Gagarin Memorial
On the right shore of the Rettenbach tributary, near the junction of the Hubhanslauweg in Hinterstein
On the right shore of the Rettenbach tributary, near the junction of the Hubhanslauweg in Hinterstein
The memorial remembers Prince Leon Gagarin and his son Vladimir, who drowned there on 3 August 1868. They wanted to watch the timber drift and were swept away by a tidal wave. The accident caused ripples in the press at the time.
Given their close proximity to the Dr. Pollak Memorial (Dr. Pollak Platz), Prince Gagarin and his son may have been standing there at the memorial, which was donated presumably the year before (1867) by Pollak’s successor, spa physician Dr. Kaan.
The Gagarin memorial is on the flat surface between the two huge boulders at the Dr. Pollak Memorial, on the shore of the Rettenbach River. The Gagarin commemorative plaque is made of Ischl marble with an inscription in Russian and German. In the Russian section, the date is given according to the Orthodox Christians’ Julian calendar (July 22) and the otherwise commonly known Gregorian calendar. Above the plaque is the stone cross.
During the flood in 2002, part of the rock and the Gagarin commemorative plaque collapsed into the river. The plaque remained lost for over a year, but was found, restored, and relocated by the Cultural Heritage Society of Bad Ischl (Ischler Heimatverein). The stone cross above the plaque, which disappeared before the flood, was replaced by one from the Ischl cemetery. The inauguration of the new monument took place on 3 August 2006.
The Gagarin memorial’s large wooden cross, which disappeared long before the flood, was found further down the river and was reaffixed, free-standing, approximately 70m downstream on the left shore. The cross probably commemorates the place where Prince Gagarin’s corpse was found.
The other plaque
The former tourism director of Bad Ischl, Dieter Neumann, has been researching the family history of the princely Gagarin family for decades. In addition to a detailed article in the Bulletin of the Cultural Heritage Society of Bad Ischl (Ischler Heimatverein), he also wrote a poem about Prince Leon Gagarin's widow. Neumann commissioned master stonemason Günter Brucker to make a Untersberg marble plaque in which the poem was engraved. The Cultural Heritage Society of Bad Ischl (Ischler Heimatverein) installed the plaque on 16 September 2022 near the historical Gagarin commemorative plaque.
