Let There Be Light

For a time, vague hopes hovered about the mayor’s office that the Bartenbach lab might invest massively in the Rattenberg project, which could serve as a prototype for dozens of similar sites in the immediate area. Bartenbach’s ceo, Helmar Zangerl, dashed such hopes. “We don’t get involved in financing or marketing,” he explains. “What we can deliver is a feasible concept.” Zangerl leads the way through the lab to a bunker-like room in which a large wired dome hangs over what looks like a Ping-Pong table.

“There are about ten skies in the world,” he says, fumbling with a few switches before summoning a technician to turn the thing on, “but I think this is probably the best.” The dome blinks to life, and there on the table is Rattenberg, one forty-third of its actual size. The beam of a headlight at the opposite end of the room hits reflectors above the shrunken city, and shafts of light fall across a few of its facades. “This is the only way to get a sense of the plasticity,” says Zangerl, crouching down, his nose at street level. He points to the shadows created by the gabled windows. “Here, for instance, is one unnatural aspect that we won’t be able to get around: the shadows will remain fixed in this position.”

Many Rattenbergers are having trouble getting around a few other aspects of the project. Although they haven’t seen this latest model, they seem to know enough about the plan to be convinced that it won’t work. Heinrich Unterrader is the self-appointed keeper of Rattenberg’s castle ruins. The eighty one-year-old and his wheelbarrow can be found there in pretty much any weather, remortaring the walls, digging for bones, and giving wayward youth ample reason not to vandalize the place. Heini, as he’s known locally, collected the signatures of eighty Rattenbergers opposed to the Bartenbach project and sent the petition to the state government, the conservation office responsible for Tyrol, and the media. In his two-page memorandum, written in calligraphy, Heini lambastes the “nonsense that has been disseminated by the media” and the “cockamamie nature of the entire plan,” which he claims would “completely disfigure” his beloved castle.

“I have nothing against the modern world,” says Heini, sitting in what was once a defensive tower in Rattenberg’s fortress and is today his home. “Bartenbach should carry on lighting underwater hotels in Abu Dhabi. But they have nothing to offer Rattenberg.”

Next door in the cloister, Mayor Wurzenrainer is making lists of potential private sponsors and authorities that need to be won over. A preservation committee’s judgment on the mirrors planned for the castle ruins looms large. Asked what his next step will be, he considers for a second, then replies, “A media strategy.”

He disappears into a back room and returns with a bottle of home-brewed plum schnapps, filling two elegant crystal glasses and raising his. “Hand-blown in Rattenberg. Cheers.”