Was he a genius or the Austrian Don Quixote? Regardless of how we view the inventions he made, Viktor Schauberger was certainly a visionary ahead of his time in terms of technological ingenuity and sensitivity to nature.

The trout hovered motionless in the stream and its delicate movements were visible only from up close. However, when the boy put his finger in the water, the fish immediately disappeared; moreover, despite the rapid current, it swam off upstream.

As a child, Viktor Schauberger loved forests, but out of all nature it was water that truly captured his imagination. For hours on end, he would observe its movement in brooks and rushing streams. Water hypnotized him, perhaps even causing him to enter an altered state, in which he could ‘converse’ with it and learn its mysteries. The son of a forester and the eighth child out of 12, he would take every opportunity to disappear in the woods, spending entire days there, even when he was supposed to be in school. His peers would regard him as a reclusive weirdo, which never really changed throughout his life. He always preferred trees and rushing water to people, favouring direct observation of nature over science. Later, when he won recognition as an inventor and ‘water wizard’, Viktor would repeat that reading too many