A Miner's Life - 19th/20th Centuries

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We know about the miners food because they suffered from scurvy due to the onesided diet – mainly pancakes and hardly any meat, fruit or vegetables, which is why a doctor around 1865 recommended cattle breeding with dairy farming. The stone walls around the pastures at Griesfeld – in the Hochkeil region, below the Hochkönig mountain – were built by the miners by clearing the pastures from rocks.

The mining industry maintained homes for unmarried miners, such as Sepp Bradl’s burned-down inn.

If they started a family, they lived in the buildings recognizable by the double projecting sections (especially in Mühlbach). Of course, in addition to the miners (who initially moved here from Tyrol), farmer’s sons and farmhands were also active in the mining industry. Many women were also employed in the processing stage until the closure. There is evidence of potato cultivation at up to 1,500 m and grain cultivation at up to 1,200 m above sea level. If you consider that you need around 3 hectares of agricultural land to make a living for one person, you can see that the broader surroundings also provided for the miners and those in the smelting works, which was done in Mitterberghütten (Bischofshofen).