The Austrian Coin Office and the Bad Aussee Daffodil Festival
A quite special daffodil grows wild in the Ausseerland region. The star daffodil (Narcissus radiiflorus) prefers altitudes of up to around 1,600 metres. When it blooms in May, it covers entire meadows with its characteristic white stars. Such daffodil meadows are among the most species-rich habitats in the Alps. Because the star daffodil is of central importance to the Daffodil Festival, an association in Ausseerland is dedicated to protecting the daffodil meadows and ensuring that there will still be enough star daffodils in a hundred years’ time to hold the festival. Picking the flowers is, in fact, not a problem for the survival of the species. They reproduce not only via seeds, but primarily via their bulbs.
The Ausseer Daffodil Festival
The Daffodil Festival was created to boost tourism. In the 1950s, the nearby pilgrimage town of Mariazell considered organizing a festival centered on daffodils, featuring a parade and a Daffodil Queen. That was the fashion of the year. Wine festivals with their wine queens were booming. Why shouldn’t what worked with wine also be possible with other local products? Today there are rapeseed and chestnut queens, as well as mussel and herring festivals.
At the time, the economic situation was difficult, organizing such an event was expensive, and the outcome uncertain. Mariazell decided against holding it. Bad Aussee took up the idea and organized the first Daffodil Festival in May 1960.
Today, the boat parade, held alternately on Lake Grundlsee and Lake Altausseer See, attracts thousands of visitors every year. Most residents of the Ausseerland region are involved in the hours of work required to gather enough daffodils to design the memorable figures.
The Mint Club helps create the Austrian Mint figure
This year, the Austrian Mint participated in the Daffodil Festival in the Ausseerland region. The figure fit perfectly with the “gschneizt & kampelt” series, which has been running since 2025. If you’re not familiar with this dialect expression: it’s a colloquial term for neat clothing. Probably every Austrian child has to answer the question at some point of whether they’ve “wiped their nose and combed their hair” before leaving the house.
The Daffodil Festival was preceded by a contest in which the Austrian Coin Mint raffled off participation in the Daffodil Festival, including accommodation, among the members of its Coin Club. Between May 28 and 31, the lucky winners helped create the magnificent daffodil figures. They assisted the team in picking and arranging the daffodils.
The Austrian Mint was on site with a sales and information booth to attract new people interested in coin collecting. The attention of the audience was certainly captured by the Austrian Mint’s traditional costume-clad couple, dressed in “gschneizten & kampelten” attire.
Even though the Austrian coin wasn’t among the winners, numismatics certainly came out on top thanks to this crowd-pleasing event.
Text and images: Ursula Kampmann
