Hunting then and now

For centuries, the rich hunting grounds in the Marchfeld were an important center of courtly hunting culture. Hunting rights were in the hands of the imperial family and noble landlords.

In 1959, the Lower Austrian Hunting Museum was opened in Marchegg Castle - the town was founded by Ottokar II in 1268. On the occasion of the provincial exhibition, renovation work was carried out on the castle and the building of the former Winter Riding School was renovated - the total costs amounted to around 17 million schillings (approx. 1.235 million euros).

The concept of this exhibition was based on the fact that the province of Lower Austria is one of the most interesting regions in Central Europe from a hunting point of view and therefore seems predestined to host a large hunting exhibition of international standard.

Visitors were presented with many aspects of hunting, with exhibits on loan from eleven countries: from a stamp exhibition to a collection of hunting carriages, from information from the provincial hunting association about the game population in the 21 districts to a trophy show. Aspects such as hunting operations and game research and hunting in the economy were also covered - in 1975, 300,000 cloven-hoofed game and 800,000 other game were shot in Austria, with 8.5 million kilograms of venison being supplied to the market.

The focus was also on “Game in its habitat” and “Hunting and nature conservation”. Because this provincial exhibition wanted to draw attention to one thing: “From the point of view of modern nature conservation, the hunter who hunts game is an important ally, the indispensable regulator of our native game populations, whose species richness he maintains,” explained Harald Schweiger, exhibition manager and nature conservation director of the province of Lower Austria.

Topics that were repeatedly discussed at the time were not left out, such as the relationship between modern agriculture and hunting, the problem of game density and the protection of birds of prey and predators, as well as the issue of opening up the forests.

As an “enthusiastic huntsman”, Governor Andreas Maurer wrote: “Hunting in the past - that was one of the main prerequisites for human life in general; properly understood hunting today - that is the care and preservation not only of the animal, but also, in the environmental sense, of nature as such. In between lies that part of the hunter's activity which has contributed to the fact that our landscape has essentially been preserved to this day as what it has always been: namely as a source of life for mankind as well as the animal world.”

The artistic depictions of hunting are immense; ten rooms of the castle have been made available to show a selection from the most important epochs. Portraits of famous hunters from the imperial family, such as Crown Prince Rudolf and Emperor Franz Joseph or Archdukes Johann and Franz Ferdinand, were also exhibited.

Marchegg Castle