Vöcklabruck is a municipality with 12,378 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020) in the Hausruckviertel in Upper Austria. The city is the center of the Vöckla-Ager-Senke, the second most important economic area in Upper Austria. As the seat of the district administration and the district court of Vöcklabruck, it is also an important administrative town, a regionally important shopping and business town and, as the location of various secondary schools, also a relevant school town.
The Romans occupied the area
around AD 15, which has since been part of the Noricum province.
When the Roman administration finally collapsed towards the end
of the 5th century under the onslaught of the Germanic tribes, the
Bavarian conquest began in 550, in which the population and
settlement-like structures that have continued to have an impact up
to our day emerged. The Vöckla-Ager-Senke is one of the oldest
Bavarian settlement areas.
The name of the city
was first mentioned in 1134 as Pons Veckelahe. In 1984 the company
celebrated its 850th anniversary. There is evidence of the Schöndorf
Church as early as 824: In the tradition book of the Mondsee
Monastery there is a document stating that a pious man named Mahtuni
has part of his inheritance, consisting of 40 days of land, forests
and other valuables in Attergau in the place called Puhilesphah
(today Pilsbach) transferred to this monastery. The contract for
this was renewed on December 26, 824 in the church in Scugindorf,
today's Schöndorf.
Between 1134 and 1143, Pilgrim von Weng
had a hospice built on the bridge over the Vöckla on the left bank,
the oldest in Upper Austria and the third oldest in the
German-speaking area.
The core of today's city, the town
square closed by two heraldic towers, the emblem of Vöcklabruck, was
probably a planned foundation of the Babenbergs in the 12th century,
who fortified their newly obtained property from the Count of Regau.
Presumably Vöcklabruck was not officially raised to the status
of a town, but slowly developed from a market town to a town in the
course of the 14th century. Since we know that it was already a town
in 1358, the year Duke Albrecht II died, this year is usually
mentioned. Albrecht and his son Rudolf IV were great patrons of the
city of Vöcklabruck and are therefore - stylized as knights - on the
city's coat of arms.
Emperor Maximilian I, who was friends
with the lord of the nearby Wartenburg Castle, Wolfgang von Polheim,
also promoted the city and stayed in it several times. He had his
coat of arms affixed to the city towers.
In
the 16th and 17th centuries, the fortunes of the city were shaped by
the religious wars that followed the Reformation and the peasant
revolts associated with them. In 1570 the majority of the
townspeople were Protestant, the pastoral office, which was under
the monastery of St. Florian, was Catholic, which led to constant
conflicts.
In 1620, Emperor Ferdinand II pledged the land
above the Enns (Upper Austria) to the Bavarian Duke Maximilian I in
return for his support in the Battle of the White Mountains. Under
Maximilian's governor Adam Graf von Herberstorff, the
Counter-Reformation began in full force. The peasants 'uprising
against forced re-Catholicization culminated in the Upper Austrian
Peasants' War in 1626. The trigger for this war was the Frankenburg
dice game in May 1625, in which Herberstorff let the ringleaders of
an anti-Catholic rebellion roll the dice for their lives in pairs.
After the end of the lien in 1628 and further bloody battles
between the peasants and the imperial troops in 1632, Vöcklabruck
(together with the community of Engelhartszell) was pledged again
towards the end of the Thirty Years War when Ferdinand II needed
money to raise an army against Sweden. The city left the association
of sovereign cities, became impoverished and could hardly recover
from the consequences of the war. It was not until 1718 by Emperor
Karl VI. re-triggered and regained their status and privileges.
In the Napoleonic Wars, Vöcklabruck suffered
great damage again. After the Peace of Schönbrunn in 1809, the city
came to France, which it passed on to Bavaria. With the Congress of
Vienna Vöcklabruck came back to Austria - this time for good. It
belonged to the Hausruckkreis; In 1868 the Vöcklabruck district
administration was installed.
The Hatschek company was
founded in 1893. The material fiber cement with the company name
Eternit was developed from a mixture of asbestos and cement, which
became a worldwide success.
From June 6, 1941 to May 14, 1942, there was a satellite camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Wagrain. It was on the same site on which half of the bus parking lot of the school center and the district sports hall are now. About 300 prisoners were used in road and bridge construction and also for other work in Vöcklabruck and Attnang-Puchheim. After the Second World War, in which the city was only slightly destroyed, new districts arose in Schöndorf and Dürnau, not least to take in refugees from the east, where more than half of the population of Vöcklabruck now lives.
From July 15
to 21, 1985 the 8th International Fire Brigade Competitions of the
World Fire Brigade Association CTIF (Fire Brigade Olympics) were
held in the Voralpenstadion in Vöcklabruck. The program included
Traditional International Fire Brigade Competitions, International
Fire Brigade Sports Competitions and International Youth Fire
Brigade Competitions.
In 2003 Vöcklabruck hosted the 14th
European Shooting Festival, an event organized by the European
Association of Historical Shooting.
In March 2006 the gutted
building of the old Upper Austria. State hospital in Vöcklabruck
expertly blown up.