Poachers in Austria

During the 50's and 60's in Germany and Austria were made sentimental movies in idealized sentimental settings - the life in the mountains, were is always a young girl who is falling in love with a young men and somebody is against that love and at the end they will always have a happy end or in Austria we made a lot of movies who are showing the good old time when we had the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy like the Sissi-Movies with Romy Schneider.

Thoose movies were made after the Second World War that the people remember how good the Monarchy was and some movies are really lovly and funny to watch so that people forget the hard life after the war.

In some of thoose movies the young maid of the Alps is falling in love with the poacher of the region and he brings her in dangerous situations when she is giving him shelter in her Alpine Chalet - I always thought that this is happening just in romantic movies of that time BUT my father told me a story:

In 1982 a poacher called Pius Walder (the second pic shows his grave) went one night into the forest and wanted to shoot some animals. His face was blackened with soot, at his shoulder a gun. He was not a poacher because he wanted to show his trophies, no in his opinion the forest is common property. The people in his little village knew all that he doing poaching for years but some of the huntsmen there were against it. Poaching is prohibited in Austria for a long time! Especially in time of poorness and hunger poachers were heroes for the poor peasant population - a kind of Robin Hood.

At the end Pius Walder was found by some huntsmen that night and they chased him and tried to shoot him 8 times - the 8th bullet killed him - it was a shot into the back part of the head and the sad thing is that the killer was just juged for 1,5 year for prison!!! The court said that it was not a precision shot he wanted to make just a warning shot. The family of Pius Walder is still fighting for their right.