Finsterau Open-Air Museum

A rustic woodcutters’ inn becomes a cosy hunting lodge

The Hirschkopfhütte stands apart from the farmsteads. “Johann Degenhart Mauth 1907” is written on the block wall of the former forestry worker’s cabin.
He was probably the foreman of the forest workers who immortalised himself as builder of the little house there. The building owner was the Kingdom of Bavaria, to which the forest around the mountains Lusen and Rachel belonged, and in whose service Johann Degenhart was employed.

On the ground floor there is a parlour featuring a tiled stove with seat, table and corner bench as well as a wide bed. Two windows make the room bright. In the attic, two chambers have been renovated.
The cabin was originally more rustic. Downstairs was a single room in which the block walls were visible. Downstairs there was a single room, where the log walls showed and the floor was tamped earth. Upstairs there was a simple storage room that could be reached by means of an open staircase on the back side of the house.
Later the cabin was no longer there for woodcutters, but for the forester, who set off from there on his walks through the territory and for hunting. Here he received the forest worker’s reports and he sat together with friends or with his woodcutters. While the fire in the stove crackled, the pot with the malt coffee steamed on the stove top and the numb hands thawed, old stories – which had already been recounted so often – were told, and sometimes a new story was also told.

From the old location of the Hirschkopfhütte there was a picturesque view of the village and the fields of Finsterau, but eventually spruce and maple tress had advanced close to the cabin.

One and a half storey block construction, blade shingle covering – documentation in 1994/95, translocation in 1995/96