Räuberhöhle (Spital am Semmering)

Middle robber's den
Location:	Styria , Austria
Height :	890  m above sea level A.
Geographic location:	47 ° 37 '2 "  N , 15 ° 44' 31"  E Coordinates: 47 ° 37 '2 "  N , 15 ° 44' 31"  E
Cadastral number:	2861/12
Geology:	marble
Overall length:	120 m
Level difference:	-25 m

Great den of robbers
Height :	914  m above sea level A.
Geographic location:	47 ° 36 ′ 58 "  N , 15 ° 44 ′ 24"  E
Cadastral number:	2861/17
Geology:	marble
Overall length:	57 m
Level difference:	19 m

Three caves above the Zatzka villas in Spital am Semmering in the Austrian district of Bruck-Mürzzuschlag in Styria are known as the robber's cave . They are used by climbers , the 17 boulders have a level of difficulty from 5a to 7c. The butterfly pink owl was found in one of the caves .

Small den of robbers

The first of the three caves, also known as the Little Robber's Cave, is now nothing more than a small hollow in the rock that only extends a few meters into the mountain and was allegedly buried in the 12th century to make it unusable for the legendary robbers of the Cerwald do.

Middle robber's den

The corridors of the Middle Räuberhöhle ( cadastral number 2861/12, listed in the Austrian cave cadastre as “Räuberhöhle” or “Kleine Räuberhöhle”, “Second Räuberhöhle” and “Dripsteinhöhle”) extend 120 meters into the mountain. They branch out more and more and eventually become impassable. Secret passages are supposed to lead from here into the surrounding area and to Lower Austria. Inside there are iron rails that date from 1912, when the Spitaler Höhlenverein built a show cave there. The stalactites are badly damaged.

Great den of robbers

The Great Robber's Cave (2861/17, also called "Zederhaushöhle", "Obere Robber's Cave" and "Taborloch") is located around 200 meters west of the Middle Robber's Cave. Already in 1828 the village judge of Spital am Semmering, Johann Glück, described the cave in the Styria-wide magazine “Der Aufmerksame”, a Biedermeier educational supplement to the “Grätzer Zeitung”, in a comprehensive article with the title “The robber cave, otherwise Zederhaus, but in general called the Taborwand (at Spital aS) “.

The Great Robber's Cave is one of two caves in Styria with fortifications. It shows sintering , but no stalactites.

According to a legend, the robbers of the Cerwald are said to have lived in it. The only sure evidence for this is a document from the year 1220, in which these robbers are mentioned. In the 17th and 18th centuries, as documented by several sources, groups of disarmed soldiers and so-called “gypsies” stayed in the Great Robber's Cave, for whom the cave served as a shelter and from where they made the surrounding area unsafe.

The cave probably served since the 15th century, e.g. B. in the turmoil of the Baumkirch feud , during Hungarian and Turkish invasions of the population of the Fröschnitztal as a refuge. Her with loopholes equipped and a door locking defensive wall which no longer exists today.

The Styrian historian Robert Baravalle assumed that the robber's cave was originally the cave castle of a minor knight, which was later expanded into a refuge, a tabor . The escape cave was certainly used again during the first Turkish siege of Vienna in 1529 at the latest and was probably used for the last time during the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683.

swell

• Bernhard A. Reismann: History of the community Spital am Semmering . Spital am Semmering 1997
• Max Fink, Helga and Wilhelm Hartmann: The caves of Lower Austria . In: Regional Association for Speleology in Vienna and Lower Austria (ed.): Scientific supplements to the magazine "Die Höhle" . tape 1 . Vienna 1979, p. 221-223 .
• Helga and Wilhelm Hartmann: The caves of Lower Austria . In: Regional Association for Speleology in Vienna and Lower Austria (ed.): Scientific supplements to the magazine "Die Höhle" . tape 4 . Vienna 1990, p. 428 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Journal of the Vienna Entomological Society, Volume 37, p. 177 (PDF file; 1.2 MB)
2. ↑ The other is the Puxerloch .