Capital question of Lower Austria
The question of the capital of Lower Austria concerned the question of whether Vienna should remain the seat of the Lower Austrian provincial government after its separation from the state of Lower Austria or whether a city on the territory of the state should be made the capital . In 1986 the question of the capital was decided by a referendum and St. Pölten became the state capital.
The state parliament of Lower Austria submitted various calculations that certified losses for the state budget of up to 50%. There is a competitive situation on the one hand between the city of Vienna and the cities in the province of Lower Austria and between Vienna and the surrounding residential communities that are on Lower Austrian soil. The political situation also played a role, as Lower Austria has been a state dominated by the ÖVP since 1945 , while Vienna is ruled by the SPÖ .
prehistory
Vienna has been the center and seat of the government authorities of Lower Austria since the Middle Ages. Before the First World War, there were considerations to elevate Vienna to imperial direct, no crown land subordinate city. For this case, the governor of Lower Austria, Erich von Kielmansegg , who had previously strongly supported the expansion of Vienna , planned to propose the municipality of Floridsdorf , located on the left bank of the Danube opposite Vienna , which had grown into a large municipality in 1894 as the capital of Lower Austria. The plan became obsolete when Vienna, under Mayor Karl Lueger , reached an agreement in 1904 with Floridsdorf, who was suffering from lack of money, to incorporate it (a previous possibility of incorporation had been rejected by Vienna in the early 1890s); it came into force in 1905.
After the break-up of Austria-Hungary , the Austrian capital in the state of German Austria continued to be part of the federal state of Lower Austria. However, this now posed problems: the densely populated, strongly social-democratic-oriented Vienna had more MPs in the Lower Austrian state parliament than the four traditional, predominantly Christian - social-oriented districts with universal suffrage for women and men . In 1919 the social democrat Albert Sever was elected governor of Lower Austria. In addition, Old Lower Austria united half of the population of the republic within its national borders, which was felt by the other six federal states as superior power.
The two leading parties therefore soon agreed that Vienna should be separated from Lower Austria and constituted as a separate federal state. This happened with the Federal Constitution adopted by the National Assembly on October 1, 1920 , which came into force on November 10, 1920. On this day, Vienna, as a municipality and state, passed its own city constitution. The division of the property in old Lower Austria into Vienna and Lower Austria excluding Vienna lasted another year and was fixed in December 1921 with the separation law adopted in the two new federal states . At the end of December 1921, the theoretically still valid joint transitional state constitution with the joint state parliament (which had not come into effect) was repealed.
The separation law stipulated that the seat of the provincial government and parliament of Lower Austria would remain in the traditional country house in Vienna's Herrengasse. Due to the bad economic situation, nobody thought of shaking the seat of the Lower Austrian provincial government and administration in Vienna.
The capital issue was raised again in 1928. In 1938, during the Nazi era , Krems an der Donau was declared the district capital . Due to the war that began in 1939, this had no practical impact.
From the 1960s onwards, discussions came up again, mainly due to spatial planning studies. In order to counter a rural exodus to Vienna, a regional center should be created in the central area of Sankt Pölten . But other cities were also named as possible seat of the Lower Austrian government: Korneuburg , Klosterneuburg and Mödling . Under Governor Andreas Maurer , it was mainly the People's Party, which continued to pursue these ideas, while the Social Democrats under the from Ternitz , so the southern industrial area , next Deputy Governor Hans Czettel were firmly rejected. So in 1975 the plans were once again put aside.
After Siegfried Ludwig had expanded the ÖVP majority in the state elections in 1983, the capital question was updated again. The SPÖ, led by Ernst Höger , also gave up its strict rejection.
The problem for the proponents of a new capital was that the residents of the densely populated Vienna Basin between Vienna and Wiener Neustadt had to expect disadvantages from a capital in the west (Krems or St. Pölten) with regard to administrative channels and professional commuting. This legitimation problem was solved by direct democracy .
Referendum
 
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In 1984 the then governor Siegfried Ludwig initiated a referendum with the slogan A country without a capital is like a goulash without juice , which should finally clarify the question. During this consultation of citizens on March 1 and 2, 1986, two questions were asked:
- On the one hand, it was about a fundamental decision for or against a separate state capital: 56% of the participants answered in the affirmative.
- At the same time, inquiries were made about the ranking between the individual cities, whereby to a certain extent the local patriotism could be won over to a fundamental yes even against competitors with no chance.
As was to be expected for demographic and political reasons, the majority of the votes fell on Sankt Pölten (45%), which was ahead of Krems (29%). The cities around Vienna Baden (8%) and Tulln (5%) had no chance, and Wiener Neustadt (4%), for whose residents the founding of the capital in the west of the country represented a real deterioration, ended up in the last place of those given on the ballot Cities (with the write-ins, Herzogenburg achieved the best result with 0.5%). The total number of those taking part in the survey was 61.3% of the approximately 1.2 million eligible voters, an unusually high number for direct democratic votes.
Decision-making and implementation
The relevant resolutions were passed by the state parliament on July 10, 1986, and construction and relocation work in the new capital began soon afterwards.
In Sankt Pölten, the government district was rebuilt on the green field . By 1996 the entire administration was relocated. The country house in Vienna's Herrengasse is still owned by the Province of Lower Austria; the half-ownership of the city of Vienna, revived with the departure of the provincial offices (see here ), was replaced by Lower Austria. The Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs (formerly Foreign Ministry ) has rented offices in the country house , and event rooms are also available, which Lower Austria itself uses again and again.
The relocation of the state government to the Landhausviertel in Sankt Pölten also triggered the relocation of various federal agencies responsible for the state and the state directorates of private companies.
literature
- Austria. Federal Press Service: Austrian Yearbook - 1987 , Volume 58, printing and publishing house of the Austrian. Staatsdruckerei, 1987, page 548 ff.
- Hermann Riepl, Lower Austrian Capital Planning Company: The Lower Austrian Capital: Vision and Reality: Documentation. Verlag Niederösterreichische Landeshauptstadt-Planungsgesellschaft mbH, 1987, ISBN 978-3853268209 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Rudolf Till: Wiener Projekte und Utopien , Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1972, ISBN 3-7141-6202-X , p. 44
- ↑ Act to conduct a referendum on a state capital in Lower Austria ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
