Mining and local history museum - Knappenhaus Unterlaussa

In the faithfully reconstructed "Knappenhaus vom Blahberg" in the Reichraminger Hintergebirge, you will experience a journey through time through the mining history of the region in the middle of the village of Unterlaussa. Iron, coal, gagat and bauxite were the raw materials that were mined in the region.

With the guest card "In total more" you get a 20% discount on one entry and with the Pyhrn-Priel Card free entry.

On the occasion of the 1998 Upper Austrian provincial exhibition "Land of Hammers - Home of the Eisenwurzen", a faithful replica of the "Blahberg miners' house" was built in the village of Unterlaussa and made accessible to the public as a museum. For more than 20 years, this museum has been teaching people about mining in the Eisenwurzen region. You will also find objects from mining areas in Europe that are up to 4000 years old.

The main theme of the exhibition is, of course, the mining of the raw materials found in the Eisenwurzen, such as gagat (a type of coal that was already used in the Stone Age to make jewellery), hard coal, ironstone and bauxite (the only mining area in Austria), which is used as a raw material for aluminium production. Experience authentic stories of former miners and inhabitants of the mining settlement Weißwasser in a video and see original tools, the so-called Gezähe, of the miners.

Through a replica of a section of a mine tunnel, the path leads back "into the open air", where you can learn about the longest material ropeways in Central Europe at the time. In addition, the topic of aluminium, from production to the end product, is dealt with here.

On the upper floor:
Exhibition: "Finds Tell".
In the Kalkalpen National Park, historical objects such as slaughtering nails, brackets for climbing stairs and other ironware can be found time and again during hikes and mountain tours. But you can also find natural things like bone remains or red deer dropping poles. There is a story behind every find. Dr. Erich Mayrhofer, the former long-time director of the Kalkalpen National Park, had an eye for special finds from cultural and natural history. Together with exhibition designer Franz Pötscher, large parts of his collection are presented in the Knappenhaus Unterlaussa.
The content of the exhibition tells on the one hand the long history of use in the first part of the region (timber, alpine farming, mining) and on the other hand its development since the founding of the National Park in the third part. In between, the protests against the planned use of the area by modern large-scale projects are placed as a turning point in history in Part 2.