History
A mansion full of history
The Villa Excelsior was built from 1895-1897 as “Villa Dr. Wassing” by the famous cure-doctor Anton Wassing. In these times Sigmund Freud spent his summer vacations from 1916 – 1923 in his “…favourite spa-resort, in middle of the beauty of the Alps”.
In 1938 the Straubinger family – who already owned the well-known Straubinger hotel next to the waterfall – took over the villa and changed the name into “Haus Goldeck”. From 1957 to 2000 the hotel was used as a cure-house for priests by the Prelate Simon Dietmann, who
built a new wing with 6 thermal baths, rooms and the large hotel chapel.
The vending to an apartment company failed in 2000 and so the hotel was closed until Christof Erharter bought the villa and renovated the building based on original plans from 1895 and reopened the hotel in the summer 2003.
The work of the famous Salzburg architect Josef Wessicken in Bad Gastein
Born in 1837, the architect decided to study architecture in Munich and Vienna after completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter. After completing his training and an internship with the master builder of Vienna Cathedral, Wessicken went to Mainz as master builder of the cathedral. One of his most famous buildings is undoubtedly the St. Andrä Church in Salzburg’s Neustadt district. Wessicken received his first commission in Wildbad in 1876 from Josef Mühlberger.
Co-builder of the “modern” Gastein
Wessicken’s largest clients in Wildbad were predominantly the Bad Gastein hoteliers and spa doctors, in particular the Straubinger family, who commissioned the adaptation building directly at the waterfall in 1884 (formerly Haus am Wasserfall or Krisch-Haus since 1911), in addition to the redesign of the main façade and the conversion of the spa wing in 1887, Wessicken designed the post office building. The most important major building for the Straubinger family was the Hotel Austria, which houses the municipal offices and the Gastein Museum. The buildings of Dr. Anton Wassing (Villa Dr. Wassing, today Hotel Excelsior), the then spa physician Dr. Eduard Schider (Haus Schider) and Dr. Josef Weingerl (Lothringen-Quisisana), whose villas shared the characteristic “Wessicken tower”, still exist today.
The architect Josef Wessicken also designed the Elisabethhof (today’s Arcotel), the hunting lodge of Count Rudolf von Czernin in Böckstein, the Hotel Weißmayr (formerly Provenchère), the Villa Excelsior (formerly Haus Goldeck) and the Wandelbahn with the Kurkasino, which no longer exists today. Only a few buildings in Bad Gastein were not built together with Angelo Comini. These include the Villa Mühlberger – his first commission in Bad Gastein . . .
