Hermagor-Pressegger See (Slovenian: Šmohor-Preseško jezero) is a municipality with 6951 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2023) in the district of Hermagor in Carinthia, Austria. The city was named after the early Christian saint Hermagoras, who according to legend was the first bishop of the Patriarchate of Aquileia.
Möderndorf Castle with the Gailtal local history museum
Lerchenhof
Castle in Untermöschach was built between 1848 and 1851 as the manorial
seat of Baron Julius von Wodley. The building, which has been a listed
building since 1939 and is now used as a hotel-inn, is considered a
prime example of late-classical Biedermeier architecture in Carinthia.
The castle ruins of Malenthein are located on the south-eastern slope of
the Guggenberg near Kühweg. The oldest documented mention of a tower
owned by Bamberg dates back to 1311, a further expansion is documented
for 1317. Until 1395 the castle was the seat of a district court. At the
end of the 15th century it went to Friedrich III. in 1506, his successor
Maximilian I gave it to Johann Geumann von Galsbach, Grand Master of the
Order of George in Millstatt. He gave it to his brother-in-law Georg von
Malenthein, and the castle has borne his name ever since. The tower was
still inhabited in 1688, but from the 18th century the castle gradually
fell into disrepair. Parts of the outer ring of walls and the 6 to 8
meter high remains of the residential tower are still visible today.
Fortress Khünburg castle ruins. Within sight of Hermagor in an easterly
direction, there is a mighty tower, the keep of the old fortress of
Khünburg, on a receding hilltop on the south-east flank of the Egel
group. A narrow, ridge-like ridge, secured by a ditch, leads to the
castle. Originally, the building could not be very extensive, since the
small plateau did not offer enough space for it. The existence of a
chapel is suspected on the grassy forecourt on the south side of the
tower. Fire, difficulties with the water supply, this had to be brought
through long pipelines. In the end, the impassable location of this
castle probably led to its abandonment. The Khünburg family later moved
their headquarters to the more comfortable, easily accessible valley
castle "castrum Kynegg" (today's Egg). In addition to possessions in
South Tyrol and overseas, the Counts of Kuenburg still have their
preferred family seat in Egg near Hermagor.
Branch church
Schlanitzen. The branch church "St. Leonhard", a medium-sized, late
Gothic building, stands south of Tröpolach, on a 116 m higher, abruptly
falling wooded hilltop (Pleik). Paolo Santonino reported the
consecration of this "new" church on October 23, 1485 by the bishop of
Caorle. Traditions also tell of a wooden forerunner chapel that was
built by miners. The church consists of a wide, spacious, almost square
nave, whose flat ceiling with stenciled paintings is supported by a
joist. The ceiling is divided into numerous longitudinal rectangular
fields by narrow longitudinal and wider transverse strips and painted
over and over, mostly with stencils, but also freehand. You can see an
almost unmistakable abundance of different knot, wickerwork, star, swirl
wheel patterns and rosettes. Also of interest is the right winged altar,
the larger-than-life Christ in chains, holding a club and a whip, as
well as the noteworthy group of crosses with Christ and the two thieves.
Until around 1890 there was still a chain that was stretched twice
around the church. It fell victim to rust, the remains of which were
later processed into sheet metal and used to cover the entrance door of
the Tröpolach parish church. Outside - on the north wall - you can see a
late Gothic, larger than life fresco of Christopherus. The youthful
giant carries the blessing Child Jesus on his right shoulder. This
fresco could be seen from afar from the valley at the time when the
forest was not yet covering the little church. Travelers looked up to
him and asked the saint for his intercession. According to popular
belief, her life was secured for that one day.
Rattendorf Parish
Church
Hermagor Parish Church
Wimpy tolerance house of prayer
Geographical location
The community is located in the lower
Gailtal at the confluence of the Gitschtal and Gailtal near the border
with Italy. The community is bordered by the Carnic Alps to the south
and the Gailtal Alps to the north. With the Pressegger See, the ninth
largest lake in Carinthia is located in the municipal area.
Finds show that today's municipal area was already inhabited in
pre-Roman times. The oldest known finds in the vicinity of Hermagor
belong to the so-called urnfield period (1200 to 1800 BC) and are partly
depot and stray finds. This includes a depot find from Dellach, formerly
the municipality of Egg, which was salvaged in 1889 from under a stone
slab. It contained two large, medium-sized lobed axes, one with faceted
lobes, and two bronze rings. A handle dagger typical of the older
Urnfield period was found in 1937 at an altitude of around 1400 m on the
Jadersdorfer Ochsenalm, Gitschtal. He points to the influences from the
southwest and northern Italy. Iron ore was mined here and exported to
the Mediterranean Sea. Around 15 B.C. BC the Celtic kingdom of Noricum
and today's municipal area were occupied by the Roman Empire and
incorporated into the empire. The Hadnmauer, a dam that ran through the
valley near Rattendorf and was probably intended to protect Gurina, is
also located around this time.
The parish of Hermagor was first
mentioned in a document in 1169, and its titular saint, Hermagoras,
indicates that it was founded by Aquileia. Conveniently located at the
crossroads from the Gitschtal to the Kreuzbergsattel, the town emerged
as a scheduled market, was granted market rights in 1288 and developed
into the main town of the Gailtal. In the 15th century, the Turks
invaded and devastated the villages throughout the Gailtal. From the
16th century, the market town of Hermagor belonged to the dominion of
the County of Ortenburg.
In 1779 Franz Xaver Freiherr von Wulfen
discovered the Wulfenia flower named after him on the Gartnerkofel.
The place became the seat of the district administration in 1868 and
thus the center of the Hermagor district of the same name at the time.
During the k. u.k. Monarchy was Hermagor Garrison of the I. and II.
Battalion of the k. k. Landwehr Infantry Regiment No. 4.
In 1880
the then market town of Hermagor had 709 inhabitants. All of them
belonged to the German language group. At that time the place was
immediately north-west of the language border. The places from Potschach
and Fritzendorf, which today belong to Hermagor, spoke Slovene. While
the Slovene ethnic group was almost entirely Catholic, Hermagor also had
a Protestant minority. This was to be found in almost all
German-speaking villages in the area and in 1880 represented the
majority in the towns of Achleiten, Aigen, Danz, Jenig, Kameritsch,
Kreuth ob Rattendorf, Liesch, Radnig, Radnigforst, Rattendorf and
Watschig, which today belong to the municipality.
Effective
October 10, 1930, the market town of Hermagor was elevated to the status
of a town by decision of the Carinthian state government. The occasion
and background of this town elevation were the events surrounding the
Carinthian defensive struggle (1918-1920) and the Carinthian plebiscite
of October 10, 1920.
In April 1938, Hermagor was declared a
so-called "Führergemeinde" because there was not a single negative vote
in the entire community against the annexation of Austria to the
National Socialist German Reich. In the course of Aryanization, the
general store owned by the Jewish trader Arthur Glesinger was forced to
close. The physician Albert Menninger-Lerchenthal, who lived in
Hermagor, was transferred to Magdeburg in January 1943 because of his
Jewish roots and died under unclear circumstances during a home leave in
the summer of 1944 on the Radniger Alm near the city area.
During
the war years, more than 3000 young women were held in the so-called
"Maidenlager" of the Reich Labor Service in the upper part of Hermagor.
The female workers, mainly from Styria and northern Germany, supported
the farms in the community.
in April 1942, several
Carinthian-Slovenian families were forcibly resettled or deported from
the municipality of Hermagor. The main local responsibility for this was
the National Socialist district leader of Hermagor Julian Kollnitz, who
was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in 1949 in the course of
denazification.
The city of Hermagor was also the location of the
"Haßlacher" company, which manufactured wooden barracks for the
Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. Some British and Soviet prisoners of war also
had to work there, the latter under particularly adverse conditions.
From October 1944, this led to several Allied bombing raids on the
south-eastern district of Hermagoras, where the armaments factory and
the train station were located. On May 8, 1945, British units advancing
from the Plöcken Pass reached the town of Hermagor. The association
"Remember Gailtal" counts more than 200 victims of National Socialism in
the district of Hermagor and in the rest of the Carinthian Gailtal, but
the number of unreported cases is estimated to be significantly higher.
In 1958 Möschach was connected and in 1973 the greater municipality
of Hermagor-Pressegger See was created through the incorporation of Egg,
Mitschig, Görtschach and parts of Rattendorf.
At the time of the 2001 census, Hermagor-Pressegger See had 7,232
inhabitants (1991: 7,403), mostly members of the German or
Slovenian-speaking ethnic group. Of these, 94.7% had Austrian, 1.6%
German, 1.1% Bosnian and 1.0% Croatian citizenship.
68.8% of the
population belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, 25.6% to the
Evangelical Church and 1.5% were of Islamic faith, 2.4% had no religious
affiliation.
In recent years, the community has developed into an important
bi-seasonal tourist community (over one million overnight stays per
year). In winter, the Skiarena Nassfeld (Mokrine) attracts many tourists
as one of the largest ski areas in the southern Alps, while in the
summer months there is a wide range of vacation options with water
(Pressegger See, Gail), hiking, cycling, mountaineering, Geotrail,
fishing, culinary festivals and various children's attractions.
Of the 3,228 employees in 2001, 600 were employed in the hotel and
catering industry, followed by 471 employees in trade, repair of motor
vehicles and consumer goods and 441 employees in manufacturing.
In 1999 there were only 86 full-time and 455 part-time farms in the
municipality of Hermagor-Pressegger See. The municipality is
proportionally below the Carinthian state average. The large landowners
are legal entities (agricultural communities) that account for slightly
less than half of the cultivated areas. Arable farming is not of great
importance. In 2009, 789 ha were designated as arable land, more than
half of which are arable meadows and pastures. Spring barley, oats and
grain maize are primarily grown on 134 hectares of pure arable land.
Of the 599 holdings existing in 2009, forestry was the main activity
of 320 (53.4% of holdings), followed by cattle farming (177) and sheep
farming (47). Livestock has halved in the last 50 years.
Forests
and wood play a major role in rural livelihoods as an important economic
mainstay. The management of the forest areas, which are consistently
owned by farmers, is becoming increasingly important. However, apart
from a few exceptions, it has not been possible to implement an
industrial refinement of the wood on site. Wood is also gaining in
importance in the context of environmental protection. For example, the
town of Hermagor and the tourist resort of Tröpolach are supplied with
district heating using biomass.
Alpine farming is also of central
importance. Cattle and horses spend the summer on the alpine pastures.
The milk is processed there into Gailtaler Almkäse and other regional
specialties. These alpine farms are the destination of thousands of
alpine and mountain hikers every year, who like to stop off and
appreciate the Gailtal hospitality and cosiness, but also the
enchantingly beautiful mountains of the Carnic and Gailtal Alps.
Although the smallest district capital in Austria, Hermagor is the
economic center of the Gail, Gitsch and Lesach valleys. Here, at the
intersection of two valleys, crafts and trade settled early on. In the
last few decades, Hermagor has changed from a more agricultural economy
to a strong tourist region. Numerous jobs have been created by tourism,
trade and commerce benefit from it. The service industry in all its
facets has increased enormously. Craftsmanship is still important,
however.
As of May 1, 2012, 514 companies of various sizes and
from a wide range of sectors were registered in the municipality of
Hermagor-Pressegger See.
Modern tourism emerged around 1800 with the bourgeois educational
trip. Since Hermagor and the Gailtal could not score, the interest in
this valley was limited. Only in the last third of the 19th century did
the tourist development of the Gailtal begin. In 1882 the “Hermagor
Tourist Association” was founded. The decisive impetus came in 1894 with
the construction of the Gailtalbahn, which was extended to
Kötschach-Mauthen in 1915 for war purposes. In Hermagor there were at
least five inns with guest rooms. The "economic miracle" after the
Second World War helped tourism to unimagined growth rates. Federal
President Adolf Schärf spent numerous holidays at Lake Pressegger See.
The Viennese in particular were drawn to the Pressegger See. The lake
received modern lidos. Winter tourism played a subordinate role until
then.
That changed in 1962. Arnold Pucher, later known as the
"Nassfeld Emperor", built the first hotel, the "Wulfenia". At the same
time, Hans Jenul built the first tow lift. Today, Nassfeld is the
largest ski area in Carinthia. The ski area offers over 30 cable cars
and lifts and over 100 kilometers of downhill runs, the longest
monocable gondola in Europe and the longest valley run. The connection
of the valley, the construction of new hotels and the creation of modern
infrastructure caused the number of overnight stays and the number of
day visitors to skyrocket.
490 tourism businesses in
Hermagor-Pressegger See have a total of 10,576 beds on the mountain and
in the valley (as of May 1st, 2012). With over a million overnight
stays, the Hermagor-Pressegger See tourist community is now one of the
most important tourist centers in Carinthia and southern Austria. In
winter, Hermagor in Carinthia is at the top. All in all, Hermagor is
among the 20 municipalities in Austria with the highest number of
overnight stays.
The Hermagor area, especially the Presseggersee, was very popular
with well-off middle-class families from the centers of the then
monarchy even before the First World War. The constant weather, the
pleasant temperatures of the Presseggersee and the exceptionally
beautiful natural landscape around the lake with the second largest reed
area in Austria (after Lake Neusiedl) were reasons for the popularity of
this region. The first pensions and hotels were built around the lake,
traffic routes were built and a modest infrastructure created. Today,
guests are offered a modern infrastructure, beautiful lidos, very good
gastronomy, cycle paths, hiking trails, Carinthia's first adventure park
and accommodation from private accommodation to five-star hotels.
In summer, the Nassfeld is a popular excursion and holiday
destination for geologists due to the unique mountain and rock
structure. The region is also very popular with botanists. Among the
rare plants and flowers, Wulfenia stands out. The mint family only
occurs around the Gartnerkofel (altitude about 1700 m) and in the
Prokletije mountains in the border area between Montenegro, Kosovo and
Albania.
The Pressegger See has the character of a lowland lake with a shallow
basin in the middle of an extensive reed bed. This covers the adjoining
fens to an extent of around 300 hectares and forms the second largest
reed landscape in Austria after Lake Neusiedl. The emergence of the
Pressegger See goes back to the conditions after the end of the Ice Age.
During the Ice Age, a glacier flowed into the valley between the
Spitzegel-Zug in the north and the phyllite ridge of the Eggforst in the
south. Before the last glaciation, the Gitschtal was drained via today's
lake area in the direction of Görtschach and the Gail. As the Gail bed
rose more and more due to ballast, the lower section of the valley lost
its previous drainage. The water from the precipitation collected in the
catchment area of the lower Gitschtal to form a lake, the last remnant
of which is today's Pressegger See.
The length of the lake in the
E-W direction is about 900 meters and the width is about 600 meters. The
lake area covers around 55 hectares. This puts it in ninth place among
Carinthia's lakes. The greatest depth is almost 14 meters in the area of
a spring funnel. Only a seventh of the bottom of the lake is more than
six meters below the water level, the average water depth is not more
than three and a half meters. The water volume is estimated at two
million cubic meters.
The Pressegger See is fed on the one hand
by the Vella stream and on the other hand by numerous underground,
densely branched springs. A legend tells that a calf sank and drowned in
Lake Constance, which lies halfway up the path to Nassfeld. The farmer
was looking for it, but soon gave up looking for it. A few weeks later
it was floating on the surface of Lake Pressegg. It had reached the
lake, about 15 kilometers away, through gorges and underground
waterways.
City Council and Mayor
The City Council (city government) consists
of seven members. The directly elected mayor is Leopold Astner (ÖVP).
1958-1973 Rudolf Tillian (SPÖ)
1973-1981 Josef Themesl
1979-1981 Rudolf Tillian (SPÖ)
1981-1983 Max Rauscher (SPÖ)
1983-2011 Vincent Rauscher (SPÖ)
2011-2021 Siegfried Ronacher (SPÖ)
since 2021 Leopold Astner (ÖVP)
The Municipal Council of Hermagor has 27 members.
Since the
municipal council elections in 2021, it has had the following
composition: 12 SPÖ, 9 ÖVP, 2 FPÖ, 3 Karl Tillian – list of citizens
1 independent former FPÖ
On June 18, 1619, Hermagor was awarded a parchment dragonfly of a
coat of arms award certificate, of which only copies from 1642 without
illustrations have survived. As a result, Hermagor kept a seal showing
the half-length figure of Hermagoras. Between 1734 and 1796 a seal
depicting the saint in full length was used, and subsequently some
details of the Hermagoras depiction vary. When the coat of arms was
confirmed in 1974, the oldest surviving seal was returned, which also
corresponds to the blazon of 1619.
On the occasion of the coat of
arms confirmation, the following heraldic description was determined:
"In red, the half-figure of Bishop Hermagoras in a violet cloak,
holding a green palm branch in the right hand and a golden crosier in
the left."
The flag is red and yellow with an incorporated coat of
arms.
Since 1998 there has been a town twinning with the neighboring municipality of Pontebba in the Italian Canal Valley.
Armin Assinger (born 1964), Austrian alpine skier, now TV presenter
Roland Assinger (born 1973), alpine skier
Anton Dean (born 1948),
pseudonym Tony Dee, writer and musician
Hans Domenig (1901–1976),
sculptor
Max Domenig (1886–1952), sculptor
George Essl III.
(1931–2022), entrepreneur and inventor
Karlheinz Essl senior (*
1939), retail manager and art collector
Robert Essl (1980–2019),
photographer
Franc Grafenauer (1860–1935), member of the Reichsrat
for the Carinthian Slovenes and organ builder
Gerhard Lampersberg
(1928–2002), composer
Matthias Mayer/Matija Majar-Ziljski
(1809–1892), clergyman and national Slovenian activist
Oswin Moro
(1895–1941), teacher and folklorist
Gotbert Moro (1902–1987),
historian, director of the Carinthian State Museum and State Archives
Engelbert Obernosterer (born 1936), writer
Paul Pellar (1919–1988),
Lutheran theologian, Superintendent of Carinthia and East Tyrol
Leo
Pietsch (1905–1981), auxiliary bishop
Arnold Pucher (1940–2022),
Nassfeld pioneer and honorary citizen
Stefanie Ranner (1923–1944),
Nazi victim
Josef Rothleitner (1934–2011), theoretical physicist
Markus Salcher (* 1991), disabled sports
Hans Schabus (born 1970),
artist
Robert Schabus (born 1971), filmmaker
Rudolf Tillian
(1913–2013), politician, former mayor, president of the Carinthian state
parliament; Winner of the Great Golden Medal of Honor of the State of
Carinthia, bearer of the Great Golden Medal of Honor with the star for
services to the Republic of Austria, honorary citizen and bearer of the
ring of honor of the municipality of Hermagor, honorary president of the
Carinthian Association of Municipalities and honorary member of the
Austrian Association of Municipalities
Herbert Unterberger, (born
1944), sculptor
Ines Widmann (1904–2002), writer