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| The Grandma contemplates the lake in Klagenfurt |
Today, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma are going to visit Klagenfurt am Wörthersee in Carinthia. It's a beautiful and nice city with an amazing history to be known, especially the WWII episode with British, German and Yugoslavian armies trying to be the owners of the city.
The three friends are waiting for the arrival of Tina Picotes, who has visited Klagenfurt several times and knows a lot of information of the city and its history.
Meanwhile, the friends have been waiting for Tina, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 63).
Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, in Slovene Celovec ob Vrbskem jezeru, in Italian Clanforte, and in Friulian Clanfurt, is the capital of the federal state of Carinthia in Austria. The city is the bishop's seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt and home to the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt.
The city of Klagenfurt is in southern Austria, midway across the nation, near the international border. It is in the middle, almost as far from Innsbruck, to the west, as from Vienna, to the northeast.
Klagenfurt is elevated 446 metres above sea level and covers an area of 120.03 square kilometres. It is on the lake Wörthersee and on the Glan River. The city is surrounded by several forest-covered hills and mountains with heights of up to 1,000 m, for example, Ulrichsberg. To the south is the Karawanken mountain range, which separates Carinthia from Slovenia and Italy.
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| Joseph contemplates the Gran River in Klagenfurt |
Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as ford of lament or ford of complaints, had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters or swamps.
In Old Slovene, cviljovec is a place haunted by such a wailing female ghost or cvilya. Thus they assumed that Klagenfurt's name was a translation made by the German settlers of the original Slovene name of the neighbouring wetland. However, the earliest Slovene mention of Klagenfurt in the form of v Zelouzi, in Celovec, the Slovene name for Klagenfurt, dating from 1615 is 400 years more recent and thus could be a translation from German.
The latest interpretation, on the other hand, is that the Old Slovene cviljovec itself goes back to an Italic l'aquiliu meaning a place at or in the water, which would make the wailing-hag theory obsolete.
More information: Visit Klagenfurt
Scholars had at various times attempted to explain the city's peculiar name: In the 14th century, the abbot and historiographer John of Viktring translated Klagenfurt's name in his Liber certarum historiarum as Queremoniae Vadus, i.e. ford of complaint, Hieronymus Megiser, Master of the university college of the Carinthian Estates in Klagenfurt and editor of the earliest printed history of the duchy in 1612, believed to have found the origin of the name in a ford across the River Glan, which, however, is impossible for linguistic reasons.
The common people also sought an explanation: A baker's apprentice was accused of theft and executed, but when a few days afterwards the alleged theft turned out to be a mistake and the lad was proved to be totally innocent, the citizens' lament=Klagen went forth and forth. This story was reported by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II.
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| Hotel Sonnenhof, Klagenfurt |
In 2007, the city changed its official name to Klagenfurt am Wörthersee. However, since there are no other settlements by the name of Klagenfurt anywhere, the previous shorter name remains unambiguous.
Legend has it that Klagenfurt was founded after a couple of brave men had slain the abominable Lindwurm, a winged dragon in the moors adjoining the lake, the staple diet of which is said to have been virgins, but which did not spurn the fat bull on a chain that the men had mounted on a strong tower. The feat is commemorated by a grandiose 9-ton Renaissance monument in the city centre.
Historically, the place was founded by the Spanheim Duke Herman as a stronghold sited across the commercial routes in the area. Its first mention dates from the late 12th century in a document in which Duke Ulric II. exempted St. Paul's Abbey from the toll charge in foro Chlagenvurth. That settlement occupied an area that was subject to frequent flooding, so in 1246 Duke Herman's son, Duke Bernhard von Spanheim, moved it to a safer position and is thus considered to be the actual founder of the market place, which in 1252 received a city charter.
More information: Austria
In the following centuries, Klagenfurt suffered fires, earthquakes, invasions of locusts, and attacks from Islamic Ottomans, and was ravaged by the Peasants' Wars.
In 1514, a fire almost completely destroyed the city, and in 1518 Emperor Maximilian I, unable to rebuild it, despite the loud protests of the burgers, ceded Klagenfurt to the Estates, the nobility of the Duchy. Never before had such a thing happened. The new owners, however, brought about an economic renaissance and the political and cultural ascendancy of Klagenfurt.
A canal was dug to connect the city to the lake as a supply route for timber to rebuild the city and to feed the city's new moats; the noble families had their town houses built in the duchy's new capital, the city was enlarged along a geometrical chequer-board lay-out according to the Renaissance ideas of the Italian architect Domenico dell'Allio; a new city centre square, the Neuer Platz, was constructed; and the new fortifications that took half a century to build made Klagenfurt the strongest fortress north of the Alps.
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| The Grandma & Claire Fontaine visit Klagenfurt |
In 1809, however, the French troops under Napoleon destroyed the city walls, leaving, against a large sum collected by the citizens, only one eastern gate, and the small stretch in the west which is now all that is left of the once grand fortifications.
In 1863, the railway connection to St. Veit an der Glan boosted the city's economy and so did the building of the Vienna-Trieste railway that brought the city an imposing central station, destroyed in World War II, and made Klagenfurt the absolute centre of the region.
During the 19th century, the city developed into an important centre of Carinthian Slovene culture. Many important Slovene public figures lived, studied or worked in Klagenfurt. Several Slovene language newspapers were also published in the city, among them the Slovenski glasnik. By the late 19th century, however, the Slovene cultural and political influence in Klagenfurt had declined sharply, and by the end of World War I, the city showed an overwhelmingly Austrian German character.
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Nevertheless, in 1919, the city was occupied by the Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and claimed for the newly founded South-Slav kingdom. In 1920, the Yugoslav occupying forces withdrew from the town centre, but remained in its southern suburbs, such as Viktring and Ebenthal. They eventually withdrew after the Carinthian Plebiscite in October 1920, when the majority of voters in the Carinthian mixed-language Zone A decided to remain part of Austria.
In 1938, Klagenfurt's population suddenly grew by more than 50% through the incorporation of the town of St. Ruprecht and the municipalities of St. Peter, Annabichl, and St. Martin. But during World War II, the city was bombed 41 times, the bombs killing 612 people, completely destroying 443 buildings, and damaging 1,132 others. 110,000 cubic metres of rubble had to be removed before the citizens could set about rebuilding their city.
In order to avoid further destruction and a major bloodshed, on 3 May 1945 General Löhr of Army Group E (Heeresgruppe E) had agreed to declare Klagenfurt an open city in case Anglo-American forces should attack the city, a declaration that was broadcast several times and two days later also published in the Kärntner Nachrichten.
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| The Grandma enjoys Klagenfurt, Carinthia |
On 8 May 1945, 9:30 a.m., British troops of the Eighth Army under General McCreery entered Klagenfurt and were met in front of Stauderhaus by the new democratic city and state authorities. All the strategic positions and important buildings were immediately seized, and Major General Horatius Murray was taken to General Noeldechen for the official surrender of the 438th German Division.
From the beginning of 1945, when the end of the war was rather obvious, numerous talks among representatives of democratic pre-1934 organisations had taken place, which later extended to high-ranking officers of the Wehrmacht and officials of the administration.
Even representatives of the partisans in the hills south of Klagenfurt were met who, in view of the strong SS-forces in Klagenfurt, agreed not to attempt to take the city by force, but upheld the official declaration that south-eastern Carinthia was to be a Yugoslav possession.
More information: Skyticket
On 7 May 1945 a committee convened in the historic Landhaus building of the Gau authorities in order to form a Provisional State government, and one of the numerous decisions taken was a proclamation to the People of Carinthia reporting the resignation of the Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter Friedrich Rainer, the transfer of power to the new authorities, and an appeal to the people to decorate their homes with Austrian or Carinthian colours, which was printed in the Kärntner Zeitung of 8 May.
Rapid financial assistance and the restitution of property to the victims of the Nazi regime was necessary. This posed a problem because one of the very first actions of the British had been to confiscate all the property of the Nazi Party, to freeze all bank accounts, and to block all financial transfers. It took months before basic communication and public transport, mail service and supply were working again, to some extent at least.
During the years that followed these turbulent days, a major part of the British Eighth Army, which in July 1945 was re-constituted as British Troops in Austria (BTA), had their headquarters in Klagenfurt, since Carinthia together with neighbouring Styria formed the British occupation zone in liberated Austria, a state of affairs which lasted until 26 October 1955.
In 1973, Klagenfurt absorbed four more adjacent municipalities -Viktring with its grand Cistercian monastery, Wölfnitz, Hörtendorf, and St. Peter am Bichl, increasing its population.
More information: Planetware
World War II proves there's no God.
Penn Jillette
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