Works · Series 2013 · 33 works

Homeland / Habitat

Perchtoldsdorf has celebrated its harvest festival for centuries. At the centre of it stand the vineyard guards, called “Hiata”. It is they who each year carry a unique harvest crown, the so-called “Pritschn”, into the church in a splendid procession. Once they were men of the winegrowers' estate, charged from the end of August until the end of the grape harvest with guarding the grapes against theft and damage by game — a task that was not always without danger. For some weeks they lived in the small Hiata huts out among the vines. Six of these windowless stone huts still mark the former territories of the Hiata today; they stand in the vineyards of Haspel, Goldbiegl, Fener, Herzogberg, Sossen and Vierbatz. From the middle of the 20th century the supervisory role of the Hiata gradually lost its importance and the huts stood empty. Their rituals, though, remained important and valued. Over the years the former six men grew into a considerable group of more than twenty young men, all of them from the winegrowing families. From the end of August they wear their gleaming badges with pride, as their predecessors did; it is an honour to belong. The “Bamstelln” — the raising of the hat trees at each hut as the grapes begin to ripen — is as much part of their duties as the preparation of the festival itself.