Villa Blumenthal

“Birthplace of a worldwide success!”

Berlin-born Oscar Blumenthal (13 March 1852, Berlin – 24 April 1917, Berlin) chose the Salzkammergut to be his second home. He got to know the Salzkammergut as a child, and visited Ischl with his mother, who came as a patient of one of the health facilities. He started spending his summers here in 1890.

Unusually, he found what became known as the Villa Blumenthal in Chicago. Yes, the villa actually comes from Chicago. When Blumenthal war there in 1893 for the World Expo, he saw this “prefabricated house” and needed to have it. He had it shipped. From the port of Rotterdam, the house was transported by train to Bad Ischl. It arrived on 19 March 1895 and was erected on his plot of land in Kaltenbach, near Lauffen in the outskirts of Ischl. The villa became a meeting point for artists, aristocrats and business people. It was also where Blumenthal frequently met with friend Leopold Petter, a hotelier from Bad Ischl who was nicknamed “Emperor of Kaltenbach”. In Lauffen, there was a no-longer-extant inn called “Zum weissen Rössl”, where Blumenthal and Petter spent many hours together with friends. The scene became Blumenthal’s inspiration for his comedy The White Horse Inn because he observed that the attractive innkeeper, Maria Aigner, was adored by many, and many men courted her.

Villa Blumenthal was built from Canadian pitch pine, a very hard and durable wood. Only the basement and the chimney are made of brick. A special feature of the house is the forced-air heating system for all stories. Professor Alfred W. Brandel, sculpture artist and the last “ivory sculptor” of Austria, and his wife Dorothea lived from 1946 to 1973 in the villa. During this time, the art exhibition in the villa was open to the public from April to October. Brandel died in February 1973. His grave is located in the cemetery in Bad Ischl.

For 37 years the villa belonged to the Janisch family who lived here and felt very comfortable. In 2018, Peter Janisch (*1942), the successful businessman and publisher, sold the house. These days, he is the autor of a successful book series about poachers in the Salzkammergut.

Today, the villa is private property of a local Bad Ischl family.