Samson procession

At the end of the 1920s, the Samson figure of that time came from the town of Unternberg to St. Margarethen and was stored in the Moarhaus. It appeared here and there in St. Margarethen and then went missing.

Since the 1970s, there was talk of resurrecting the Samson custom. This was first made concrete with the official Samson gathering on December 1, 2000. With the motto "It doesn't have to be big, just beautiful!", the construction of the Samson figure was begun according to a drawing by Reinfried Schröcker. After a few pieces were made significantly simpler, it was ready to be presented to the public on schedule the night before the Prangtag on July 14, 2001. The first procession took place on the afternoon of the following Prangtag. It was rebuilt in the winter of 2006/07, and with the installation of a frame made of light metal, the weight was considerably reduced.

Samson

Samson is an Old Testament figure with superhuman strength in his long hair. He symbolically represents the struggle of Jews against the Philistines. Samson's lover, the Philistine Delilah, betrayed him, and deprived of his hair. Thus his enormous strength was also gone.

In the Catholic countries of Europe, it was a custom in the late Middle Ages to carry around figures such as heroes from Biblical stories in the processions, which formed around the feast of Corpus Christi, for the glorification of these parades. Among these figures was Samson.  With the jaw bone of a donkey, he killed thousands of Philistines at Lehi; for this reason, every Lungau Samson carries one such jaw bone with him.