3. Cultic place Johannesberg - Millennia old

The Johannes Church

"This church, built on a rocky mountain, was consecrated in honor of St. John the Baptist. There are four pictures on the side walls of this narrow chapel, two of them are pleasantly surprising by the history of the country. They represent the meeting of the Count of Habsburg with the priest carrying holy altar bread, and the founding of the Klosterneuburg Monastery by Margrave Leopold the Saint. - When the priests of the Society of Jesus were still sitting here, wonderful walks under the leafy beech trees on this mountain were appropriate, which served them for prayers or for scientific consideration.
The large bell of the parish church, which has no equal for many miles and whose solemn tone is heard hours away, is hung in the tower of St. John's Church. The head walled in the tower indicates the size of a former man of Viechtau.
This church was built around 902, because when the forest on the next mountain (Othinstein then Johannsberg) was cleared for the construction of the monastery, traces and remnants of the old idolatry were found in the dark and overgrown groves, causing the founders of the nunnery to build a church in honor of the holy John the Baptist on the square of the destroyed idol.
Above the church door is a stone slab with the following inscription:
“Hill once a cave of a pirate family, now dedicated to the divine Johanni Baptistee!”
Description by Carl Ritter as shown in the city archive of Gmunden, HS 129, OÖLA
The church stands on hewn cuboids. This suggests previous buildings. Test excavations on the Johannesberg (Felgenhauer, 1979) were astounding: over 6000 fragments from the Hallstatt period (750 BC), from the 9th to the 15th centuries AD came to light. It can be assumed that Johannesberg has been and still is a place of religious practice since time immemorial.

Information about Carl Ritter

Drawer, watercolorist and chronicler, born in 1807, died on July 1st, 1885 in Gmunden (Upper Austria). Ritter who came from Eisenerz in Styria, began began his service in the saline in 1826 and worked in the chancellery of the imperial salt and forestry directorate in Gmunden since July 1853.

© E. Rumpf, R. Hofbauer; Translation: XiBIT Infoguide GmbH