La Loupe St. Anton & Stuben am Arlberg No. 7

“It was around 1900
that innovative
mountaineers started
noticing the Arlberg
and its villages.”
“Skiing and Arlberg
became two terms
that simply belonged
together.”
“Skiing wasn’t invented
on Arlberg or in
St. Anton, but it was
here that it became
a mass phenomenon.”
BIRGIT HEINRICH'S
WORDRAP
My cushion with an original, historic
start number from Skischule Lech …
always makes me a bit nostalgic.
Ice bar or 5 o’clock tea? Ice bar.
When I’m not at the village archive I like
to spend the winter …
simply in the snow.
I am most impressed by this pioneer:
Rudolf Gomperz.
146
A silver locomotive …
is the most extraordinary
exhibit we have.
were not mentioned for the longest time. Take, for example,
the construction engineer Rudolf Gomperz, who came to
St. Anton by chance in 1905 – we have so much to thank him
for and in the end Hannes Schneider could not have been as
successful as he was without him. He was the man in the
background who promoted and supported Hannes Schneider.
The local historian Hans Thöni took it upon himself to
research the story of Rudolf Gomperz’ life and published it in
St. Anton’s local newspaper. It was Gomperz who, step by
step, transformed the farmers’ village into a tourism
destination by building up infrastructure for ski tourism, by
organising the first package ski trips, and who, as the chairman
of the Austrian and Central European Skiing Association,
initiated the international Arlberg Kandahar Race.
Aside from that he was the organisational mastermind behind
the ski film productions by Arnold
Fanck and Hannes Schneider.
For decades Gomperz pushed for the construction
of the Galzigbahn railway.
When it was finally opened in 1937 after
much protest he remained in the background,
sensing what Austria’s Anschluss
to the German Reich might mean for him
and his family. After a lot of humiliation
Rudolf Gomperz was murdered in the
extermination camp Maly Trostinec in
1942. In the Gomperz family’s household
all visitors had been able to admire a
special heirloom that had belonged to
Rudolf Gomperz’ grandfather: a precious
silver model of a locomotive fashioned
after the Kaiser-Ferdinand Nordbahn
from 1845. Rudolf Gomperz owned the
model until 1941 when it disappeared and remained missing
for 75 years. In 2015 those whose house had held the locomotive
in St. Anton in the meantime spoke up and handed it over
to the Jewish Community. This way the silver locomotive was
once again exhibited in St. Anton after 75 years where it now
reminds everyone of Rudolf Gomperz and his fate.