Ebensee am Traunsee is an Austrian market town in the Gmunden
district in the Traunviertel and Salzkammergut in Upper Austria with
7677 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020). The community is located
in the judicial district of Bad Ischl.
Originally located in
the eastern part of the Duchy of Bavaria, the area has belonged to
the Duchy of Styria since 1180, which the Austrian Babenbergs
inherited in 1192. The place Ebensee was first mentioned in 1447.
Since the local brewhouse could not be expanded due to an acute
shortage of wood in the area around Hallstatt, Emperor Rudolf II
ordered the construction of a new Pfannhaus (saline) in Ebensee in
1596, the Saline Ebensee, which was realized from 1604. The first
salt could be boiled on February 8, 1607. The manpower required for
the brewhouse was mainly recruited in Hallstatt, the lumberjacks in
Aussee. The brine was fed in via an almost 40 km long brine line
from the Hallstatt Salt Mountain, which was built under the
technical direction of Ischl forest master Hans Kalß - this is still
in operation and the Gosauzwang brine line bridge is a UNESCO World
Heritage Site Hallstatt-Dachstein / Salzkammergut .
In 1625
Ebensee already had 1,000 inhabitants. The construction of its own
Catholic church began in 1729. The church was under the Traunkirchen
monastery. Ebensee first became a vicariate in 1771 and an
independent parish in 1786. When in 1733 the salt works workers
wanted to take their free Shrove Tuesday, the "Shrove Tuesday
revolt" occurred.
The salt works, numerous houses and the
church tower were destroyed in a major fire in 1835. During the
March Revolution in 1848, a national guard was set up in Ebensee. A
first telegraph was set up in Ebensee in 1866. Ebensee was connected
to the Austrian railway network in 1877 by the Salzkammergutbahn, a
branch line of the Rudolfsbahn. The railway line ran from
Attnang-Puchheim in Upper Austria to Stainach-Irdning in Styria.
This was intended to promote the onset of tourism and to cover the
enormous fuel requirements of the salt pans, which could no longer
be met by the increasingly scarce forests, by supplying coal. The
brothers Alfred and Ernest Solvay built an ammonia-soda factory in
1883, the Solvay-Werke in Ebensee. In 1887 the Ebensee volunteer
fire brigade was founded.
Electricity was introduced in 1907
after the construction of a power station on the Offenseebach.
During the First World War, 218 residents were killed and 6 more
went missing. In addition, the place was affected by a great famine
in 1917.
Since 1918 the place belongs to the federal state of
Upper Austria. In 1927, a cable car built by Adolf Bleichert & Co.
was opened on the Feuerkogel, the Feuerkogel cable car. Ebensee was
raised to a market town in 1929. During the Austrian civil war, a
large part of the Ebenseer workers took part in the general strike
in February 1934. The armed forces marched in and put down the
uprising.
After Austria was annexed to the German Reich on
March 13, 1938, Ebensee was part of the Upper Danube Gau.
In
November 1943, the Ebensee concentration camp was established as a
sub-camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp - with the code name
Projekt Zement, it served to relocate the Peenemünde rocket research
facility to a bomb-proof area. From November 1943 to May 1945, 8,745
prisoners died in Ebensee concentration camp. At the end of April
1945 there were 18,437 prisoners in Ebensee. The camp was liberated
on May 6, 1945 by American troops. During the Second World War, 289
Ebenseers fell and another 90 were missing. After 1945, a DP camp
for Jewish “displaced persons” was set up on the site of the
concentration camp. Due to tensions, most of the Jewish DPs were
relocated to Bad Gastein.
Flood protection was built from
1951 to 1957 by building the Traun. The Protestant church was
consecrated in 1953. A new prestressed concrete bridge over the
Traun was built in 1954. In 1957 the 350th anniversary of the town
took place. On September 23, 1963, Italian neo-fascist terrorists
carried out bomb attacks on the saltworks, the Feuerkogel cable car
and the Lion Monument. One gendarme was killed and four other people
injured.
The new town hall with ancillary facilities was opened in 1973.
The saltworks was converted into a stock corporation in 1979. In the
same year a new large saltworks was built in Ebensee / Steinkogl and
the local history museum was opened in the "Saltworks Office". A new
Feuerkogel cable car was put into operation in 1986. In 1988 Ebensee
received the title “Most youth-friendly municipality in Upper
Austria”.
The KV Kino Ebensee was awarded the Upper Austrian
State Culture Prize in 1992 and the art day trip Prä-Post-Brunft
(Christoph Herndler, Reinhard Kannonier, Georg Nussbaumer, Walter
Pilar & Norbert Schweizer) was awarded the Upper Austrian promotion
prize for alternative cultural work.
In 1995 a big
international 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Ebensee
concentration camp took place. The concentration camp memorial
gallery was opened a year later. The former prisoner in the Ebensee
concentration camp, Roberto Castellani from Prato, became an
honorary citizen of the market town of Ebensee in 1997.
The
Contemporary History Museum Ebensee was opened in 2001. In 2002
Ebensee became a "bicycle-friendly community" and a "climate
alliance community". From 2004 to 2005 Ebensee received new flood
protection. In 2005, Ebensee became Austria's first “attac
municipality”. On September 30, 2005, Solvay closed its soda
production. In 2007, the 400th anniversary of the municipality was
held. In 2008 Ebensee took part in the decentralized Upper Austrian
provincial exhibition "Salzkammergut" with the project "Heimat -
Himmel & Hölle - Migration im Salzkammergut".
On July 5,
2017, the city council meeting decided to rename Ebensee to Ebensee
am Traunsee. On October 31, 2017, the renaming was approved by the
state of Upper Austria.