Walburga Schindl. Poetess from Absam
The Biedermeier poetess lived from 1826 to 1872. On the north side of the "Zum Bogner" inn we see a memorial plaque with a marble portrait of Walpurga Schindl. She was the daughter of the then Bogner landlord Michael Schindl. She was commonly known as the "Bogner Burgele".
She was orphaned at the age of seven. From then on, her spiritual uncle 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 smartest 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. Ruef was later the chaplain of a lunatic asylum in Hall. His writings on the causes and consequences of mental illness were far ahead of his time and some of them are still valid today. It was he who encouraged Walpurga to take an interest in literature. She read Goethe, Platen, Rückert and others and began to write herself.
In 1848, the imperial court was forced to flee from Vienna to Innsbruck as a result of major domestic political unrest. Archduchess Sophie, the mother of Franz Josef, who ascended the imperial throne in the same year, often came to Absam on her walks. There she got to know and appreciate the Bognerwirtin and her then 22-year-old daughter. The Archduchess and her ladies-in-waiting were enchanted by Walpurga's grace, cheerfulness and spiritual motherly wit. This acquaintance developed into a correspondence between the Empress Mother and the "Bogner Burgele" that lasted eight years. In each of her letters to Walpurga, the Archduchess expressed her love for Tyrol and its "pious and faithful" inhabitants, as well as her longing to see her beloved land again.
Walpurga married a surveyor and finally moved with her husband to Kremnitz, where she died and was buried at the age of 46. She was confined to bed for the last seven years following a foot injury.
A selection from her literary oeuvre
Snowflakes
you woke up too early from your winter sleep
and were then startled by the desolate meadow.
Poisonous foxglove, O warn
the little bird that wants to drink your dew,
lest death ensnare the little animal.
Poor mimosa,
a slight touch makes you tremble;
do you know the world so well, the ruthless one?
Source: Dr. Maria Riha
