Walburga Schindl. Poet from Absam
The Biedermeier-era poet lived from 1826 to 1872. On the north side of the “Zum Bogner” inn, we can see a commemorative plaque featuring a marble portrait of Walpurga Schindl. She was the daughter of Michael Schindl, who was the innkeeper at the time. She was commonly known as “Bogner Burgele”.
She lost her father at the age of seven. From then on, her uncle, the clergyman Sebastian Ruef, looked after her and had a great influence on her upbringing. Sebastian Ruef was her mother’s brother. Adolf Pichler described him as the most intelligent man Tyrol produced in the 19th century. Walpurga spent several years with her uncle in Tobadill in the Stanzertal valley, where he worked as a curator. Later, Ruef became chaplain at the mental asylum in Hall. His writings on the causes and consequences of mental illness were far ahead of their time and some of them remain relevant today. It was he who encouraged Walpurga to take an interest in literature. She went on to read Goethe, Platen, Rückert and others, and began to write herself.
In 1848, as a result of major domestic unrest, the imperial court was forced to flee Vienna and take refuge in Innsbruck. Archduchess Sophie, the mother of Franz Joseph, who ascended the imperial throne that very same year, often came to Absam on her walks. There she got to know and grow fond of the landlady of the Bogner inn and her daughter, who was 22 at the time. The Archduchess and her ladies-in-waiting were enchanted by Walpurga’s grace, cheerfulness and witty humour. This acquaintance gave rise to a correspondence between the Empress Mother and the ‘Bogner Burgele’, which lasted for eight years. In each of her letters to Walpurga, the Archduchess expressed her love for Tyrol and its ‘pious and loyal’ inhabitants, as well as her longing to see her beloved land again.
Walpurga married a surveyor and eventually moved with her husband to Kremnitz, where she died and was buried at the age of just 46. Following a foot injury, she was confined to her bed for the last seven years of her life.
A selection from her literary works
Snowflakes
you have awoken too soon from your winter slumber
and were then startled by the barren field.
Poisonous foxglove, oh warn
the little bird that wishes to drink from your dew,
lest death ensnare the little creature.
Poor mimosa,
a gentle touch is enough to make you tremble;
do you know the world so well, that merciless world?
Source: Dr Maria Riha
