Sylvester Oberberger

Sylvester Oberberger (born December 27, 1841 in Reichertshofen near Ingolstadt , Bavaria ; † May 16, 1930 in Maxglan near Salzburg , Austria ) was a large landowner and real estate agent in Salzburg and is considered the "creator" of the Elisabeth-Vorstadt district .

biography

In 1880 Oberberger moved from Reichertshofen to the Salzburg suburb of Froschheim, where he acquired the Eisenhut and Schlammhof along with its extensive properties.

In addition to agriculture and the grain export trade, he increasingly tried himself as a real estate agent. In 1887 he was able to acquire land on the Mönchsberg , but his application for a parceling permit failed due to resistance from the municipality. From 1889 to 1892 he parceled out his farm grounds in Froschheim, where he also met resistance from the municipality and suffered high financial losses due to the resulting delays. The properties he acquired were located between the Salzach , whose bank area at that time roughly corresponds to the course of today's Bergheimer Strasse, and Froschheimer Hauptstrasse (since 1904: Elisabethstrasse). The strip of land, the undeveloped parts of which were still partly owned by the Sasser and Daghofer families, was bordered to the south and north by the slaughterhouse built in 1874 (roughly in the area of ​​today's Gebirgsjägerplatz) and the former city limits to the community of Gnigl - Itzling . In addition, there were only a few restaurants in Froschheim at the time, the Salzburg main train station (1860), the Grand Hotel de l'Europe (1873) and until 1904 the horse racing track.

After completing the subdivision, Oberberger built the "Hotel Elisabeth". This was destroyed in the Second World War and the area was acquired by the Communist Party of Austria, which built the Volksheim on it. Oberberger did not always have the desired success and had to sell some plots at a loss in order to find buyers. Only in the periods from 1897 to 1900, 1904 to 1906 and 1910 to 1913 were several plots built per year. A notebook that he kept from 1917 to 1927 gives an insight into his private and business life. In it he described, among other things, the conditions in Salzburg during the First World War , the wave of price increases that the population had to suffer from, the hunger riots of 1918, his son's imprisonment of war and the honoring of the street naming in 1922.

Sylvester Oberberger was particularly anxious to rename the growing and changing suburb of Froschheim, from which, in addition to displaying a patriotic sentiment among the population, he also expected an appreciation of the place in relation to the rest of the city and, above all, an increase in the financial value of his own property . In March 1898 he therefore founded a committee to rename the suburb and tried to win over the residents and landowners of the town to his idea of ​​renaming Froschheim to "Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Vorstadt" on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the reign of Emperor Franz-Joseph .

In order to avoid an expected rejection by the local council, he submitted an alternative proposal called "Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Vorstadt" , which became more topical and popular with the murder of Empress Elisabeth in Geneva. Although his petitions to the local council were rejected twice, he found a valuable comrade in the future mayor Franz Berger , who vehemently advocated Oberberger's idea after taking over the office. After the approval of the emperor, the renaming of Froschheim to Elisabeth-Vorstadt took place on July 12, 1901 , in good time before the emperor's festival days (July 15 to 17). With this, Oberberger had immortalized the restructuring of this district from a rural to a suburb inhabited by the middle class.

"My Elisabethvorstadt"

Empress Elisabeth - who gave the district its name

The extent to which Oberberger, who originally came from Bavaria, grew together with the district is shown by his poem "Meine Elisabethvorstadt", written in 1928.

How beautiful you are

To the soul of the traffic and got

The gardens are fresh green

Preserved in the urge of modern haste

The vastness of the mountains looks out

Astonishes you in the face,

Like one that doesn't believe its eyes:

Is it you or is it not you.

I discovered you like new territory

As the youngest offspring of the city of Mozart,

The notwithstanding, unawakened

When "Froschheim" slumbered deeply.

Now you grow with the new time

As I saw it in my dream.

You stretch your strong arms wide

In a promising homeland.

And if I should ever divorce

And my eye no longer greets you -

My problem child - you know it well

How you grew together with me

Construction of the Oberberg'schen grounds

In an advertising leaflet, Oberberger presented some types of houses in the "alpine style", but mostly left the choice of the architectural style to the respective builders. In this way, however, he was only able to partially realize his plan to build a residential area in the style of a large villa colony with surrounding gardens for the middle class. Up to the First World War, architecturally remarkable villas as well as several large apartment buildings (rental houses) were built. A number of well-known planners and construction companies were involved in the construction of the Oberberg grounds, which is expressed in the wide range of styles and floor plans of the objects. The building company Ceconi and the architects Karl Pirich and Paul Geppert d. Ä. The latter also built his own villa in Elisabeth-Vorstadt (Stauffenstrasse).

Family and honors

Sylvester Oberberger's first marriage to Genovefa, b. Stangl (1850–1899) and in second marriage with Therese, b. Zach (1853-1930) married. The daughters Klara (* 1873), Anna (1879), Stefanie (* 1884) and Maria (* 1888) as well as his son Maximilian (1874) came from the first marriage.

In 1888 he was granted citizenship of the city of Salzburg. With a municipal council resolution of April 3, 1922, a street in the Elisabeth-Vorstadt was named after him.

Literature and Sources

• Gerhard Plasser: The city expansion in Froschheim and Lehen. Using the example of the parcelling of private property. In: Salzburg Archive 22, pp. 144 ff. Salzburg 1996
• From city law to citizen participation. In: Festschrift. 700 years city law of Salzburg. S. 214 ff. Salzburg 1987
• Friederike Zaisberger , Reinhard R. Heinisch : Life beyond death ... Celebrities in the Salzburg municipal cemetery . Announcements from the Society for Regional Studies in Salzburg . 23. Supplementary volume. Self-published by the company. Salzburg 2006
• Reinhard Stamberg (ed.): Salzburg suburbs. Album. Publishing house for photography. Helfried Seeman and Christian Lunzer OEG. Vienna 1998. ISBN 3-85164-062-4
• Peter Walder-Gottsbacher: Salzburg in old views. European Library - Zaltbommel / Netherlands 1990. ISBN 90-288-5100-3
• Josef Brettenthaler: Salzburg SynChronik. Alfred Winter publishing house. Salzburg 2005. ISBN 3-85380-055-6
• Franz Martin: Salzburg street names. List of streets, alleys, squares, paths, bridges, gates and parks with an explanation of their names. 5th substantially revised edition by Willa Leitner-Martin and Andreas Martin. Announcements from the Society for Regional Studies in Salzburg. 25. Supplementary Volume. Self-published by the company. Salzburg 2006