This year's thematic focus, Shoemakers, Pechers, Formers - Almost forgotten trades and professions of the past, reminds us of those professions that we often no longer know today and craftsmen whose skills are increasingly being forgotten. For a long time, Austria's economic structure was dominated by agriculture and industrial production was still closely linked to farming. The later specialisation of craftsmanship still played a negligible role compared to domestic production.
Some work was backbreaking labour, which could also be disgusting, dirty, harmful to health and life-threatening. The changes in the world of work brought about by new technologies, combined with the increasing rationalisation of work processes in the 19th and 20th centuries, had far-reaching effects, many manual workers lost their bread and butter and new branches of industry emerged.
