Asylum at the market

When elephants also livened up the Bleiburg Wiesn

Elephant at the Bleiburger Wiesenmarkt: the circus was given asylum on the Bleiburger Wiesen during the ten-day war in 1991.(Bild: Zirkus Gärtner)

Maik Gärtner first visited the Wiesenmarkt as a baby with his circus family. This year he returned here as a showman. 

"It's hard to imagine today. But until the early 1980s, we even had elephants on the meadows," recalls Mayor Stefan Visotschnig. The last time visitors were able to marvel at the pachyderms was in 1991. And it actually came about by chance. The Viennese Gärtner family's circus was stranded in Bleiburg during the war in Yugoslavia.