• The Nockbergs
  • Nockbergs National Park
  • Orgin of the National Park
  • The Nockbergs "Nocken"
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Healing Powers of Nature

Plants have always played an important role in rural life – as food, working material, spice and medicinal remedies. The correspondingly connected customs and traditions have developed based on this ancient knowledge.

The fruit of the elderberry serve for the production of juice and jelly – the “Holdasalsn” – that one takes to counteract feverish illnesses. The especially powerful, healing effect of the master-wort is used as a schnapps preparation, the “master-wort spirit”. The silvery leaves of the mountain avens are used to make the “Kaisertee” (Emperor’s tea) that is administered to Karlbad spa guests for its nerve-calming, sleep-inducing effect.

"Karlbad" Spa

An especially rustic pleasure is offered by the 300-year-old Karlbad. The name, Karlbad, is derived from “Bad im kleinen Kar” (bath in a small cirque). Dr. Anton Wilburg, a doctor from the small town of Gmünd in the Tauern, already indicated as early as 1728 the healing effect of the Karlbad for eye ailments. Farmers, lumberjacks and hunters suffering from rheumatism formally appreciated the healing effect of the ore- and mineral-content round stones from the nearby stream. Numerous spa guests from far and wide today enjoy bathing in the ancient, massive, hollowed larch trunks.

The clear water of the Königstuhl is first led through an ingenious system of wooden pipes into the troughs. In the meantime the red-hot stones are taken from the fireplace with “Moltern” (small wooden troughs) and then tipped into the cold spring water. The water is heated to about 40° Celsius, the crumbled stones removed from the water and the spa guest then reclines in the trough. The guest is covered up to the neck with wooden boards. The spa guests then sweat in the troughs and only an available glass of fresh spring water gives refreshment.

This type of cure is carried out, as before, by the Aschbacher family as it has been handed down by their ancestors. Centuries of alpine-meadow cultivation have givene the Nockbergs much of their unmistakeable appearance through mowing, grazing and clearing timber. Only this type of using the land by alpine farmers made possible the rare balance of the natural living conditions for animals, plants and people, which has been basically maintained to this day.

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