Land of mountains - hiking paradise in the Wienerwald

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Director: Stefan Sternad , camera: Stefan Sternad

Production: ORFIII, 3Sat & ipFILM

Documentary: 42 min./2021

This "Land of Mountains" production is dedicated to the Viennese's local mountains and runs from Klosterneuburg in the northwest of Vienna towards the southwest to Baden and Mödling. The highest point in the largest deciduous forest area in Europe is the almost 900 meter high Schöpfl.

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Starting from Kahlenberg, with an impressive view of the metropolis of Vienna and the Vienna Basin, the foray into the diverse and mysterious world of the Vienna Woods begins. From here it goes over the Leopoldsberg towards Lower Austria. Since its founding, Klosterneuburg Abbey has developed into the theological and cultural center of the region. With the important art collection, the treasury and the grave of St. Leopold with the Verdun Altar, the monastery is one of the oldest museums in the world. Viticulture has also always played a major role here.

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Berndorf an der Triesting is known as “Kruppstadt”. With the founding of the Berndorfer metal goods factory and cutlery factory, Artur Krupp had his architectural model town built here in 1843, with, among other things, well-equipped workers' settlements, magnificent school classes with the "style classes" and a city theater.

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At the end of the foray through the Vienna Woods, the Josef Schöffel monument in Mödling is visited. Due to the miserable budget situation, the KuK Finance Ministry wanted to sell a quarter of the Vienna Woods to a timber dealer at the end of the 1860s and release it for felling. Josef Schöffel almost single-handedly prevented the project with a journalistic campaign until a court stopped the sale.

Since then he has been nicknamed “Savior of the Vienna Woods”. “Land of the Mountains” shows a portrait of the Vienna Woods as a local recreation area, sanatorium, hiking and leisure paradise and as a place of historic summer resort.