"Oh, thou my Austria!" Leoben in Styria in the First Half of the 20th Century
Vintage postcards from the interwar period and the immediate post-war era
In case you missed the first instalment of this three-part series, please see here:
What better way to introduce this second instalment by a brief comment penned by friend-of-these-pages Bernd Stracke who posted a few lines in German below the first part:
As a Styrian, I have a lot in common with Leoben. After Graz, the city of my birth, Leoben is the second largest city in Austria’s “Green Heart”. When I was going to school, it was joked that Leoben was the only town name in Austria that contained all 5 vowels: A, E, I, O, and U. In broad Styrian dialect, the name of Leoben sounds like “Laeioubn”.
Any self-respecting Styrian of a certain age will, at least once in his or her life, have boarded the Erzbergbahn railway in Leoben before passenger services were discontinued in 2001. The railroad ran, via Vordernberg, up to the Präbichl Pass and on the other side of the pass down to Eisenerz or even to Hieflau. In some places, the route, which can only be mastered with a cogwheel locomotive, has a gradient of up to 71%. Between departing from Leoben and the train station at Glaslbremse, the steam locomotive had a hard time negotiating the 500 metres in altitude. Our parents told us at the time that the engine’s pounding sounded like a slow, moaning “help me, help me!”. The closer we got to the top, the flatter the tracks became, and we could already hear it like a relieved: “It’s getting better, it’s getting better!”
Beyond the Präbichl, the tracks led downhill to Landl/Hieflau (where my long-deceased uncle Herbert Weissensteiner was once stationmaster), and the engine noise of the locomotive could be interpreted as an exuberant and cheerful request akin to “up yours, up yours”.
For a detailed description of the rail line, albeit “only” in German (use a machine translator), please venture over to https://www.erzbergbahn.at/unsere-bahn/.
Old Leoben
Although never mailed, the above multi-image postcard shows the Mur bridge with the City’s Schwammerlturm (top left); a view of Mt. Reiting (2,215m, top right); a total view of Leoben (bottom left); and the City’s main square (bottom right).
Below, a mailed postcard showing the river Mur from a quite different angle, c. 1930.
Above, the old town in the Mur meander is shown; note the cast-iron Mur bridge on the right-hand side of the image. That above postcard was mailed in 1939.
One more image taken from somewhere “off the beaten track” showing the old town as seen from the Massenburg; it was mailed in 1930.
A Series of Postcards from the Post-War Era
Below, a few more postcards that all hail from the 1950s, which I decided to include because they all come from a series.
Above, the so-called Hacklhaus, a Baroque townhouse in the main square; below, St Jacob’s; both postcards date from c. 1950.
Above, the interior of Leoben’s parish church of St. Xavier; below, the primary school building in Leitendorf; both c. 1950.
Bonus Postcard: Schwammerlturm, c. 1958
A snapshot in time from 1958, showing Leoben’s Schwammerlturm from the inside (i.e., if you walked through the gate, you’d be standing on the above-shown Mur bridge).
Come back tomorrow for a few more black/white and, above all, coloured postcards from the Cold War era.
Beautiful