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On Sunday, August 11, 2024, the Standard headlined: “Continued search for apparently missing Bodo Hell in Dachstein area”. People were worried that since Friday August 9th there had been no contact with the 81-year-old writer Bodo Hell, who, like every summer, was looking after animals as a shepherd at the Grafenbergalm on the Dachstein. Despite continued searching, the hope of finding him increasingly dwindled. A month later, Bodo Hell was declared dead.
In 2018 his book “Wilder Dachstein” was published together with the folklorist Elsbeth Wallnöfer and the photographer Peter Kubelka. In 2026, a new edition of the classic from the Upper Austrian and Styrian mountains was released under the title “Dachstein”. The name Hell is also connected to the Salzburg “Untersberg”. The book with the subtitle “Stories – Border Crossings – Gangsteige” was published in 2012 and has been in its second edition since 2014. Last but not least, the Geschreibenstein, the highest mountain in Burgenland, is also presented here.
Like hardly any other writer, Bodo Hell, who was born in Salzburg in 1943 and lived in Vienna, had a close connection to the Dachstein, where he lived summer after summer as a shepherd on the Grafenbergalm. “The landscape of the Dachstein Mountains with its “trough valleys, ice alleys, disruption zones, fracture systems and rock formations” fascinated Bodo Hell from the beginning and, tragically, after 46 years of working in the Alps, he never let go,” writes Andrea Nießner in the foreword to the new edition from 2026. On pages 12 to 59, the folklorist and author (standard columnist) Elsbeth Wallnöfer presents the Dachstein (“The mountains, the massif, the mountain”) in a broad thematic topography. She portrays Dachstein pioneers, writes about alpine pastures, the huts there and reports under "Disappeared, Swallowed, Lost" about the American Ken Cichowicz, who was found alive after 19 days on the edge of the Dachstein glacier in 1985, seriously injured. The last two pages of her contribution belong to Bodo Hell "The Shepherd, the Writer and His Cattle", which she praises as follows: "The writer who also wrote for his farmers, who accepted what the alpine community decided almost without resistance, was therefore a good shepherd."
The main part of the book (pages 60 to 178) written by Hell is divided into ten chapters, each of which is dedicated to people, well-known writers (Peter Rosei,...) as well as local alpine farmers. He ranges from “entrances (offside, flanking)” to “downforce (reverberation)”. The texts, with the exception of commas, have virtually no punctuation. Hell writes through his book in one go. A remark from the afterword, an interview by Wallnöfer with Hell, fits in with this: "[He reported] without a period or comma until a question of communication forced him to pause" (page 181). Within the chapters, the texts are divided into paragraph blocks of one to a maximum of two pages long, which are alternately left and right aligned. With this playful rhythm and ease, as a local expert with great knowledge, he calmly guides us through the world of the Dachstein massif, its residents, visitors, dairymen and dairymaids, its layers and stories. His language is refreshingly clear, his words, experiences and messages are convincing and authentic. The texts in the book are accompanied by impressive images by Peter Kubelka, who has captured the world of the Dachstein in the mirror of the seasons, away from tourist clichés.
The 159-page book about the 1,883 meter high Untersberg, a mountain range that lies in both Salzburg and Bavaria, consists of two parts of the text, the introductory article, "History" (pages 9 to 61) by Walter Seitter, philosopher and author, followed by part two, "Gangsteige", by Bodo Hell. Like a common thread, the texts are supplemented and illuminated by photographs by Peter Kubelka and "miniatures", as explanatory inserts, by Elsbeth Wallnöfer.
Seitter begins his historiography with the question "What is a mountain?" and states: "A stable and clearly defined physical phenomenon that stands out clearly from its surroundings and can be determined in space and time can be called an "individual" [...]." A name emphasizes the independence of the individual; There are several of these, i.e. spellings, "Untarsperig", "Unternsperch" and "Untornsperch" as we can see from a "miniature" by Wallnöfer. After the mountain question, Seitter approaches political history (from page 21), the history of legends (from page 33) and art history (from page 49). Of course, Untersberg marble, an important building stone that is still used in Vienna to this day, is also mentioned here. The quarries are also shown several times (page 13, ...).
Bodo Hell calls his part of the Untersberg book “Gangsteige” and approaches it in twelve chapters. With the first chapter, "Drachenloch / Kienberg", which begins as follows, we are in medias res: "so follow the first forest path on the right after the border crossing,..." In his sentences, Hell takes us, largely without punctuation, to the northernmost of Salzburg's mountain worlds, which turns out to be by no means peaceful. “Attempted murder / statements, reports, assumptions,” is what he calls a section starting on page 103, which leads to July 2005 and begins as follows: “on the day of the second attempted murder….”. Alpine pastures, such as one he lived on the Dachstein, are also mentioned: "Of the majority of the alpine pastures on the Untersberg itself, which have fallen into disrepair, not much remains other than the names, which would be in a clockwise direction: ..."
The author Christoph Mandl grew up in southern Burgenland and is one of the region's experts. First, a look at page 119 at the end of the book: "The Geschreibenstein as an area in the offside. Offside is often good because it is undiscovered, undeformed, unspoiled. An area that is not abused. The area can be and remain." And that is exactly what characterizes the mons altissmimus of Burgenland and its region. At 884 meters, the mountain is not a giant, but the fact that the summit plateau with a viewing tower is located directly on the Austrian-Hungarian border makes it special. This offers various approaches in the truest sense of the word. First, a few words about geology for which Mandl finds poetic and entirely appropriate words: "The Geschreibenstein is the last fall of the Alps before the Pannonian Plain." (page 12). It actually consists of rocks like those we know from the Hohe Tauern, which emerge from the underground here, in the so-called Rechnitz Window.
In the thematically broad book there is space for the noble serpentine as well as Bernstein Castle, where the African expert Ladislaus E. Almásy was born in 1895. Schlaining Castle, which stands for peace, and Markt Neuhodis, where the sculptor Rudolf Kedl created a sculpture park, can also be found here. Pages 62 to 65 with the title "The Jewish Drama. The Kreuzstadel" are about the mass murder in Rechnitz during the Nazi era, the victims of which have still not been found. Few people know that it was Gustav Pick who wrote the legendary “Fiakerlied” in Rechnitz in 1832. By the way, Christian Kolonovits, the internationally famous musician, was born here. These few insights alone show the colorful diversity of this little-known but worth discovering region around the Geschreibenstein.
Conclusion: "Dachstein" and "Untersberg" impress as a successful mixture of high-quality literary texts, impressive images and well-researched articles, thereby opening up new perspectives on icons of the Alpine mountain world. The "Geschriftenstein", a wide-ranging, diverse text-illustrated book, covers much more than "just" the highest mountain in Burgenland, with the surrounding landscapes, the residents and their history on the border between Austria and Hungary. (Thomas Hofmann, August 7, 2026).