Historical ore mining at the Röthelstein and the Teltschenalm
In order to supply the hammer mill in Grubegg (ca. 1800 - 1850) in the south of Mitterndorf with iron, the salt works administration considered mining ore deposits on the Röthelstein and the Telt-schenalm. Various deposits were suspected, not only ore, but also coal and salt. The traditional use of saline springs and small salt deposits in the Hinter-bergertal was well known. In 1783, the Aussee salt works administration had coal and iron mined. Systematic exploitation began in 1797. However, a smelting plant built for this purpose suffered from a lack of wood for coal production. Investigations and test digging revealed that the ore was not of high enough quality. Due to the location and the altitude, there was a transport problem, and mining could only take place in summer. For this reason, the saltworks stopped prospecting in 1808. After another attempt 30 years later, the saltworks finally stopped mining ore in 1853. Since it was too expensive to use the accumulated ore reserves, they are still lying on the heaps today.
Alpine farming
Until the 19th century, alpine pasture farming played a special role in the farming economy of the Enns Valley and the Salzkammergut, as it did in Alpine regions in general: in the Hinterberger Valley, too, the valley floors consisted mainly of moorland and could hardly be used for agriculture. Alpine pastures were therefore an indispensable basis as fodder for the cattle. The historical alpine pasture farming is reflected in the Enns Valley and the Salzkammergut in a large number of alpine pastures that are now closed down. Historical descriptions show how great the importance of alpine farming was. At the time of Maria Theresa, there is evidence of eight low mountain pastures and 13 high mountain pastures in the Mitterndorf basin with a total of 142 huts for the keeping of 931 cattle. In his historical-topographical survey of the Duchy of Styria in 1843, Georg Göth, the secretary of Archduke Johann, named a significant number of cattle pastures for the tax municipalities of Mitterndorf and Pichl, most of which are no longer used for alpine farming today, for example the Raß, Mitter, Fahrnrin, Rothmoos, Teltschen, Zlaim, Rechentrett, Klausgraben, Schwarzacker, Riesen and Laueralpe. In the 19th century, alpine pasture farming experienced a significant decline due to the onset of industrialisation and the draining of the valley floors. The conversion of dairy farming to dairies and the increasing importance of hunting also played a role.
Winter carriage & lumberjacks
About 100 years ago, apart from agriculture, Mitterndorf was a woodworking landscape. A part of the employed male population worked in forestry, timber transport and wood processing. Winter haulage was an important sideline for farmers. After the Second World War, the timber and forestry industry changed radically. The use of horses to transport timber, which was still common in the 1950s and 1960s, came to an end in the 1970s. That generation that worked in forestry after 1945 experienced the radical change from manual woodworking to power saws, from draft horses and wood sledges to forest roads, tractors and trucks. With this change, the long tradition of lumberjacks and winter hauling finally came to an end. It was a world of work that was remembered by those involved at the time as both hard and demanding work and a special community experience.
First mention of the name "Mitterndorf
For the first margraves of Styria (the Traungauers or "Otokars"), the Palatinate of Pürgg, which in the Middle Ages bore the name "Grauscharn", was an important centre of power. Grauscharn controlled the Enns valley and the connection to the Ausseerland with its salt deposits and subsequently also became the seat of a powerful parish situated north of the Enns. This is when the direct administration of the Ausseerland and the Hinterbergertal began. In 1147, the Traungau and Styrian Margrave Otokar III gave the newly founded Cistercian monastery of Rein a salt mining site on the Sandling and several farmsteads for agricultural use, including two farmsteads in "Mittelindorf". Mitterndorf was first mentioned in writing in this document. This donation marked the beginning of the rise of salt mining in Aussee.
When "Hinterberg" came into being
After the last Babenbergs died out (first half of the 13th century), the rulers in Styria changed several times in the struggle for their inheritance. In 1254, Archbishop Philipp von Sponheim of Salzburg occupied the Enns Valley and the Ausseerland. He had the Pflindsburg built, the castle that gave the Ausseerland its lordship name for a long time (Pflindsberg). From this period of brief Bohemian rule over Styria comes an Urbar (tax register) of Styrian sovereign property from the year 1265, in which the name Hinterberg is mentioned in a document for the first time, the name of which comes from the superior county of Ennstal. Hinterberg refers to the sovereign lordship between Kainisch and Kulm, which was administered from Aussee together with the lordship of Pflindsberg (today the Ausseerland communities) and existed like all the lordships until 1848. Tauplitz, on the other hand, belonged to the parish of Pürgg or the lordship of Trautenfels.
Forest Land Ausseerland
Ausseerland is a forest country. Forests are an important habitat for people, animals and plants. Their importance goes far beyond a purely forestry role. They store and filter water. They are a habitat for animal and plant species and a recreational area for us humans. They protect us from natural hazards. Forests convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and bind it in leaves, branches, trunks and roots. They thus influence the climate and form their own forest climate through their canopy, the balancing effect of which we experience when we walk in the cool forest on a hot summer day. Forests produce wood, which we use as a renewable resource. They are a workplace and offer space to relax. People's access to the forest is changing, just as society, its values and thus also its rules of coexistence are constantly changing. In ecology, a distinction has been made between forest and forest ecosystems since the middle of the 20th century. The term forest essentially refers to the artificial establishment of a woody stand by sowing or planting and often to a uniformity of the uppermost tree layer, which is maintained by care, whereas in the forest different phases of vegetation development (succession) take place. In the Ausseerland, the forest primarily belongs to the category of forestry, only the forests of the Totengebirge and the Styrian Dachstein Plateau are placed under protection from an altitude level of approx. 1,200 m and are not managed.
The forest ecosystem
Forest ecosystems differ from other ecosystems such as steppes, tundras, grass savannas, semi-deserts and full deserts, bogs and swamps, freshwater and saltwater ecosystems by the high biomass stored in living and dead plant parts. The special life form of trees stores carbon in the long-lived woody body and thus enables the photosynthetically active tissues of the leaves to be raised above the herb layer. In the course of millions of years of selection processes, woody arboreal plants were able to prevail over herbaceous plants and grasses wherever sufficient nutrients and moisture were available and the vegetation periods were sufficiently long. By developing a tree layer, the forest changes the wind speed and the irradiation intensity on the ground, thus creating its own microclimate. By opening up the space, sunlight can be filtered much more efficiently in several layers than pure grass or herbaceous stands can. The effective leaf area in temperate forests can be 5-6 times the base area on which the forest stands. This means that one hectare of forest can have a leaf area of 6 hectares. This means that sunlight is optimally used for energy and carbon dioxide from the air is bound by photosynthesis into organic substances, into plant biomass. A large part of this is bound in the wood of the trunks, branches and roots over the long term, in primeval forests over several hundred years. Since the last ice age, an amount of carbon has accumulated in the forest soils that is roughly twice the biomass stored in the forest.