In the final years before the First World War, Bruneck changed considerably. The population grew to over 2,500 residents, resulting in a construction boom. Modernity finally made its way to the little town. Not everyone welcomed these changes. One such critic was the lawyer, writer and local researcher, Paul Tschurtschenthaler, who was born in 1874. 

Tschurtschenthaler felt that tradition and custom were being destroyed. He complained about the increasing traffic and other noisy comings and goings that also resulted from tourism. He sought to prevent the general cultural decline – with his literary works, but also by founding a homeland museum.

According to Tschurtschenthaler, the museum should “first and foremost be a creation for the citizens, a hall in to which political conflict could not gain access, where the present with all its struggles and passions would remain outside the door and only the past would be able to have its peaceful say”. This showed him to be someone who extolled a past in which everything in the world still seemed to be as it should. In 1912 the homeland museum initiated by him opened in what was then the town hall. Paul Tschurtschenthaler died in Bregenz in 1941.

His Bruneck homeland guide, which was published in 1928, is still valuable today as a record of the town’s history. The park by the Ursulinentor gate, where Bruneck’s band holds its summer concerts, is named after Tschurtschenthaler.