With a black apron tied around his waist, Konrad Meßner is standing in the kitchen at 9 a.m. at the wood fire. The logs crackle. The innkeeper handles pots and pans, in between he serves espresso from an ancient mocha pot to the slowly arriving guests at a wooden table. A reading is about to begin in the wood-panelled room next door. Eight visitors take a seat around a brick oven to then discuss Hannah Arendt and her teacher Karl Jaspers. The innkeeper asks if they need anything else, he has put glasses and a full water carafe on the table.
The whole thing takes place in the “Ansitz Plawenn”, which stands like a small castle with dovetail battlements in the village of the same name in Vinschgau. Messner rented the building ten years ago and turned it into a special inn. “When I started here, the kitchen stank of smoke and grease, I scrubbed with soap and a brush for a week,” says Messner, pointing up to the sooted vault. Sausages and bacon used to be smoked here on fixed iron bars. Even earlier, the room served as a chapel.
Meßner runs the inn as a cultural association and club. The association is called “Arcus Raetia”, the club is called “Club of Mult”. Membership costs one euro per year. “More than 1,000 people are currently registered – from 27 countries,” says Konrad Meßner proudly. The cross-border exchange between nearby Switzerland, Austria and Italy is important to him. From a tax point of view, his club operating model is more of a disadvantage, explains the landlord. “I don’t want to talk bad about hygiene regulations now, but with a normal inn license I’m not allowed to cook on a wood stove, for example,” he says. Messner does not tend to be overly friendly. He can’t choose his guests, he says with a shrug. Basically, however, the following applies: “Anyone who finds me is right.”
“Whoever finds me is right.” Landlord Konrad Meßner has his own view of the world. He tries to live as self-sufficient and to establish his inn as a place of culture.
(Photo: Helmut Luther)
He is described as a “court jester, philosopher, weirdo,” but “I’m not all that,” explains Messner. “My landlord calls me his castellan. Sounds nice, but I don’t like being pigeonholed.” The mid-sixties sees himself as a free spirit. As a regional developer, he has implemented a number of projects. For example, he was the driving force when it came to cultivating rye and spelt like they used to in Vinschgau, where apple monocultures dominate. He has collected old seeds from many countries, which he uses and multiplies here. “Now, in the third phase of my life, I’m a cultural host. I want people to eat well and start conversations. The exchange is the essential thing, anything aloof doesn’t interest me.”
Why in Plawenn, where there are neither hotels nor other inns and which is therefore atypical for South Tyrol, which is very touristy? “Come with me, I’ll show you something!” is all he says and a stone staircase leads down to the uninhabited basement. Spread out on a wooden board, apricot kernels are drying there, Schüttelbrot made from rye flour is stored on a shelf, and old touring skis are leaning against the meter-thick wall. Then Messner opens a door with a wrought iron lock. You are now standing in the garden, with beds still lying fallow, where Messner grows vegetables and herbs in the summer. A wayside cross rises up behind a fence, on the right on a hill the frescoed parish church with the cemetery, otherwise only meadows, no other building far and wide. “I like to live far away from the hustle and bustle,” he says with a view of the landscape. “Going for a walk, thinking in peace, that’s important to me.” He also wants to “live to a large extent as self-sufficient”.
The small town of Plawenn is remote in the Upper Venosta Valley. Unlike other places in South Tyrol, there are no hotels here. Only Messner’s culture inn.
(Photo: imago stock&people)
If you walk around the manor house, which is decorated with a corner tower and battlements, farmhouses are stacked on top of each other on the slope: the upper floors made of sunburned larch wood, hay barns made of raw tree trunks, crooked firewood sheds. Plumes of smoke rise above the roofs. According to the municipal administration, Plawenn has 45 residents all year round, says Meßner. However, he went from house to house and counted himself: “We are 38, on an expansion course, a young couple moved in a year ago.”
“Open from time to time, but gladly on request,” says the inn’s homepage
Konrad Meßner isn’t from here either, he comes from a village in the Isarco Valley. “This and the fact that I’m the only one in town who doesn’t run a farm means that I play a special role,” he says. Except for Messner’s inn, there is no rest stop here. Some of the villagers, all men, regularly stop by for an after-work beer, says the innkeeper. “I exchange cuttings and offshoots of balcony and garden plants with the women.” No sign points the way to the Plawenn Ansitz. Messner doesn’t advertise either. Events are announced via SMS. On the homepage of his Kultur-Wirtshaus it says: “Open from time to time, but gladly on request, so please register!”
In the parlor this Sunday, Hannah Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism as well as Jaspers’ concepts of reason and truth will be discussed with due seriousness. There are no experts here, it’s about being together, the exchange between people interested in culture, teachers, educators. One engineer is there, most of the participants live in Vinschgau, two came from Innsbruck. The one, objective, universal truth, “there is no such thing,” says Messner after taking a seat at the table. The others nod approvingly.
While the philosophizing continues in the wood-panelled hall, the landlord shows a second, bright room, which is also used for seminar purposes. The adjoining room with private bathroom can be rented. “Best for a break, two or three months,” says Messner. Around 1 p.m. there is lunch, some participants stand in as waiters at short notice. The vegetarians get cheese dumplings, the others hearty liver dumplings with sauerkraut. Yesterday he slaughtered a pig here with a farmer, says Meßner. “Whoever eats meat should also slaughter.” After coffee and apple strudel, the speaker picks up the guitar and strikes up a song. The singing is now as lively as the discussion before the meal, even in polyphony.
How long will this go on today? “Sometimes they stay for dinner too,” says the landlord, but you never really know. Today, however, he will have to grab a broom and sweep people out. “The farmer is coming, with him I want to process the rest of the pig into sausage.”
information to the cultural inn: raetia.net/club-of-mult/