Bad Kleinkirchheim is a municipality with 1711 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020) in the Spittal an der Drau district in Carinthia. Known today as a spa and climatic health resort as well as a ski area in a valley in the Gurktal Alps, it was mainly rural in the middle of the 20th century. Although the legend says that the first spa guest already appreciated Bad Kleinkirchheim as a recreational area in the 11th century and the first bathers visited the place in the 17th century, it was only a few decades ago that there was a radical structural change away from the agricultural and towards the touristy Bad Kleinkirchheim a. Today the community is one of the twenty most visited tourist destinations in Austria in both the summer and winter seasons.
Parish Church of St. Ulrich: It
was probably built around the turn of the millennium and was first
mentioned in a document in 1166. The originally Romanesque building,
later renovated in the Gothic style, burned down in 1710 after a
lightning strike; in its place, today's long building was erected by
the Jesuits in the baroque style. The branch church of St. Katharina
im Bade, usually referred to as St. Kathrein for short, is a late
Gothic pilgrimage church, built around 1492 over the healing spring,
the source of which is located in the lower church. The third
Catholic church building is the parish church of St. Oswald, built
in its current form around 1510 in the late Gothic style. Five
frescoes from 1514 have been preserved in it. The local evangelical
community belongs to the parish of Wiedweg (municipality of
Reichenau). In 1938 the people of Kleinkirchheim built their own
evangelical church, a simple wooden building based on a sketch by
Switbert Lobisser.
Jakobskapelle: The Jakobskapelle serving as a
mortuary next to the parish church was created in 2003 by the
artists Armin Guerino and Tomas Hoke. The chapel, which received a
recognition award from the state building prize in 2004 and is a
listed building, has a three-way division that is also visible in
the materials: the ship-like assembly room made of oak wood is
entered through a stainless steel gate. A glass cube, which
symbolizes the heavenly Jerusalem, hangs over the slope.
Evangelical Church in Bad Kleinkirchheim
Farms: There are still
numerous old farms in the municipality, for example the Egarter Hof
in St. Oswald with a traditional grain crate is worth seeing. These
storehouses, called Troadkåstn in the Carinthian dialect, were
always a little apart from the house and yard so that the food
supplies would not be lost in the event of a fire. The granaries
that have been preserved mostly date from the 17th or 18th century.
The last ring farm in St. Oswald, the Bodnerhaus, built around 1620,
was demolished and rebuilt in the Maria Saal open-air museum.
Mills: Every farm used to have a small water mill (mostly stock
mills) on the neighboring stream. Some of these now mostly derelict
or demolished mills have been rebuilt and are e.g. B. along the St.
Oswalder Bach (Trattnig Mühle, Gatterer Mühle).
There are no traces of
settlement in the region around Kleinkirchheim from the pre-Roman
times, and also for the Romans, who from 15 BC onwards. Chr.
Carinthia ruled, the remote, densely wooded valley was probably too
far from their traffic routes. With the end of the Great Migration,
the Roman Empire collapsed and Slavs, coming from the east via the
Drau Valley, invaded Carinthia and settled there. Gradually they
also settled in the side valleys. The first Baier and Frankish
settlers came to the country from the middle of the 8th century.
After the Frankish rule had finally established itself in the
first half of the 9th century, the first Bavarian settlers probably
also settled in the Kirchheim Valley. It is not known when exactly
the first “Capella” was created in “Chirchem”. On July 5, 1166, a
pastor named Pabo was mentioned in a document in which the
Archbishop of Salzburg, Konrad II, confirmed the donation of the St.
Ruprecht Chapel to the Millstatt Monastery - this document is the
first documentary mention of Kirchheim. Another document from Pope
Alexander III. from April 6, 1177 mentions a place of the same name;
this document issued in Rialto in Venice is still preserved and is
in the Vienna State Archives. It is assumed, however, that the first
church was built much earlier, before the turn of the millennium, in
honor of Saint Ulrich, the bishop of Augsburg. The place was only
given its current name Kleinkirchheim in the 16th century, in order
to be able to distinguish it more easily from the mining town of the
same name in Mölltal, today's Großkirchheim.
Slavic settlers
soon followed the first Baier immigrants: The place name of today's
Zirkitzen indicates that they settled east of the first settlement,
because in their language "Circica" means the same as Kirchheim.
Double names like in this case, which occur several times in
Carinthia, show that Bavarians and Slavs apparently settled
peacefully next to each other in this region in the early Middle
Ages.
Since 976 the Duchy of Carinthia was an area
independent of Bavaria, but the Bavarian landlords still retained
the upper hand over their possessions. The Aribones, who had had the
hereditary dignity of the Palatine count towards the Dukes of
Carinthia since 977, also had large estates in Carinthia. They are
the first verifiable masters of the Kleinkirchheim valley. Count
Palatine Poto Graf von Pottenstein from this Bavarian family is said
to have been the first to experience the healing properties of the
spring in Bad Kleinkirchheim in the 11th century after being wounded
in battle. According to legend, he bequeathed the healing spring to
the Millstatt Abbey, which he founded around 1070, in gratitude.
Irrespective of this, from the above-mentioned documentary
confirmation in 1166 until the abolition of the monastery in 1773,
Kleinkirchheim belonged to the Millstatt rule.
The still densely forested and
probably uninhabited high valley of St. Oswald did not belong to the
Aribones at that time. It was not until 1197 that the “apud
Chirchem” forest came into the possession of the Millstatt monastery
through an exchange, which was confirmed in a papal deed from 1207.
The Benedictine monks cleared the newly acquired valley and created
meadows and fields so that farmers settled down here too. The monks'
convent had a church built in the new settlement, which was
consecrated to St. Oswald and first mentioned on June 8, 1228.
The clearing activity was continued to the east, the closed
Millstätter property extended into the current municipal areas of
Reichenau and Gnesau, only after 1500 no more new hubs were created.
The oldest surviving Millstätter land register from 1470 also
contains a list of 73 properties in the Kirchheim office. Of these,
26 Huben and 28 Schwaigen were in Kirchheim, and one Hube and 21
Schwaigen in St. Oswald. Due to the altitude, the St. Oswalder
settlement was mainly kept cattle, which is why the farms at that
time were mainly classified as Schwaigen, which had to pay a lower
tithe. The land register from 1470 also shows a "Taferne" (inn) that
stood at today's Unterwirt country house.
Emperor Friedrich III. caused Pope Paul II to found an order of
knights in honor of St. George in 1469. Millstatt was designated as
the seat of the Order of St. George, the Benedictine monastery there
was dissolved and its possessions, including Kleinkirchheim, were
transferred to the new order. Its task in the first years of
existence was to protect Carinthia from the Turkish threat, because
at the time the order was founded, a threat to its territory was
getting closer and closer: The Turks, who had conquered
Constantinople in 1453, had then moved across the Balkans and had
reached the Carniola region in 1469.
Since Carinthia had
already found out about this a few weeks earlier, the passports in
the south of the country began to be sealed off and the castles,
monasteries and churches were secured. A body tax was levied in the
country to raise funds for defense. In Millstatt the Knights of St.
George built a fortified order castle next to the old, "desolate due
luggage" of the monastery.
At the end of September 1473 the
Turks invaded Carinthia for the first time and marched through the
valleys, robbing and pillaging; the Kleinkirchheimer Tal was spared
this incursion and a second raid three years later. The people of
the country had to watch impotently as their rulers fled from the
Turks and withdrew behind the expanded walls, while entire valleys
were reduced to rubble. As a consequence, some Kirchheim farmers
also joined the farmers' union founded by Peter Wunderlich in
Spittal in 1478, which was directed against the Turkish tax, but
also prepared to fight the invaders.
In Kleinkirchheim the
farmers tried to organize themselves against the threat because they
did not want to rely on the St. George Knights. In Zirkitzen there
is a large cave in a rock wall, the front of which the inhabitants
walled up with rocks. This "Wihrwand" - the remains of which can
still be seen today - was completed just in time, because on June
25, 1478, the Turks attacked the country, this time coming from
Friuli. The farmers' union was only able to provide 600 men and was
overwhelmed, the Millstatt knights entrenched themselves, as had
been feared, in their castle. After the Turks set Radenthein on
fire, they moved to the Kirchheimer Tal. When the first houses in
Zirkitzen were set on fire, the farmers tried to defend themselves
with arrows and stones. Although they were able to defend their
position against the attackers, they were unable to prevent further
farmsteads from being burned down. The valley was spared from
further attacks by the Turks, but the Hungarians invaded Carinthia
as early as 1480 and also came as far as Kleinkirchheim. In 1490,
after the death of Matthias Corvinus, the Hungarian occupation
ended.
After the
Knights of St. George had already failed in their task of defending
their country against the Turks, their leadership in the decades
that followed was characterized by disorder and arbitrariness.
Despite the use of imperial administrators, the mismanagement in the
Millstatt rule increased and with it the discipline of the subjects
decreased. The order faced dissolution during the 16th century. The
ideas of the Reformation found fertile soil among the population,
who were also impoverished as a result of taxes, raids and
occupation. In addition, the Carinthian nobility supported the
renewal of faith in their endeavors for more independence from the
provincial duke, who belonged to the strictly Catholic Habsburgs.
Towards the end of the 16th century, most of the farmers in
Kleinkirchheim were of the Lutheran faith after the duke had assured
them freedom of religion.
However, the religious conditions
changed radically in 1595 after Ferdinand II came to power. In 1598
he handed over the properties of the Millstatt Order to the Jesuits,
to which he himself belonged. They declared Millstatt a residence,
which was run by a superior. Since they had the imperial mandate to
financially support the newly founded University of Graz, and the
finances were on the ground due to the mismanagement of the George
Knights, they imposed high taxes on the farmers.
At the same time, the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church
began, the population - around 1500 subjects between Liesertal and
Turrach were summoned to a commission in Millstatt in 1600 - were
given the choice of either becoming Catholic or emigrating within
three months. Books labeled heretical were burned, preacher's houses
and churches destroyed. In spite of these hardships, many of those
who took the Catholic religious oath in order not to have to leave
their homeland retained their faith. Protestant books were smuggled
in and secret meetings were held. Despite all efforts by the
authorities to prevent this, secret Protestantism was still
widespread in the region between Spittal and Gnesau, which also
includes Kleinkirchheim, even in the middle of the 18th century. A
councilor, who traveled and studied the country on imperial orders,
reported in 1751: "Almost all of Upper Carinthia is mixed with
non-Catholic people." As a result, there were further expulsions of
the "sectarians"; Nevertheless, a comparatively high proportion of
the population of Kleinkirchheim - as in other rural areas of
Central and Upper Carinthia - has remained true to the Protestant
creed.
In 1773 the Jesuit order was abolished by papal bull.
With the tolerance patent of Emperor Joseph II of 1781, Protestants
and Jews in Austria were given almost full equality with Catholics.
Wherever 100 families or 400 people of their faith lived together,
they were allowed to form a parish, build houses of worship and
schools and build a cemetery. Since Kleinkirchheim did not meet this
requirement - 228 Protestants lived in Kleinkirchheim in 1820 and 55
Protestants in St. Oswald - the community in Feld am See was
initially affiliated with, and later Wiedweg became the parish
responsible for Kleinkirchheim.
During this time, further
reforms fell: serfdom was abolished, the land register patent was
re-measured and taxed, the cadastral communities of Kleinkirchheim,
Zirkitzen and St. Oswald were formed and the farmers were given free
rights of disposal over their property.
From the end of the 18th century, the consequences of the French
Revolution were felt in Carinthia: Napoleon's coalition wars reached
Carinthia for the first time in March 1797 and again in 1799 and
1805 after the Austrians had been defeated by the French. The wars
had mainly economic consequences: inflation, war taxes and levies on
the occupiers burdened the peasants. In the Peace of Schönbrunn,
among other things, the western part of Carinthia fell to France in
1809, the border ran just a few kilometers east of Kleinkirchheim
near Patergassen. A new kingdom under French rule, the Illyrian
Provinces with the capital Laibach, was formed, which also included
Kleinkirchheim. The place was assigned to the main community
Feldkirchen, but received its own Mairie.
After the Wars of
Liberation in 1813/14, Emperor Franz I put the Illyrian provinces
back into the possession of the Austrian Empire with a patent dated
July 23, 1814. The old subservience as it existed before 1809 was
not reestablished for Upper Carinthia. This meant that the personal
liberation from manorial rule, in particular the decree from all
robot services that the French occupation had brought with it,
continued to exist, even if this did not mean the end of the
material dependence on the landlords for the peasants.
The Viennese March Revolution of 1848 resulted in liberal and democratic changes, the peasants now also received complete personal and civic freedom by abolishing all payments and taxes to their landlords. On March 4, 1849, Carinthia again became an independent crown land with its own state parliament and state government in Klagenfurt. On March 17th, the new Reichstag in Vienna passed a provisional municipal law, which resulted in the foundation of many municipalities in what is now Austria. In the course of this, the community of Kleinkirchheim was founded in 1850, and its dimensions have hardly changed to this day. Franz Ebner, who held this office for a total of 16 years, was elected the first mayor.
With the reign of Franz Joseph I, who ascended the imperial throne in December 1848, a lot changed for Kleinkirchheim as well: Religious freedom was confirmed as early as the beginning of 1849, and the formerly known "Old Catholics" could now call themselves followers of the "Evangelical Confession" . The gendarmerie was founded in June, but a local post did not exist until 1894. Kleinkirchheim was given its own post office in 1885, and until then Millstatt, 20 kilometers away, was the closest post office. In the same year a volunteer fire brigade was established in the village. On August 15, 1897, the savings and loan association was founded, from which the Raiffeisenkasse emerged in 1944.
The warm spring of
Kleinkirchheim was discovered and used at the time the place was
built. Wooden troughs were set up along the drain to catch the
water. To protect the spring, the Millstatt Monastery built a chapel
above it in 1492 and consecrated it to Saint Catherine (ancient
Greek for "The Cleansing"). In the 17th century, next to the chapel,
which has been preserved to this day and is located above today's
thermal baths of the same name, “Sankt Kathrein”, a second spring
was taken and led via wooden pipes to a “bath house” below the
Kathrein church, where the water is heated and was filled in
bathtubs. The oldest written mention of such a bathing establishment
comes from the year 1670. A bathing regulation from 1762, which
describes the use of the baths for a three-week spa stay, is around
a hundred years younger. Bad Kathrein near Kleinkirchheim was
advertised in an advertisement in the Klagenfurter Zeitung in 1831,
and overnight stays were offered in different price ranges. The “Zum
Badwirth” inn, as it was called in 1884, was probably the only
larger accommodation facility in the town at the turn of the century
before last.
In 1909, Hans Ronacher took over the bath house
and instead built a new building with an attached hotel that could
accommodate 50 guests. During these years a railway line (“Area
Valley Railway”), which should also run through the Kleinkirchheim
Valley and would have meant a connection to Millstatt, was
discussed. However, the first plans were interrupted by the First
World War and were no longer taken up due to the subsequent economic
crisis. The thermal bath was reopened in 1922 and investments in
tourism continued in Kleinkirchheim. A tourist association was
founded, which advertised the resort with a year-round brochure.
From 1928 a post bus line was also set up from Spittal an der Drau
via Radenthein to Bad Kleinkirchheim, which initially served this
route once a day, from 1939 a second bus was used. On July 22nd,
1934, the thermal open-air swimming pool was put into operation and
in 1936 the small community with 1,100 residents was able to offer
400 beds for guests. Due to the political circumstances and the
Second World War, tourism then came to an almost complete
standstill.
After the war, the resumption of tourism was out
of the question, especially since a storm in 1946 caused great
damage in the valley. The roads were badly damaged by floods and
mudslides, and for months it was only possible to reach
Kleinkirchheim by horse-drawn carts. The road to Radenthein was
completely rebuilt and cars could not use it again until 1949. This
was followed by a renewal of the section to Patergassen. In 1954, a
supply system was set up and house connections made in the village,
which had previously only been supplied with electricity by the
smallest hydroelectric power stations, as part of the KELAG
electrification program. In the same year, work began on a
community-wide water supply, the full development of which was not
completed until the early 1980s.
In 1956/1957, a ski lift was
put into operation in Kleinkirchheim, which at the time was also the
longest in Carinthia at 620 meters, to attract ski tourists to the
place. In the meantime, a network of slopes with a total length of
over 100 kilometers and 26 lifts has developed in Bad
Kleinkirchheim, almost all available slopes can now be artificially
snowed in when there is not enough snow. In the 1960s, a thermal
indoor pool was built in addition to the complete new construction
of the facilities. In 1977 Kleinkirchheim was finally given the
official designation “thermal baths” by the state government, and
the community has been called Bad Kleinkirchheim since then. With
the "Römerbad" a second thermal bath was opened in 1979. In 2007,
the Römerbad was completely expanded and renovated to accommodate
even more bathers.
Bad Kleinkirchheim is located at an average of 1087 m above sea level
in a valley furrow of about five kilometers that runs in a west-east
direction in the Gurktal Alps between Lake Millstatt and the Upper
Gurktal. The populated area is between 980 and 1,380 meters above sea
level, the highest point in the community is the summit of the Klomnock
(2,331 m). North of the villages of Kleinkirchheim and St. Oswald, part
of the municipal area belongs to the Salzburg Lungau and Carinthian
Nockberge biosphere reserve.
On the flanks north and south of the
valley, the mountains rise comparatively steeply to a height of around
2,000 meters, so that Bad Kleinkirchheim's only transport connection to
its neighboring communities is limited to the Kleinkirchheimer Straße (B
88), which connects the community with Radenthein in the west and
Reichenau in the east. In addition, Bad Kleinkirchheim borders on Krems
in the north-west and Feld am See in the south-west.
Utilization:
35% of the approximately 7,400 ha municipal area is alpine grassland,
28% forest, around 9.6% meadows and arable land and 1.3% pastures; only
0.1% is taken up by the small streams and moor areas. Almost 26% are
designated as “other small areas and paths”, which include settlement
areas in particular.
Mountains: To the south of the Bad
Kleinkirchheim valley is the Kaiserburg (2055 m) and behind it the
Wöllaner Nock (2145 m), followed by the long straw bag (1904 m) and the
Klomnock (1845 m). On the opposite side, several peaks enclose the side
valley north of the village of Kleinkirchheim, from west to east are the
Priedröf (1963 m), Wiesenock (1969 m), Scharte (1800 m), Spitzegg (1919
m), Brunnachhöhe (1976 m) and the Mallnock (2215 m), which forms the
northern end of the mountain range above St. Oswald. The mountain chain
closes in the east via the Klomnock (2331 m), Steinnock (2144 m),
Falkert (2308 m), Moschelitzen (2305 m) and finally the Totelitzen (1990
m) projecting to the south.
Bodies of water: The Twengbach rises on
the southern slope of the Moschelitzen, which flows through Rottenstein,
then turns to the west, picks up the Zirkitzenbach and, below the
Kaiserburg, the Ottingerbach, as well as crossing Kleinkirchheim in the
further course and leaving the valley after the inflow of the
Kmölningbach and St. Ostwalder Bach in the direction of Radenthein,
where it unites with the Kaninger Bach and feeds Lake Millstätter See as
the "Riegerbach".
Geology: The Kleinkirchheim valley is a typical
trough valley, which got its present form from a glacier of the last ice
age phase, the Würm ice age. It is part of the western Gurktal Alps,
which are called Nockberge here. The lowest floe of the rocks are gray
slates that were formed in the Paleozoic. There are also green slates
that look like chlorite slates and sometimes contain feldspar. The upper
zones consist of phyllites of the Gurktaler Nappe, a thinly slate,
metamorphic and also Paleozoic rock. This includes a strip of Triassic
limestone that stretches from the Stanalpe (below the Turracherhöhe) to
Aigen near Kleinkirchheim. This strip of limestone appears in places on
the surface of the municipality, for example openly at the Kaiserburg
and as a continuation in the form of white dolomitic limestone on the
southern slope of the Wöllanernock. The lime was also mined and burned
in earlier centuries.
With a population density of 24 inhabitants per km², the municipal
area is comparatively sparsely populated (for comparison: Carinthia has
59, Austria 98 inhabitants per km²). While in the many small villages of
the Nock region there has been a tendency to migrate to surrounding
market towns and cities over the past hundred years, Bad Kleinkirchheim
recorded steady population growth in the 20th century, so that the
number of inhabitants almost doubled during this period. The period
between 1910 and 1923 was an exception: 59 soldiers from Kleinkirchheim
died in World War I, and in addition, after the war, magnesite mining on
the Millstätter Alpe and the magnesite plant in neighboring Radenthein
prompted some workers and their families to emigrate, because at that
time there was no bus service that would have made commuting possible.
Later, when a regular service started, the workers stayed in their place
of residence and the population increased steadily again.
The
strong increase in tourism from the mid-1950s is also reflected in the
particularly high population growth in Bad Kleinkirchheim between the
censuses of 1951 and 1971: While the municipality was still
predominantly rural until the mid-20th century, a radical structural
change took place in the decades that followed due to the steadily
increasing tourism. In 1951, 519 people worked in agriculture and
forestry, in 1991 there were only 44. In the hotel and catering
industry, which consisted of only a few inns after the Second World War,
the number of local employees rose to 300 in the same period. Today, the
total number of employees working in the tourism industry in Bad
Kleinkirchheim roughly corresponds to the number of residents.
93.4% of the residents of Bad Kleinkirchheim have Austrian citizenship. The largest proportion of the foreign population comes from Southeastern Europe (Yugoslavia 1.7%, Croatia 1.0%, Bosnia-Herzegovina 0.5%) and Germany (1.4%). 95.2% of the population mention German, 1.8% Serbian and 1.0% Croatian as their colloquial language.
At the time of the 2001 census, 62.3% of the population belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, 30.8% to the Evangelical Church and 2.0% to the Orthodox Church, 0.8% were of Islamic faith and 3.5% had no religious affiliation. This meant that a comparatively high proportion of people of the Protestant faith lived in Bad Kleinkirchheim; for comparison: in Carinthia in 2001 10.3% and in Austria 4.7% of the inhabitants belonged to the Protestant Church.
From 1960, the municipality carried a picture of the Catherine Chapel
in its seal, which, however, did not correspond to the heraldic rules.
Today's coat of arms was created by the Carinthian state archive, and
the coat of arms and flag of Kleinkirchheim were awarded by the
Carinthian state government on January 20, 1971. The heraldic
description of the coat of arms is as follows:
"In the split
shield, in front in green, a golden late Gothic church with a ridge
turret (St. Katharina im Bade church) from the chancel side, in the back
in blue a silver fountain bowl, from which a silver fountain with two
retrograde rays rises, which is flanked by a golden sunbeam at the front
and a silver snow crystal at the back. In the black base of the shield,
a winding silver strand of healing water leads from the church to the
fountain bowl.”
The Catherine Chapel and the fountain bowl with the
rising fountain symbolize the use of thermal baths and bathing in
Kleinkirchheim, sun and snowflakes stand for year-round tourism.
The flag is black, yellow and green with an integrated coat of arms.
The municipal council has 15 members.
With the municipal
council and mayoral elections in Carinthia in 2003, the municipal
council had the following distribution: 7 FPÖ, 4 SPÖ, 3 ÖVP, and 1 NRS
(list of names).
With the municipal council and mayoral elections in
Carinthia in 2009, the municipal council had the following distribution:
7 FPK, 4 SPÖ, and 4 ÖVP.
With the municipal council and mayoral
elections in Carinthia in 2015, the municipal council had the following
distribution: 6 Kleinkirchheimer list - Matthias Krenn, 4 ÖVP, 3 citizen
list for Bad Kleinkirchheim, and 2 SPÖ.
Since the municipal council
and mayoral elections in Carinthia in 2021, the municipal council has
had the following distribution: 8 Kleinkirchheimer list - Matthias
Krenn, 4 ÖVP, and 3 SPÖ.
Skiing: With 2,000 members, the largest club by far is the
Kleinkirchheim Ski Club, founded in 1947. He trains racing skiers and
has organized national and international competitions since the 1960s.
FIS Ski World Cup races have also been held in Bad Kleinkirchheim since
1978. The first winner in the downhill races on March 11th and 12th,
1978 was Annemarie Moser-Proell. The World Cup last came to Bad
Kleinkirchheim in December 2007 with two men's competitions and in
January 2018 with two women's competitions. From 2020, women’s
technology competitions will take place in Bad Kleinkirchheim every 3
years. To start with, slalom and giant slalom will take place in winter
2020. A 3,200 meter long, former World Cup slope (height difference of
842 meters) with a gradient of up to 80% bore the name "FIS K 70" for a
long time. The designation points to the original year of creation 1970.
Until shortly after the turn of the millennium, this run had the
nickname Franz Klammer, who was already a member of the local ski club
when he was active. In 1971, the Austrian ski legend won his first
European Cup downhill run on this Kirchheim downhill run, which marked
the beginning of a successful sports career for him. Today there is a
new "Franz Klammer World Cup descent" in Bad Kleinkirchheim, which
replaces the old "FIS K 70" men's race track and the old "Strohsack"
women's race track.
FC Raiffeisen Bad Kleinkirchheim, who played in
the 1st Class B of the Carinthian Football Association in the 2005/06
season.
ice shooter round
chess community
Golf Club Bad
Kleinkirchheim Reichenau: The 60-hectare golf course is partly on the
municipal area.
Tennis: Several hotels provide tennis courts for
their guests, and there is also a facility with an indoor tennis center
in the village, which is operated by the mountain railway company.
Downhill cycling: Since the start of construction in spring 2019 with
federal, state and EU funding, the Bergbahnen have built 3 of 4 sections
as of August 2019 and thus 11.4 km of "Europe's longest" Flow Country
Trail. The 4 sections will overcome 968 meters in altitude between the
mountain and valley station of the Kaiserburgbahn and together with a
"parcours" circuit, a total of 15.9 km of route is planned.
When the music plays is a series of folk music open air events. The
event, which has been held in Bad Kleinkirchheim every year since 1995,
is one of the largest of its kind in the German-speaking region and
regularly achieves high ratings with its broadcasts on both Austrian and
German television. Since 2003, an open-air event has also been held in
winter at the valley station of the Kaiserburgbahn.
From 1910 to
1973 the Internationale Österreichische Alpenfahrt was a race for the
World Rally Championship. Following on from this tradition, the
Alpenfahrt Classic Rally has been taking place every year since 2002,
starting and finishing in Bad Kleinkirchheim. Vehicles built between
1910 and 1973 are eligible for this.
The Kleinkirchheimer Straße (B 88) is the only connecting road
leading from Radenthein via Bad Kleinkirchheim to Patergassen. There are
no direct traffic routes to the neighboring communities in the north and
south. An approximately 10 km long road leads to the north through the
side valley and the villages of Staudach and St. Oswald, which ends just
behind the Brunnachbahn.
The ÖBB Postbus line 5140 runs several
times a day on the B 88, coming from Spittal via Radenthein to
Patergassen. The nearest train station is Spittal-Millstättersee, about
30 km away, and Klagenfurt Airport is about 50 km from Bad
Kleinkirchheim.
Due to the climate and the low-lime and phosphorus soil, only a small
part of the municipal area is used for agriculture, whereby the
proportion of cultivated areas, especially fields and meadows, has been
declining sharply for decades due to the decline in agriculture in favor
of building land. The farmers mainly practice what is known as
'Egartwirtschaft' and use their fields alternately as grassland and
arable land for three years at a time. Usually oats are grown, then
barley or potatoes and in the third year winter rye. Since crop yields
are low, most farmers have switched to animal husbandry. Above all, the
Pinzgau cattle are bred, pigs and poultry are also kept. Alpine farming
follows the trend of land management and is steadily declining.
On the other hand, the forest stock, which is entirely in private hands,
is being expanded. A mixed forest of spruce and larch grows in Bad
Kleinkirchheim, with the latter predominating as the vegetation height
increases. The tree line is at the Kaiserburg at about 1900 m above sea
level. The farmers mostly cut down themselves, for their own use or for
sale, in the form of plenter felling, i.e. by removing individual mature
or overripe trees, as is common in so-called plenter forests.
Due to the tradition as a spa and climatic health resort and
especially after the expansion of the infrastructure for alpine winter
sports from the 1960s, the community is now highly geared towards
tourism. According to the workplace census of May 15, 2001, 143 of the
263 companies based in Bad Kleinkirchheim and 694 of the 1,156 local
employees (60%) worked in the hotel and catering industry, and a further
38 companies and 106 employees in retail. On the other hand, there are
only eight manufacturing companies with a total of 56 employees.
In addition to the St. Kathrein and Römerbad thermal baths, numerous
hotels and guesthouses and a total of 26 lifts dominate the townscape of
Bad Kleinkirchheim. There are two ski areas: The Kaiserburg/Maibrunn
area, which belongs directly to Kleinkirchheim, with two valley stations
in town, and St. Oswald/Nockalm. The largest employer is the mountain
railway company, which, in addition to the gondolas and lifts, also
operates the two thermal baths and some leisure facilities.
The
following cable cars have been built since 1977:
Kaiserburgbahn I and
II (Kleinkirchheim, built 1986/87, 1070 m - 1363 m - 2043 m above sea
level)
Brunnach biosphere park railway (St. Oswald, built in 2001,
1333 m – 1912 m above sea level)
Nockalmbahn (Staudach, built in
1977, 1278 m - 1870 m above sea level)
The first two mountain
railways are in operation all year round, while the Nockalmbahn has only
been in operation during the winter season for several years.
Bad
Kleinkirchheim has around 900,000 overnight stays a year and in 2000
ranked 19th place in Austria in winter and 18th place in summer.
In Kleinkirchheim there is an elementary school with a total of six
school classes. Its beginnings go back to the 18th century, the current
school building was built between 1966 and 1968. Before that, the
students were taught in the more than 500-year-old former office
building, which today houses a hotel (Kirchenwirt), making it one of the
oldest school buildings in Austria for a long time. From 1888 there was
a one-class school in St. Oswald, which was closed in 1972.
There
are no secondary schools in Bad Kleinkirchheim, there is a secondary
school in the neighboring municipality of Radenthein, and grammar
schools, vocational schools and universities in Spittal an der Drau.
Sons and daughters of the community
Josef Joham (1889–1959),
banking clerk
Erich Unterweger (1928-2007), sculptor and visual
artist
Manfred Brunner (born 1956), ski racer
Wolfram Ortner (born
1960), ski racer
Florian Prägant (* 1983), professional golfer
Personalities associated with the community
Erwin Aichinger
(1894–1985), Austrian forest scientist who lived and died in Bad
Kleinkirchheim
Matthias Krenn (* 1960), politician (FPÖ) and
entrepreneur
Karin Schabus (* 1968), politician (ÖVP) and farmer