The Liebermann Villa and its history
The Liebermann Villa in Mallnitz was once the stately summer residence of Edmund Mojsisovics. Johann August Edmund Mojsisovics Edler von Mojsvár, born 18 October 1840 in Vienna, was a highly respected geologist and palaeontologist of his day. The Visitor Centre is dedicating an exhibition to this important universal scholar that pays tribute to his extensive life’s work.
Mojsisovics quickly rose through the career ranks at the Imperial & Royal Geological Institute and wrote a number of seminal works on stratigraphy and the ammonites fauna of the alpine Triassic. Already as a student he was a founding member of the Austrian Alpine Club in 1862 and, in 1873, helped to establish the Association of the German and Austrian Alpine Clubs. It was in the 1860s that Mojsisovics first became acquainted with, and learned to love, Mallnitz and its mountain scenery. His first few mountain tours took him up to the Ankogel and the Hochalmspitze, and almost every year he would return to Mallnitz for his summer retreat.
Upon retirement in 1900 he finally set about building his own villa in Mallnitz. The plot of land required for this purpose was chosen with meticulous care. Indeed, anyone who has looked out of the villa windows at the staggering views of the Ankogel and the Hohe Geisel will know why it had to be this particular spot.
Here, in this scenic paradise, Edmund von Mojsisovics and his wife created their own little world. Sadly, he was not to enjoy his villa for long: in autumn 1906, what was initially thought to be a harmless throat condition was in fact diagnosed as cancer. After a year spent in agony and pain, Edmund von Mojsisovics died on 20 October 1907.
His widow later remarried, a certain Liebermann, and the villa bears his name to this day. Together with the German and the Austrian Alpine Club she erected a memorial to her husband on a rock above the Hengstenberg Path behind the villa. Along with the Mojsisovics summit also named after him, both these sites celebrate the memory of a remarkable scholar who elected to make Mallnitz his home.
