Blockheide-Gmünd Nature Park

Rocking stone in the block heather

The Blockheide is a nature park near Gmünd in the northwestern Waldviertel in Lower Austria .

Natural sights

The lamb salad ( Arnoseris minima ), a rare herb , has its largest occurrence in Austria in the block heath . As a subatlantic floral element, it finds suitable living conditions in the Gmünder Bucht on the edge of the Wittingau basin .

The small fruit ohm herb (also southern arable woman's coat , Aphanes australis ) is a very rare species in Austria. It avoids lime and is found in the mineral-poor, strongly acidic, sandy and extensively cultivated fields in the block heath.

The block heather represents a heathland landscape with a small-scale rural cultural landscape. You can find a mixture of small-scale arable fields, extensively used meadows and mixed forests. The landscape is interspersed with granite blocks . It is a collection of often bizarrely shaped block castles and remnants (some also formed as wobbly stones ), a remnant of the former high mountains of the Bohemian Massif , created by wool sack weathering . Some of them have stimulated the imagination of people to choose names such as pyramids, mushroom stones, offering bowls or loaves of bread.

There are also numerous fairy tales about the stones. Legend has it that after the creation of the world, God wandered from Manhartsberg to the west and picked up the surrounding stones in a cloth. In the area of the Blockheide this cloth had become so heavy that it tore and the stones rolled apart all over the area. Since God was already tired, he decided to go home and leave the stones.

The nature park was founded in 1964 at the suggestion of the Austrian sculptor Carl Hermann when there were plans to make agricultural work easier by blasting the granite blocks. The preservation of the cultural landscape is one of the great difficulties of the nature park, since the management is very labor-intensive and not very profitable.

Built sights

Even the Neolithic man of painted ceramics left traces here. However, there are further indications of human presence only for the Middle Ages , the time of the Slavic and Bavarian conquests. The remnants (stone formations), which were the cause of the sacrificial stone theory of Franz Xaver Kießling and his followers (which still exist today), were in no way used in a cultic sense in prehistoric times. This theory does not correspond to the current state of knowledge and has its roots in the romantic and national historicism of the late 19th century.

In the nature park there is an exhibition about the formation of the heathland with its granite remnants as well as a diorama show entitled "The Birth of Wiggling Stones", which are housed in the former water reservoir built in 1908, as well as an attached information center. In 2003, a 23.2 m high wooden observation tower was built above the water reservoir, which offers a good view of the nature park and the nearby border to the Czech Republic. This is the third observation tower at this location. In 1964 a first, 17 m high, and in 1980 a second, already 20 m high, wooden tower was built. The new control room has a total of 117 steps that lead to the viewing platform at a height of 20.35 m.

The block heather is characterized by a landscape that is characterized by red pines, birches and oaks, but above all also by Ranker , i.e. silicate, lime-free dry grass that is rarely found in Austria. These dry grasslands have only a few centimeters of soil above the granite or gneiss rock. There is still a quarry that is in operation. Another, old quarry is on the roadside in the forest, the two former excavation pits have filled with water and are known as moon ponds. Some of the particularly impressive granite formations have been given names, such as Teufels Brotlaib, Christophorusstein, Schulerstein. To explore the area, themed trails such as the GranitkulTOUR, MythologieTOUR or the LandschaftskulTOUR have been set up. The meridian path follows the 15th eastern meridian . There is a geological open-air museum in which various granite, gneiss, marble and magmatite forms from the Waldviertel can be seen, a nature children's playground with a stone labyrinth and a picnic area. Guided adventure hikes are also offered. An entrance to the nature park is in Grillenstein at the Schüsselwirt, where there is also a large car park. Another entrance is at the Backhausen textile factory, from whose customer parking lot you can walk across the Braunaubach from the southeast through the forest into the Blockheide. A third entrance is through the Malerwinkel, a ditch made of mighty granite layers and providing an interesting view of the wooden buildings of a former outdoor swimming pool that was open here until the 1980s.