a spot called Goetheruhe (Goethe’s Rest) and there is indeed a Swiss pine tree on the site. The road that runs by it is called Römerstrasse, and is very likely the old road. This route through Raetia had its own alternative “bypass” route, which branched off near here and followed the upper plateau on the eastern side of the valley (and there is a “Römerstrasse” up there today too.)
The second reason that Washington comes to mind is Schönberg’s relationship to Andreas Hofer, who had friends here and used a local hotel as headquarters during the fighting — which makes it a bit like the 1809 Tirolean Freedom Fighters’ Valley Forge.
Schönberg, like much of the higher plateau lands above the rivers, has offered up archaeological evidence pointing to pre-historic settlement. Armed with GPS coordinates from the internet and a google map print-out (yeah, I need a smartphone), I went to search for this area which has been designated as a protected historic monument — and only found this flat-topped hill on private, apparently inaccessible ground, so I can’t say. Then again, the high ground is absolutely lousy with archaeological finds all up and down the valley, so we might as well assume that every hill and dale were inhabited since the end of the last ice age.
To see the Via Raetia road segment without a car: ST Bus from Innsbruck Train Station to Schöndorf Ortsmitte. Follow “Römerstrasse” signs to the Autobahn underpass. It’s at the far end of the rest stop, which includes a McDonalds with the best views I have ever seen.
This is by Albert Bierstadt, the 19th-century painter who’s best known for his landscapes of the American West. It’s from 1868 and titled “Tyrolean Landscape“, but I am not so sure. There may very well be a duet of jagged mountain peaks in Tirol that look just like this…
…but it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Watzmann, which is in Berchtesgaden.(Image found here.
Yes, I can sense you shrugging your shoulders and rolling your eyes all the way from here — does it matter, you ask? Why yes, it does. Try calling a Tiroler German someday, see where that gets you. 
And since Berchtesgaden belongs to a little dangling peninsula that’s surrounded by Austria, I looked on a map to see if it were possible that one could paint the Watzmann this large while actually standing in Tirol — nope, it’s Salzburg Land all around for kilometers. Was he (1) misinformed about his location, (2) is this indeed another mountain group, or (3) am I missing some important border realignment from the First World War?
But as long as we’re discussing the Watzmann, here is one by Caspar David Friedrich, who had never actually seen the Watzmann with his own eyes and only knew the mountain from others’ works (come to think of it, we’ll call that (4) and it may be the best answer to the above question.)
and one by Adrian Ludwig Richter, which I happen to like the most. It reminds me little of landscapes by the Tirolean artist Rudolf Lehnert.
Friedrich and Richter images found here.
