» Lechner - a name wich guarantees tradition and the future

Josef Lechner was the first to promote the marble industry in Laas (Lasa). Born in 1851, he travelled to Switzerland and Bavaria in Germany as a young man then returned home in 1882 to set up his own company. He went on to found a second company in nearby Bozen (Bolzano) with a work-force of some 25 craftsmen a few years later. Lechner employed up to 100 workers in Laas (Lasa) during his hay-day around the year 1900. His company quarried the well-known Lasa marble and produced works of art, sculptures and more functional pieces which were exported to Austria, Hungary, Russia, Great Britain, Germany and as far afield as Ethiopia and the United States of America. The most impressive items to have left Lechner’s workshops then include the statue of Emperor Wilhelm in Stettin, a 3.5 metres high figure of Christ which was to stand in Riga, another large statue of Christ intended for Berlin, various sculptures for the Berlin Siegeshalle, an elaborate funeral monument at Braunschweig, the altar for the village church of Marling (Marlengo) near Meran and the memorial statue of Queen Victoria which was sent to London in 1903.

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