From the road up the hill immediately behind the ruins is to be had a beautiful glimpse across the valley opening and over the Danube to the handsome buildings of the magnificent monastery of Mölk, a little further down the river. The Castle of Weitenegg must have been a fairly extensive place at one time, having presumably been added to considerably since it was originally erected, as it is supposed, by that Rüdeger of whom we hear so much in the story of Pöchlarn. Judging by the extent of the remains that are left, the size of the rooms and halls, now weed-grown skeletons, it must have been very large; and despite the tradition as to its age, there appear to have been considerable additions in more modern times. Many of the window spaces form a modern “note,” suggesting that they were added no earlier than the late seventeenth century. The lower portions are largely of stone, the native rock largely worked into it, though there is also a goodly proportion of seemingly more or less modern red brick.
MÖLK
But for its ruins and its lovely inland walks, the little village of Weitenegg has nothing to attract the visitor. A short distance further down-stream a cable ferry connects this left bank with the right, and so takes us to Mölk, largely hidden by a tree-grown island. The small town of Mölk is at the foot of the abrupt rock on which the grand monastery buildings have been erected with a fine eye to effect. The steamer landing place is a little below the monastery which, seen from the river, might be a magnificent palace. This splendid “Kloster” has been described by Dibdin as “one of the noblest edifices in the world.” The Bibliographical Tourist went on, indeed, to declare that, “Christ Church College at Oxford, and Trinity College at Cambridge shall hardly together eclipse it; while no single portion of either can bear the least comparison with its cupola-crowned church, and the sweeping range of chambers which runs parallel with the town.”
Though on the site of an older establishment, the place, which arouses every visitor to enthusiasm—“the Escurial of Germany” it has been named—was designed and erected in the eighteenth century—that period so often decried for its architectural achievements. It was built during the first third of that century by an architect named Prandauer. Not much of the early history of the place is known, though tradition tells of the burial at Mölk of a Scottish saint who, bound on a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1012 was mistaken for a spy when passing through this neighbourhood and promptly hanged. Presumably his saintliness was revealed (as in so many instances) posthumously.
In the seventeenth century Mölk was twice besieged, once by the Turks when they swept through a large part of Austria. It was, however, an earlier building that was thus put to warlike uses; possibly it was in consequence of damage done by the besieging Turks in 1684 that the monastery was rebuilt in the early part of the following century. Here in 1805 Napoleon made a short stay in his victorious advance on Vienna and here he stayed also in 1809. In one of the apartments a mark on the floor used to be shown as having been made by the Emperor in a moment of passion.
The two centres of greatest interest in this most magnificent of the Benedictine foundations along the Danube are the church and the library. The former is a lofty and richly decorated building “the very perfection of ecclesiastical Roman architecture,” with a wonderful wealth of gold in its decoration. The library, which is noted for containing a large number of biblical and manuscript rarities, is a grand lofty room about a hundred feet in length, with a handsomely painted ceiling, and also no small measure of gilding in its scheme of decoration. Of the great wine “caves” or cellars, which apparently formed one of the features on which the old-time monks prided themselves, it is said that in some of them a carriage might be turned with ease. A French writer a few years after the campaign of 1805 said “in order to have an idea of the abundance which reigns here, it may be sufficient merely to observe, that for four successive days, during the march of the French troops through Mölk towards Vienna, there were delivered to them not less than from fifty to sixty thousand pints of wine per day—and yet scarcely one-half of the stock was exhausted. The French generals were lodged here on that momentous occasion and no doubt found it “snug lying in the abbey.”
Splendid as the monastery appears when seen from the water and from the left bank, its situation was well chosen for the views it affords of the wooded heights across the river and for the beautiful prospect to be had from its gallery over the tree-grown islets up the river to where Weitenegg stands on its rocky promontory backed by the green woodlands of the higher hills, with the mountains in the distance.