Anton Dicklberger: Miner from the Ischl salt mine  

Biography:

Anton Dicklberger, born in 1780, married to his wife Walpurga, lived in Bad Ischl until the end of his life (first tenant of the Franz-Berghaus built in 1813). As a man of iron diligence, thorough knowledge and rich experience, he was appointed mountain master at the Ischler Salzberg in 1808. During his tenure, he taught five pupils (mountain students) without special compensation. The Hofkammer chose him as a mining expert to estimate and appraise various mines.

Dicklberger worked for years on his comprehensive history of the Upper Austrian salt pans and has thus set himself a lasting and honorable monument. On April 15, 1817, he was able to present the two-volume work to the Salt Office. For his meritorious work he was awarded the middle gold civil medal with the Öhr by the court chamber as the highest award and in grateful recognition of his hard work for the creation of the history of the salt works in Upper Austria he was presented with an honorary gift of 50 ducats.

With increasing age he became ailing, began a one-year holiday in 1836, never returned to service and retired in 1838. He died in 1840. His widow had a monument with a Latin inscription erected on the grave, which contains the following wording in German: "Here rests the honorable Mr. Antonius Dicklberger, imperial-royal mountain master of the Ischler salt works, best deserved and distinguished, who died at the age of 61 on 22. Oct. 1840 piously fell asleep in the Lord. May he rest in peace.”

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In 2010, in honor of the deserving miner, the Bad Ischl town hall in the village of Eck named a street after him - "Antonius-Dicklberger-Straße".

Thomas Nussbaumer from Bad Ischl, a former employee of the saltworks, translated the historical work into its current form of writing and published it in 2018 as a two-volume work with a DVD of the original edition.