So that nothing happens to Ötzi: Oberpframmerner builds a rescue box for an ice mummy

The glacier mummy Ötzi gets a new suitcase, made in Oberpframmern.

When it catches fire or the ground trembles, rescuers bring the scientific sensation inside to safety.

Oberpframmern/Bozen

– backpack, belt bag, hatchet and bow and arrow: 5,300 years ago, Ötzi hiked across the Alps with light luggage.

Now the Iceman, whose world-famous mummy can be admired in the museum in Bozen, South Tyrol, is getting new luggage – from the Ebersberg district.

Ötzi was unable to save his survival equipment in the Copper Age: shot in the back by an arrow, he died high in the Ötztal Alps, where the glacier preserved him for thousands of years.

Its discovery in 1991: A scientific sensation that partially rewrote Stone Age history.

Today, Ötzi's body is kept at a constant minus six degrees in a cooling chamber in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology.

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Bulky: Ötzi's previous suitcase, in which the Iceman was wrapped in foil for transport.

© M. Samadelli / dpa

But if a fire or an earthquake endangers the building there, the invaluable ice mummy has to be taken to the Bolzano University Hospital as quickly as possible, where a cold chamber is permanently available especially for this eventuality.

Transported in a tailor-made rescue box, made by the Schröter model building company in Oberpframmern.

Ötzi's new piece of luggage made of lightweight aluminum and fireproof soft foam on the inside

Where milling machines the size of a double garage otherwise form 3D models for car and aviation manufacturers, Ötzi's new piece of luggage was made from two millimeter thick lightweight aluminum.

It looks like the case for an unusual musical instrument.

Inside, the fire-resistant soft foam is precisely adapted to the body shape, based on a computer model.

So that the 1.54 meter tall ice mummy is not damaged if things get hectic during a salvage or the case gets bumped.

You can find more current news from the district of Ebersberg at Merkur.de/Ebersberg.

For the eyelets, handles and clasps, the Schröter company obtained expertise from the fire brigade in nearby Grafing - if you need it to be quick, two helpers can lift it, if necessary even one alone.

In an emergency, the box is available very close to Ötzi's museum cooling chamber.

The Bolzano fire brigade has a sophisticated access plan, packs the 13-kilo, 5,300-year-old corpse in sterile towels and in the rescue box.

In this way, escape through the stairwell or the turntable ladder through the window is possible without breaking the filigree, frozen limbs.

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Test lifting without Ötzi: Our reporter with the 42-kilo rescue box.

© Stefan Rossmann

The case was made for a friendly price of 5,000 euros, says company boss Maximilian Lörzel: "Ötzi is a treat!"

When Ötzi was being “transported home” from Innsbruck in 1998, he traveled on the Brenner Autobahn, which was closed to him.

And when he has to go to the nearby university clinic for medical examinations, he is transported late at night with a police motorcycle escort, as was the case last year.

Now Ötzi travels with new luggage in such a case.

Ötzi's "personal doctor" from Grafing makes contact

The contact between the Upper Bavarian company and the South Tyrolean museum came about through the forensic doctor Oliver Peschel (58) from Grafing, as Ötzi's curator something like the personal doctor of the ice mummy.

He is happy that there is now a replacement for the bulky Ötzi wooden box, which weighs a good 100 kilos and which probably would not have fit through the museum window.

"We sweated blood and water," says Peschel about the recent transport of the mummy to the CT scan.

Peschel will bring the new, 42-kilo aluminum crate to South Tyrol next week himself in the trunk of his Volvo.

With a delivery note, of course, so that if necessary he can explain to the police what he is driving around.

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