History of Hainburg Has Many Hues Layered with Kings and Invasions
A town doesn’t age like a person, growing weaker with years, diminishing with each loss. The burdens it has withstood make a town stronger, enduring, and in that, comforting. Hainburg, its medieval structures so prominent, wears layers of kings, invasions, conquests and defeats. Hainburg’s beauty is in its layers.
Stefan Sholz is working on one of the ugly layers from the small town’s past. He is crouching in the rectory garden at dusk, cradling a 14th century Jewish tombstone he has recently unearthed. Sholz, an archaeologist, says that he knows it is Jewish because of the script, but he has sent photographs of it to experts in Prague in the Czech Republic to be sure.
Sholz is speed-talking as he darts around the garden, so focused on what he wants to say that he can ignore the scores of biting gnats that flit around him in the twilight, pecking at his skin.
His words come rapidly, hooked end to end like train cars, with scant space between. Listening to him is exhausting.
He is accompanied by a priest, whose garden it is and who stands with arms folded across an ample belly, and the town treasurer, who is tagging along to see what all the fuss is about.
Sholz moves from the rectory to the school next door, gesturing and chattering while tossing out historical factoids about Hainburg, which is in eastern Austria, on the Danube.
Standing outside the schoolhouse under a now-darken sky, Sholz says that he persuaded school authorities to let him dig under the sixth-grade classroom, believing there to be a mass grave from the Turkish invasion in 1683.
He opens a door. Floodlights starkly illuminate 50 or so skeletons. They have been under the building for 320 years.
Hainburg was once a place for kings: Members of the Babenberg dynasty lived here, precursors to the long-ruling Habsburgs.
Ottakar, who became king of Bohemia in the Middle Ages, married a Babenberg queen in this town. The royal wedding took place at the commanding Schlossberg Castle, the remains of which still crown the Hainburg sky.
Hainburg is still considered one of the oldest and most well-preserved fortifications in Europe. It was a walled town � most of the wall remains � with three gates (or doors) and 15 towers, all intact.
Hainburg was a mighty protector of Vienna, built largely with the ransom money England paid to release Richard the Lionheart from captivity.
In the Middle Ages, there was a significant Jewish community (the oldest synagogue in Austria is here), and trade was bustling because of the town’s location on the Danube.
So when the Turks stormed Hainburg in 1683, the defeat was astonishing. It was also massive. Fewer than 100 people survived; about 8,000 were killed. Some of the dead were buried in the grave Sholz recently discovered.
The bloodletting that took place in a few days is horrific to imagine.
Composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s grandfather was said to be one of the survivors. Local legend has it that he, like other survivors, climbed inside a chimney and hid until the massacre was over.
Inside the stationery store on the main street, a clerk walks to the back of the shop and points to a cast-iron hatch door on a wall about 8 or 10 feet above the floor. Sylvia Haltschuster says that some survivors hid there, where there once had been a chimney.
“A woman hid in here with her baby, but only she survived. The baby was crying,’ Haltschuster recounts as she makes a hugging gesture to indicate that the mother accidentally suffocated her baby. She tells the story with a tenderness that suggests that the tragedy occurred more recently than three centuries ago.
Hainburg is nearly 1,000 years old. There are Roman and Celtic ruins from a previous incarnation, but the erection of the Schlossberg Castle in 1050 marks the current town’s real birth.
Hainburg tells Europe’s story well, for it is big and small: a pocket-size town packed with past.
Tucked into what is known as Lower Austria, the town has stood as a blockade � or at its weakest, a helpless witness � to invading forces its whole life. The 12th century Wienertor (Vienna Door, the largest medieval gate in Europe) sports enormous stone cannons embedded at its base, leftovers from an earlier Turkish invasion. The Celtic and Roman ruins are more evidence of more invasions.
And up until 12 years ago, the Soviets had their weapons dug into the surrounding hillside, reminding little Hainburg for nearly half a century that it was just inside the Iron Curtain.
“It was (like living) at the end of the world,’ says Rainer Kern, 36-year-old owner of Rainer’s, the only bar in town.
“There was nothing else. This was it.’
Before World War II, it is said, streetcars trundled between Bratislava (in Slovakia) and Hainburg, which is along the border. Once part of the Austrian empire, Slovaks and Austrians shared land, kings and trade.
And although Austria was occupied by the Soviets (among others) for 10 years after the war, the Slovaks were ensnared in communism for 40.
Outside of town is an old wooden hut, big enough for one person; it was used by the army as a lookout post. Alongside it, and extending about a half-mile or more east to the Slovak border, is a path, originally worn down by the feet of those running to escape the confines of communism. People say that the runners were shot on sight.
But the rapid crumbling of communism brought an immediate opening of the borders.
“There were celebrations,’ says Michi Brenner, a Hainburg resident and owner of a popular bed and breakfast along the river.
“People brought candies to the border and special foods to celebrate’ with the Slovaks, Brenner says. “”I didn’t think much on it then, but looking back now, it gives me goose bumps.’
Slovakia’s transition was an uneasy one for Hainburg residents, who worried about increased theft, job loss and heaps more traffic as a result of the Iron Curtain being yanked down.
But if it was once the end of the world, the two-lane street that snakes through the center of town is now a thoroughfare uniting east and west once again, and town officials are scrambling to figure out how to capitalize on the possibilities.
They needn’t worry. That path worn by runners risking all for a stab at freedom has been transformed into a bicycle route that extends along the Danube and leads to Vienna. The only thing anyone risks along this path these days is a blown-out tire. Within shouting distance is the Donauauen, the last protected European rain forest.
Cycling through the vineyards of the surrounding countryside, and past the boundless fields of sunflowers (watch for the deer at dusk), it becomes clear that if medieval Hainburg’s strength was its readiness to fight, the power today is Hainburg’s tender beauty.
This spring, the fire department held a carnival in a field to raise money for the Red Cross. It was the annual Volksfest, and it seemed that all of Hainburg’s nearly 6,000 residents came out for it.
Eurotech music blasted from the speakers as Rainer Kern joked, danced and drank with his friends in a large tent set up for the revelers.
“We have some (revelers) from Austria, America and Slovakia.’ His announcement was followed by toasts made in three languages: a noisy Prost! Cheers! and Nasdravie!
Outside the tent, the night was full of brilliant stars, a backdrop to the ruins of the mighty Schlossberg. Prost!
