Laa forest

Laa forest
Street in Vienna
Basic data
place	Vienna
District	Favoriten (10th district)
Connecting roads	Puchsbaumgasse
Cross streets	Urselbrunnengasse, Donabaumgasse
Places	Otto-Geissler-Platz
use
User groups	Pedestrians , bicycle traffic , car traffic
Technical specifications
Street length	approx. 875 m

Laaer Wald is a street in Vienna's 10th district of Favoriten , which was named in 1990 after the grove of the same name.

Course and characteristics

Laaer Wald in the Bohemian Prater

The quiet street continues the Puchsbaumgasse , which ends at a former industrial railway from the Ostbahn to the Ankerbrotfabrik , in a south-easterly direction, crosses under the autobahn Südosttangente Wien , leads up to the height of the Laaer Berg through allotment gardens and continues through the Bohemian Prater to the Otto-Geißler -Platz, a parking and turning area between allotment gardens. Here is one of the entrances to the Laaer Wald recreation and nature reserve, which extends in the west to Laaer-Berg-Straße .

Remarkable

Pieta

At the corner of Laaer Wald / Urselbrunnengasse there is a brick chapel from around 1906. It is white, has a gable roof with a two-armed cloverleaf cross and in the arched niche stands the figure of the Virgin Mary with the body of Christ on her lap behind an iron grating ( Pietà ).

Anna Chapel

Behind the Bohemian Prater is the wooden St. Anna Chapel , which was built in 1916 (according to Dehio) or 1923. It has a ridge turret and then a sacristy to the north. In the hall with a wooden ceiling there are pictures of Anna herself and the birth of Christ from the beginning of the 20th century. On the outside there is a stone relief depicting St. Hubertus . In 1982 employees of the Vienna Forestry Office renovated the derelict building.

Bohemian Prater

This small entertainment district was built between 1880 and 1890 and extends on both sides of Laaer-Wald-Straße. It owes its name to the brickworkers from Bohemia and Moravia who worked on the Laaer Berg , who in the first few years were the main audience of the Bohemian Prater. In addition to restaurants such as the Werkelmann , the Bohemian Prater consists of ring games , swings , a caterpillar track, a Ferris wheel and various other showman establishments. In Tivoli various music performances take place.

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Laaer Wald recreation area

The top of the Laaer Berg was originally made up of mixed forests of downy oak , which were increasingly cleared from the late 17th and 18th centuries to make way for brickworks . A few brick ponds were created from the clay pits . In the early twenties of the 20th century, the Sascha film industry shot monumental films (silent films) such as “Sodom and Gomorrah” and “ The Slave Queen ” (hence the name Filmteich ) on the southern slope of the Laaer Berg .

Most of the Laaer Berg was originally largely free of forests and housed a Pannonian flora that was unique for Vienna . Due to the juxtaposition of dry grassland and wet locations, there was an extraordinary wealth of species. As early as 1905, when the Vienna green belt was being planned, the intention was to reforest 234 hectares of forest on Laaer Berg. However, this project was only started in 1953 with a delay of around 50 years to an extent of 40 hectares. Due to the geological nature and dryness of the gravel soils, however, there were severe failures and after three years only a tenth of the trees that had been planted were still alive. Thereupon the city, which did not want to be dissuaded from the project, had large trenches dug with excavators, filled with earth and artificially watered the trees planted there. 1956–1970 over 270,000 trees and bushes were reforested here. It was not until 1982 that the now well-grown forest was made accessible to the public. From today's nature conservation point of view, the then well-intentioned afforestation and destruction of the unique dry vegetation are consistently viewed negatively.

In the course of the reforestation, hiking trails were laid out and a bird sanctuary was created around the two former brick ponds, the Butterteich and the Blauer Teich , which today is home to over 50 species of birds. The Laa forest has been available to the population as a recreation area since 1982. The approximately 40 hectare area is fenced and closed when it gets dark. At the Bohemian Prater, access is from Laaer-Wald-Straße, to the south from Klemens-Dorn-Gasse and to the west from Laaer-Berg-Straße . Children's playgrounds and seating and resting areas as well as a viewing platform by the butter pond are available to visitors. Since 2006, located in the north, a large, traditional, carved wooden gate from the Romanian Maramures (in the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg monarchy part of the county Maramures , in German at that time often Marmarosch written) that the City of Vienna was made a gift.

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  Information board

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  Forest path

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  Butter pond

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  Forest path

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  Wooden gate from Maramures

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  Anna Chapel

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alexander Mrkvicka, Susanne Leputsch: Green in the City, Urban Green Space Policy in the 20th Century , in: Karl Brunner, Petra Schneider (Eds.): Environment City, History of Nature and Habitat Vienna , Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-205- 77400-0 , p. 482

literature

• Herbert Tschulk: Viennese district culture guide favorites . Jugend & Volk, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-224-16255-4

Web links

Commons : Laaer Wald  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• About the Laaer Wald on wien.gv.at
• Geology, flora and fauna of the Laaer Berg on montelaa.biz

Coordinates: 48 ° 10 ′ 2 "  N , 16 ° 23 ′ 56.6"  E