Miniagrimundus Waldburg

More than 100 true-to-original miniatures from everyday farming life in the 19th and 20th centuries take visitors back to the "good old days" of rural life and work!

The miniatures on display in the museum are the work of the Waldburg master wainwright and agricultural machinery builder Johann Hochreiter, who also taught at the agricultural college in Freistadt. Hochreiter's enjoyment of his work and his love of detail prompted him to start working on miniatures. He began with a small spinning wheel, followed by a berry press and then a team of Haflinger horses, which fully ignited his enthusiasm for building further miniatures.

The main objects of the lifelike miniatures originate from everyday farming life in the 19th and 20th centuries. Farm wagons and carts, ploughs, harrows and agricultural machinery and tools were still in use everywhere until the motorisation of agriculture. The modern and fast-moving era with its industries and factories displaced the countless small craft businesses in the countryside such as wainwrights, blacksmiths and wagon makers, coopers, shoemakers, tailors and many more.

The Miniagrimundus is intended to illustrate the tried and tested working methods of our ancestors of yesteryear and to keep alive the memory of the wealth of experience and the painstaking and sweaty manual labour of many generations before us. In their exactness and functionality, the exhibits provide visitors with a vivid and historically extremely valuable reference to the farming community in the Mühlviertel heartland.
This museum, unique of its kind, displays tools, equipment and implements that Johann Hochreiter, a retired master wainwright and technical school teacher, has lovingly and skilfully created over 27 years as lifelike and functional miniatures. The approximately 100 exhibits open up to the viewer as a window into a seemingly bygone "good old days".

The exhibition is ideal for illustrative teaching in schools and as a complement to a visit to the parish church with its three late Gothic winged altars. The "Spechtweg" nature trail in the nearby Wimbergwald forest is also a good way to round off a visit to Waldburg.