Hinterschellenberg, the hamlet where a Russian army crossed

Hinterschellenberg is a handful of houses, a chapel and an inn at the far end of the Eschnerberg, right up against Austria. Nothing about it hints that one of the most talked-about episodes in Liechtenstein’s history began here, and that’s exactly why I like it. It’s a place to visit with the story already in your head.

A hamlet at the end of the hill

Hinterschellenberg is one of the five hamlets from which the village of Schellenberg grew. In the 19th century it vied with Mittel-Schellenberg to be the heart of the municipality, and lost once the church and convent went up in the other hamlet. Even so, it had a grocery shop from 1900 to 1975, and its inn, the Löwen, appears as a licensed house in 1847, although the Lexikon says drink was being served unofficially before that.

This is also where the border crossing into Austria lies, towards Nofels and Feldkirch, unstaffed since 1987. And one curious detail to round off the picture, the treatment works at Bendern handles waste water from the whole of Liechtenstein except Hinterschellenberg.

What happened in May 1945?

During the Second World War, the Russian count Boris Smyslovsky, who went by the name Arthur Holmston, raised a force for the Wehrmacht made up of Russian émigrés, Soviet prisoners and deserters, at one point up to 6,000 strong. From 4 April 1945 it was called the First Russian National Army. On 18 April, with Germany collapsing, Holmston ordered a retreat south to try to reach safety in Switzerland.

During the night that joined 2 and 3 May, what was left of it crossed from Nofels into Liechtenstein at Hinterschellenberg. There were 494 people, including 33 women and two children, and 23 of them weren’t Russian. Liechtenstein disarmed and interned them, first in the schools at Schellenberg and Ruggell. The Lexikon’s entry on the municipality gives a different count, about 440 soldiers and 50 civilians, and I go with the entry devoted to the army itself, which is more detailed.

The myth and what really happened

The Prince and the government wanted the matter off their hands as soon as possible. By the end of July 1945 half the internees had left for Vorarlberg to be repatriated, and that summer another 104 followed a Soviet commission. Just over 130 Russians, around 20 of them women, refused to go back, and the government refused to hand them over. By 1948 they had emigrated to Western countries, mainly Argentina. Holmston and his wife later came back to live in Liechtenstein.

The Lexikon says those repatriated weren’t shot en masse, as people in the country soon came to believe, although the majority ended up suffering in Stalin’s labour camps. And it’s honest about memory, noting that an unnuanced myth grew up that Liechtenstein was the only country to stand up to Stalin. I think it’s a cracking story precisely because it doesn’t need exaggerating. The wider context is on Liechtenstein in the Second World War.

The 1980 stele

The hamlet gained a memorial stele in 1980, which the Lexikon credits to Schellenberg municipality, and in 1995 a Russian Orthodox service was held there in memory of the crossing. The story reached the cinema too, with the French film «Vent d’Est» in 1992 and the documentary «Fluchtburg Liechtenstein» in 1995. I haven’t found any official information on access to the stele, so all I’ll say is that it’s in the hamlet.

St George’s and the Löwen

St George’s chapel, at 623 metres, began as a private initiative around the turn of the 18th century and was enlarged in the mid-19th. It was restored in 1944-45 and again in 1980-81. Inside there’s a baroque altar from 1659 with an early 17th-century crucifix, a 17th-century oil painting of St George and a mid-17th-century tabernacle.

For lunch, the Wirtschaft zum Löwen opens Monday to Thursday, 10:00 to 23:00, with the kitchen serving from 11:30 to 20:30, and it’s shut Friday to Sunday. The tourist board includes it among the places to try Käsknöpfle, the national dish. A kilometre away on the same hill stand the two ruins of the Schellenberg castles.

To get here, LIEmobil route 35 starts in Nendeln and climbs via Bendern and Gamprin.