Alpbach - a congress village with history

The Tyrolean mountain village of Alpbach was first mentioned in documents in 1150. At the beginning of the 15th century, copper and silver ore was discovered. At that time, the Böglerhof was the seat of the Fugger administration and the mountain court. Due to its seclusion, the village developed its own building and living culture as well as a deeply rooted tradition that has been preserved to the present day. After the First World War, Alpbach developed into a tourist community. In August 1945, Otto Molden and lecturer Simon Moser organized the first International University Weeks in Europe after the war. Since then, the “European Forum Alpbach” has been held annually in August, a large international congress of prominent representatives of science, politics, business and culture, professors as well as students and intellectuals from various fields of knowledge. Current developments and problems are presented and discussed in an interdisciplinary manner in seminars and plenary sessions, each with a general theme.

Over the decades, the atmosphere of a free, intellectual community in the Alpbach Valley has attracted personalities from many disciplines and continents who have shaped the thinking of their time: Ernst Bloch, James Buchanan, Ralf Dahrendorf, Gottfried von Einem, Friedrich von Hayek, Cardinal Franz König, Konrad Lorenz, Karl Raimund Popper, Erwin Schrödinger, Fritz Wotruba and many others. Politicians such as Bruno Kreisky, Jacques Delors, Indira Gandhi, Yitzak Rabin and Ban Ki-moon also took part in the Alpbach events.

Congress Centrum Alpbach - Building

The building, designed by the DIN A4 team of architects from Innsbruck in 1997, conveys a bright and pleasant atmosphere. The building was embedded in a slope in order to preserve the special Alpbach townscape. This made it possible to optimize the energy balance and keep the impact on nature as low as possible. A spiral-shaped light cone ensures that all the halls are flooded with daylight. It is thanks to the courageous decision of former mayor Alfons Moser that traditional timber construction remained the dominant feature.

The halls in the Congress Centrum Alpbach were named after the personalities associated with the “European Forum Alpbach” in a special way.

Gottfried von Einem (1918-1996): Austria's most important composer of the past decades created a musical monument to Alpbach with his “Alpbach Dance Serenade”. Einem expressed his feelings about happiness, death and dreams with tones and sounds.

Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992): The 1974 Nobel Prize winner for economics felt right at home in Alpbach. The economist worked as a professor at the London School of Economics and at the universities of Chicago and Freiburg im Breisgau. Hayek is considered a representative of neoliberalism.

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983): The English writer of Austro-Hungarian origin studied natural sciences. Koestler was particularly interested in communism. He made Alpbach his adopted home and built the so-called “Schreiberhäusl” there.

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994): The philosopher of Austrian origin, who taught in England, is considered the founder and main representative of Critical Rationalism. In a critical debate with the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, he developed a general theory of science and methodology.

Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961): The 1934 Nobel Prize winner for physics lived in Alpbach for a time and is buried in the cemetery there. His intellectual legacy includes Schrödinger's atomic model and the “de Broglie-Schrödinger model”. He also dealt with philosophical problems.

In 2013, the CCA recorded its strongest operating result to date. This confirms that the market is responding well to the special features of Alpbach as a conference venue and that the extraordinary Alpbach synergy of tradition and modernity has long been economically worthwhile. It is therefore only natural that the decision in favor of sustainable conference tourism will also be continued with the structural expansion. CCA Managing Director Georg Hechenblaikner explains: “Our aim when developing the extension was to preserve the special features of the Alpbach conference village. Growth at any price would not correspond to our idea of sustainable conference tourism; after all, the Alpbach conference destination has also grown over many years and is very well supported by all those involved in the village”. The largest event at the CCA is undoubtedly the European Forum Alpbach, which takes place annually in August and, with 4,500 national and international participants from business, politics, culture and civil society, has significant demand for expansion.

Factbox extension building

- Plenary hall (415 m²) + 3 separate seminar rooms (90 m² each) for events requiring several rooms

- Plenary hall and seminar rooms together (total area 685 m²) as one hall for plenary events with a larger number of participants or gala events

- A large area in which all new rooms and the adjoining foyer are connected (approx. 1,175 m²), e.g. for specialist exhibitions

- July 2016 Opening

 

Alpbach - history in detail

Although the name Alpbach was first mentioned in a document in 1150, it was settled by the Bavarians before and around the turn of the first millennium.

In 1860, a bronze axe was found on the Steinberger Joch (crossing into the Zillertal). It is therefore assumed that this crossing was already used before the Hallstatt period.

Christianization took place in the 7th and 8th centuries by Irish and Scottish monks. The patron saint of the parish church (tower from 1440, nave 1754) is St. Oswald, a former king of Northumbria in England.

At the beginning of the 15th century, copper and silver ore was found on the Gratlspitz, Schatzberg and in the Luegergraben. The Fugger trading family from Augsburg mined ore in Schwaz and Kitzbühel at that time and also took over this business in Alpbachtal. The Böglerhof was the seat of the Fugger administration and the mining court. There were already two inns at that time, the “Böglerhof” and the “Jakober”, the latter only as a brandy tavern. Mining ceased in the middle of the 19th century due to insufficient yields.

In Inneralpbach, on the edge of the forest above the small church, stands the “Vorder-Unterberg” farmhouse, built by local carpenters between 1636 and 1638. The farm was inhabited until 1952 and today houses a mountain farm museum. In addition to a farmhouse parlor, a house chapel and a smokehouse, around 800 furnishings and everyday objects can be viewed.

Due to the isolation of the valley (a road on the valley floor to Alpbach has only existed since 1926), Alpbach has developed its own building and living culture (Alpbach farmhouse furniture), but customs have also been preserved longer than in many other valleys in the country.

The development of tourism in Alpbach began at the start of the 20th century. In 1938, Alpbach already had 110 guest beds, today there are already more than 2,500 guest beds and over 300,000 overnight stays. Although tourism is the main source of income for the local population (2,600 inhabitants), there are still 105 working farms in Alpbach, roughly the same number as 100 years ago.

Alpbach has been the venue for the annual European Forum Alpbach since 1945. This international congress, which now attracts more than 4,000 participants, makes the village a meeting place for leading personalities from politics, business, science and culture every August. Alpbach is therefore also known as the “village of thinkers”.

The first congress center in Alpbach was built in the mid-1950s and was named after the poet Paula von Preradovic. She wrote the lyrics for the Austrian national anthem.

On the initiative of Kommerzialrat Alfons Moser, Alpbach's mayor from 1945 to 1979, the local council passed the local building regulations in 1953 and ordered new buildings to conform to the traditional Alpbach architectural style.

In 1975, the Austrian Institute of Public Health declared Alpbach to have the purest air in Austria.

In August 1983, Alpbach was voted “Austria's most beautiful village” in an ORF television competition due to its uniform wooden building style and floral decorations.

In June 1985, the municipality of Alpbach was awarded the European flag by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in recognition of its merits in promoting the European idea.

In August 1993, Alpbach was awarded the title of “Most Beautiful Flower Village in Europe” as part of the European “Entente Florale” flower decoration competition.

The new Congress Centrum Alpbach was opened in August 1999. Two key aspects were given special consideration during the construction of the building: the preservation of Alpbach's unique townscape and the lowest possible energy consumption during operation. The ingenious architecture of the building includes a central glass cone and a south-facing glass façade, which provide plenty of daylight in all conference rooms. Space has been created in the building for two bright foyers, a plenary hall for 500 people and five seminar rooms. The gentle integration of the building into the landscape was completed by extensive greening.

History of the Congress Centrum Alpbach until 2016

- Mid-March 1998 Demolition of the old Congress Center Alpbach, Paula von Preradovic House

- 1st week of April 98 Start of construction

- March 21, 1999 Commissioning of the new Congress Centrum Alpbach

- August 22, 1999 Grand opening on the occasion of the European Forum Alpbach

- 2018 Start of construction of the CCA extension

- July 2016 Opening of the klimaktiv building