Schützenscheibenmuseum Scheibbs

The Schützenscheibenmuseum in Scheibbs is the largest of its kind, holding around 250 historic targets painted between 1670 and 1941. It sits in the Lower Austrian town of Scheibbs, where the local marksmen’s guild has kept the tradition alive since 1563. The museum explains how central-European shooting guilds developed from early religious rituals into organised civic groups. It shows how Scheibbs kept its own peaceful, craft-based form of marks­manship rather than turning military. The guild still runs the museum today with the town council. The collection’s painted targets record local and national events, private celebrations and even religious scenes. About a hundred carry the coat of arms of the nearby Gaming Charterhouse, whose court painters first made the Scheibbs targets in tempera. The guild’s ‘fool’ or ‘pritchenmeister’ once kept order on the old shooting ground by the Wiener Tor, where the Kapuzinerkirche now stands. Scheibbs bought that ground from the charterhouse in 1568, but the custom of shooting for a wooden bird on a pole goes back much further. The targets themselves show how the bird motif survived the switch from bows to firearms. Visitors find the targets arranged chronologically, each one labelled with its date and painter when known. The earliest pieces from the late 17th century already carry Latin mottoes alongside political or domestic scenes. Some smaller targets mark weddings or funerals, while others recall battles or treaties. The museum occupies a single room in the town, yet the vivid colours and sharp detail of the tempera paintings fill the space with stories from three centuries of Scheibbs life.