Peter Rosegger

Peter Rosegger (original Roßegger) (31 July 1843 – 26 June 1918) was an Austrian writer and poet from Krieglach in the province of Styria.The way there takes two hours and as a result, Peter had very limited education, largely provided by a wandering teacher who taught him and other children from the region for a year and a half.Rosegger started to publish Heimgarten in 1876, a monthly journal with articles and stories for the people of the country, whose main representative and interpreter he was.Fascinated by machines and technology, and being a faithful Christian, he showed a sharp eye for the potentials and advantages, as well as for the dangers and downsides of both the church and the economic development of the late 19th century.He called for donations publicly at various occasions or used his influence in academic circles, thus contributing to the founding of one school (in Alpl, his home village), the building of two churches (one in Mürzzuschlag and one in St. Kathrein, rebuilt after it burned down) and other benevolent actions.He became citizen of honour in Graz and Vienna, and Franz Josef's successor Karl presented the ex-farmer-boy-now-national-poet with the Franz-Joseph-medal, a high-ranking accolade for an author.Rosegger, who had been ill frequently and seriously, travelled back to his home in Krieglach in May 1918 in order to die where "the beautiful legend of the forest-farmer boy" had once begun, in the woodlands of the Styrian Alps.