Strasser Häusl

In a dreary time "Silent Night, Holy Night" was written

1816 Volcanic eruption in Indonesia (Mount Tambora) - all of Europe suffered from this catastrophe. The "years without summer" followed. The harvest could not be harvested. Terrible war years impoverished the population. Famine was the consequence. It was during this dreary time that "Silent Night, Holy Night" came into being. Josef Mohr first wrote only the poem "Silent Night, Holy Night" in 1816 in Maria Pfarr in Lungau. 1818, on 24.12.- "Silent Night, Holy Night" resounds for the first time in the Oberndorf St. Nikola Church. Its creators are the Oberndorf auxiliary priest Josef Mohr and the Arnsdorf teacher Franz Xaver Gruber.

The spread of "Silent Night" by the Strasser children

The great need drove the Strasser children abroad dressed in traditional costumes. Like their father, they sold bought gloves made of fine leather, linen goods, underwear and oil products from the Zillertal. By singing in the marketplace, they attracted more and more onlookers. Their songs told of their homeland, the high mountains, love and death. Almost always they also yodeled. Jakob Katschthaler (1776 - 1835), school teacher, organist and choir director of Hippach since 1802, was their great teacher. He knew the Strasser very well not only as a school teacher but also as a choir director. They surely learned the majority of the songs from him. It must have happened then that they also heard and learned to love "Silent Night, Holy Night", brought to Fügen in 1819 by the organ builder Karl Mauracher in the Zillertal. Josef Rainer, a brother of the original Rainer and innkeeper in Fügen, is also said to have warmly recommended that they bring this song to Leipzig.