Gurk (Carinthia)

Gurk (Slovenian Krka ) is a market town of Carinthia with 1202 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020) in the district of Sankt Veit an der Glan . The place had supraregional importance as the bishopric of the diocese of Gurk and through the Romanesque Gurk Cathedral from 1140, which goes back to a foundation of the landlady Hemma von Gurk (995-1045).

geography

The Gurk market is surrounded by mountain meadows and extensive high forests and is the center of the sparsely populated Gurk valley . Down the river Gurk lies the small town of Strasbourg , from whose fortress the Gurk prince-bishops once ruled.

Community structure

The community is divided into three cadastral communities (Pisweg, Gruska, Gurk) and comprises the following 22 localities (population in brackets as of January 1, 2020):

Dörfl (19)
Finsterdorf (10)
Foebing (8)
Gassarest (10)
Gloss (0)
Gruska (21)
Gurk (827) including Finsterbach
Gwadnitz (33)
Hundsdorf (22)
Kreuzberg (11)
Crown (9)
Masternitzen (9)
Niederdorf (12)
Pisweg (82)
Ranitz (19)
Manor House (43)
Strasse (12)
Sutsch (11)
Zabersdorf (14)
Zedl (8)
Cedar (9)
Tent Chess (13)

Neighboring communities

	Strasbourg
Weitensfeld in the Gurktal		Mölbling
	Frauenstein

history

Gurk Cathedral

monastery

Sundial on the south wall of the cathedral monastery in Gurk

The name Gurk ("the Gurgelnde") is derived from the river Gurk of the same name . Today's municipal area was settled around 2000 years ago, but only gained importance after Carinthia was annexed to Bavaria . The earliest documented mention of the river comes from the year 831, a Salzburg court Gurk was mentioned in 864. In 898, Emperor Arnulf donated large parts of the Gurktal to the Hemma ancestor Zwentibold , including a Gurk farm, which is believed to be located in today's Lieding (municipality of Strasbourg ).

In 975, Emperor Otto II granted the privilege to run a nunnery in Lieding. This was re-established by Countess Hemma von Gurk between 1043 and 1045 on the site of today's Gurk. The Gurk Abbey did not last long, however; instead of the nunnery, the Gurk diocese was founded in 1072 by the Archdiocese of Salzburg , which had rich property in the northern part of Carinthia. Gurk was the seat of the diocese until 1787, whose residence is now in Klagenfurt .

During the high and late Middle Ages, a settlement of tradespeople developed under the rule of the monastery. Gurk received market rights in the 13th century, but - like other monastery markets in Carinthia - it was not a market in the full legal sense for a long time and had neither coats of arms nor seals until the 18th century.

In terms of traffic, the municipality was opened up in particular by the Gurktalbahn from 1898 and connected to the Southern Railway , although its operation was finally stopped in April 1969; the entire route was demolished in the area of the municipality. The founded association for a museum railway originally wanted to start (museum) operations as far as Gurk (the cathedral as a tourist destination), but this was prevented at the time by the neighboring communities and the supervisory authorities.

On June 25, 1988, John Paul II visited the cathedral and prayed in the crypt at the grave of St. Hemma. The first Pope's visit in the history of Carinthia was also a major media event and led thousands of people to an open-air mass in front of the cathedral.

Gurk was recognized as a European parish by the Council of Europe in 1998.

population

At the time of the 2001 census, Gurk had 1,311 inhabitants, 99.0% of whom were Austrian citizens. 94.6% of the population confessed to the Roman Catholic and 1.5% to the Protestant Church, 3.5% were without confession.

Culture and sights

Parish and former cathedral church of the Assumption, see Gurk Cathedral (The grave in the crypt of Gurk Cathedral is the center of the veneration of St. Hemma )
The diocesan museum in the provost yard of the monastery
Court fountain in Ranitz, a medieval so-called "Heiden- or Roman fountain"
Gurktal Dwarf Park, amusement park

politics

Municipal council

The municipal council consists of 15 members and has been composed as follows since the municipal council election in 2015 :

7 KAMPL (Die Freiheitlichen in Gurk / Pisweg, List of Mayor Siegfried Kampl)
4 SPÖ
3 ÖVP
1 green

The directly elected mayor is Siegfried Kampl (Die Freiheitlichen in Gurk / Pisweg, List of Mayor Siegfried Kampl). The former FPÖ member Kampl was expelled from the party in 2014 because of positive statements about National Socialism and is now non-party.

coat of arms

Gurk's coat of arms shows “in blue an elongated Romanesque basilica with two baroque helmeted towers; the nave is raised by a Biedermeier scale ” . The scales above Gurk Cathedral were taken from a market seal from the 19th century; Although Lieding had market rights since 975 and a first settlement of traders near the cathedral received such rights in the 13th century, Gurk still had neither coats of arms nor seals in the 18th century. It was only after the bishop's seat was moved to Klagenfurt that a separate seal called “Markt Gurk” was found in the document books, which had a Biedermeier scale, a symbol of the market judge and a just authority, as a motif.

The coat of arms and flag were awarded to the municipality on February 20, 1969, the flag is yellow-blue-yellow with an incorporated coat of arms.

partnership

Arnstadt in Thuringia ( Germany )

Personalities

Holy Hemma of Gurk (* between 995 and 1000 - probably 1045)

literature

Wilhelm Deuer, Johannes Grabmayer: Transromanica - In the footsteps of the Romanesque in Carinthia (series “cultural hikes”) . Verlag Johannes Heyn, Klagenfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-7084-0302-1 , pp. 149–157.

Web links

Commons : Gurk (Kärnten) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Gurck in the Topographia Austriacarum (Matthäus Merian) - sources and full texts

www.gurk.at
20508 - Gurk (Carinthia). Community data, Statistics Austria .

Individual evidence

↑ Statistics Austria: Population on January 1st, 2020 by locality (area status on January 1st, 2020) , ( CSV )

↑ Office of the Carinthian Provincial Government ( Memento of the original from August 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 1, 2015. @1@ 2

↑ Office of the Carinthian Provincial Government ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 1, 2015. @1@ 2

↑ Kleine Zeitung : FPÖ excluded Carinthian mayor from the party , September 17, 2014

^ Quoted from Wilhelm Deuer: The Carinthian municipal coat of arms . Verlag des Kärntner Landesarchiv, Klagenfurt 2006, ISBN 3-900531-64-1 , p. 130.

[Metadaten_Einwohnerzahl_AT_Ortschaft_QUELLE-1] Statistics Austria: Population on January 1st, 2020 by locality (area status on January 1st, 2020) , ( CSV )