Rosegger's Birthplace Alpl: Kluppeneggerhof

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In his texts, the folk poet Peter Rosegger often took inspiration from childhood memories on the Alpl. His birthplace reminds us today of the simple lifestyle at that time.

The Kluppeneggerhof, the place where Peter Rosegger was born, lies at 1,150 m above sea level, surrounded by green meadows and forest. Here the ‘forest peasant lad’ spent the first 17 years of his life. The people around him, his experiences and those of his family inspired him to write stories and poems that he began to record while still a youth.

Peter Rosegger remains one of Austria’s most popular poets. He was born the eldest of seven children in this simple 18th-century Alpine farmhouse on 31 July 1843. Living conditions were modest, to say the least: the cooking was done over a hearth in the scullery (a kind of smoke room which served as a kitchen) while the central room was used for eating and sleeping—and as a work room, too. Here, visitors can observe numerous furnishings and fixtures which testify to simple rural life in the 19th century.

Even today, the only way to get to Rosegger’s birthplace is on foot: after a half-hour walk through the Alpl woodland, a path eventually leads up to an ensemble of buildings consisting of a home, outhouses, a barn, a rural storehouse and a dried flaxen hut.

Rosegger’s texts often draw on memories of his childhood on the Alpl; in time he coined the notion of ‘Waldheimat’ (‘forest home’) for this magical place. His birthplace was also where he took his first tentative steps towards becoming a writer, an endeavour which later grew into an extensive body of literary works.