Kittsee

Kittsee ( Slovak Kopčany , Hungarian Köpcsény , Croatian Gijeca ) is a market town with 3307 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020) in the Neusiedl am See district in Burgenland in Austria .

geography

Kittsee is the only place in the municipality. It is right on the border with Slovakia near Bratislava . The original municipality was larger and extended to today's territory of Slovakia. After the border was drawn in 1919, only the western part is on Austrian territory. The separated part is now part of the fifth district of Bratislava, Petržalka , and bears the Slovak name Kopčany.

history

Kittsee (top right) around 1873 in the recording sheet of the Landesaufnahme (the area of the military camp in Bruck an der Leitha is shown schematically on the left)

The rule of Kittsee was located in the Wieselburg border district founded by King Stephen I of Hungary . Due to its location on the Danube and on the road between Vienna and Pressburg , Kittsee was an important place for east-west trade. Presumably, Béla III. a toll station built here. With their income the castle was built and the roads and bridges were maintained. By the 15th century at the latest, Kittsee had market rights .

In 1529 the place was destroyed by the Ottomans . In the 16th century Croatian farmers were settled in deserted villages. In 1679 the plague raged in Kittsee. In 1683 the Ottomans destroyed the place on their way to Vienna . The Bethlen War of 1619–1620 and the Kuruzenkrieg of 1704 also presented heavy burdens.

Since 1898 had due to the Magyarization of the government in Budapest of Hungarian name Köpcsény be used. Numerous new houses were built around 1910. According to the saying of an emigrant who had returned from America, the new district was called Chicago .

After the end of the First World War , after tough negotiations, German-West Hungary was awarded to Austria in the Treaties of St. Germain and Trianon in 1919. The place has belonged to the newly founded federal state of Burgenland since 1921 (see also the history of Burgenland ).

On January 1, 1971, Kittsee was merged with Edelstal , but the merger was reversed on January 1, 1992.

Until 1990, Kittsee was right on the Iron Curtain. This fact led to a decrease in the number of inhabitants in the years after the Second World War. Since the 2000s, however, the population has risen sharply due to the influx of younger, mostly better-off Slovak families. The main reasons for this are lower land prices than in Bratislava, the convenient location near the city center of the Slovak capital and loan support from the Austrian state. In 2003 the Centrope region was founded in Kittsee . On June 24, 2009, Kittsee was raised to a market town.

The Jewish Kittsee

Kittsee belonged to the Burgenland Siebengemeinden , where Jews were allowed to settle under the protection of Prince Esterházy since 1670 . In 1735 there were 266 Jews in Kittsee, in 1821 there were 789. Due to strong emigration in the decades that followed - for economic reasons - their number fell to 62 by 1934. About one month after the Anschluss , the Jewish community in Kittsee was finally destroyed.

Center of Kittsee with the synagogue (around 1920)

In mid-April 1938, the 51 Jewish residents of Kittsee and the neighboring community of Pama were taken from their homes at night by members of the SA , expropriated and abandoned on a sand island in the Danube. The refugees were found by residents of the Czechoslovak village of Devín (now part of Bratislava ) and the military police and immediately deported across the Hungarian border. Hungary in turn pushed the Jews back to Austria. After a long odyssey, Jewish aid organizations in Bratislava were finally able to enable the deported Kittsee Jews to emigrate to various host countries.

The Croatian Kittsee

Kittsee is also part of the Burgenland Croatian settlement area . However, since the end of the Second World War, this population element has melted down to just a few dozen speakers. The place was settled with Croats around 1550; the proportion of Germans and Croats in Kittsee - similar to the places Antau (Otava) , Sigleß (Cikleš) and Stegersbach (Santalek) - has always been balanced in the past. In the course of the 19th century, the emphasis shifted in favor of the German-speaking group, but the Croatian group retained a considerable number until the interwar period (proportion of Croats in the total population in 1910: 37.6%, 1934: 31.8%, 1951: 9.4%, 2001: 2.6%). Kittsee is still one of the bilingual parishes in Burgenland with Croatian pastoral language.

Population development

Kittsee / Petržalka border crossing

Culture and sights

Old Kittsee Castle and Kittsee Jewish Cemetery

New Kittsee Castle

Parish church Kittsee

Heidenturm Kittsee
Kittsee Jewish cemetery
Old Kittsee Castle
New Kittsee Castle: Kittsee Castle was built at the beginning of the 17th century. With its park, it is an important baroque castle in northern Burgenland. Until September 28, 2008, the castle housed the Ethnographic Museum Schloss Kittsee , which showed selected exhibits from the folk culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, since then the museum has been closed. Since 2007, music theater performances have been taking place in the summer months as part of the Kittsee summer festival. The artistic director is the Viennese actor, singer and director Gerhard Ernst .
Parish church Kittsee : The three-aisled church has an approx. 36 m high (including cross) integrated west tower with a hood-shaped helmet and a semicircular apse . The church with a capacity for around 1250 people was built by the master builder Stefan Wilhelm Haderer from 1948 according to the plans of the architect Helene Koller-Buchwieser and inaugurated on November 16, 1952 by Bishop Josef Schoiswohl .

Culinary specialties

The Kittseer Apricot , a breed that comes from the Early Hungarian Yellow , was protected as a word and image trademark in 2004.

Economy and Infrastructure

traffic

Kittsee is on the Parndorf - Kittsee - Petržalka railway line and used to have a train station on the Pressburger Bahn .

Established businesses

From an agricultural point of view, apricot cultivation plays a major role. There are currently around 30,000 apricot trees on around 110 hectares .

Public facilities

Kittsee plays an important role as a medical center. The only hospital in the district is located here. It was founded in 1902 by the beatified ophthalmologist Ladislaus Batthyány-Strattmann and named after him in 2004.

politics

Municipal council

Local council election 2017

%

40

30th

20th

10

0

35.16
(+0.80)

33.09
(-5.87)

19.49
(+2.02)

8.77
(+2.04)

3.48
(+0.99)

ÖVP

SPÖ

LIKI ^A1

UBFK ^A2

FPÖ

2012

2017

The council comprises a total of 21 members on the basis of population.

Results of the municipal council elections since 1997
Political party	2017			2012			2007			2002			1997
Political party	Sti.	%	M.	Sti.	%	M.	Sti.	%	M.	Sti.	%	M.	Sti.	%	M.
ÖVP	525	35.16	9	470	34.36	7th	447	35.93	8th	493	39.25	8th	593	54.76	12
SPÖ	494	33.09	8th	533	38.96	9	699	56.19	12	636	50.64	11	490	45.24	9
FPÖ	52	3.48	0	34	2.49	0	20th	1.61	0	127	10.11	2	not running
LIKI ^A1	291	19.49	4th	239	17.47	4th	not running			not running			not running
UBFK ^A2	131	8.77	2	92	6.73	1	78	6.27	1	not running			not running
Eligible voters	2101			1922			1788			1646			1661
voter turnout	72.54%			75.13%			80.31%			86.88%			81.40%

^A1 List Kittsee

^A2 Impartial citizen list Kittsee

mayor

Mayor is Johannes Hornek (ÖVP), who prevailed in the runoff election on October 29, 2017 with 57.04% of the votes against his predecessor Gabriele Nabinger (SPÖ), who achieved 42.96%. Hornek was sworn in on November 10, 2017 by Birgit Lentsch, the main wife of the Neusiedl am See district .

Former mayors of Kittsee were (excerpt):

1958–1970 Franz Böröczky (SPÖ)
1977 Franz Böröczky (SPÖ)
2010–2012 Klaus Senftner (SPÖ)
2012–2017 Gabriele Nabinger (SPÖ)

coat of arms

Blazon : “ Round, silver (white), slender tower with a high arched door, a window slot on the middle floor and two windows on the upper floor, a protruding, shingle-covered high pitched roof with a knob and point on a green floor and a blue shield. "

Personalities

Jakob Figdor (1742–1808), wool merchant, founder of the Figdor family of entrepreneurs and banks

Franziska (Fanny) Christiane Figdor (1814–1890), Hermann Christian Wittgenstein's wife

Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), violinist, conductor and composer

Martin Millesits (1871–1940), farmer and politician ( CS )

Karl Stöger (1905–1946), farmer and politician

Franz Böröczky (1922–2002), politician ( SPÖ )

Elisabeth Rechnitzer (1937–1993), politician

Franz Wahler (* 1962), bridge builder

Paul Hafner (* 1977), soccer player and coach

Thomas Schrammel (* 1987), national soccer player

Lisa Stadler (* 1988), sailor

Christian Gartner (* 1994), soccer player

literature

Veronika Plöckinger (Red.): Destroyed Jewish communities in Burgenland - securing evidence using the example of Kittsee . Austrian Museum of Folklore, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-902381-07-8
Felix Tobler: Croats and Germans in Kittsee. Examples of their relationship in the 18th and 19th centuries. In: Burgenland homeland sheets . No. 54/1992, Eisenstadt 1992, pp. 18-25, PDF on ZOBODAT
Section “The partner communities” in “TÜPL Bruckneudorf - 150 Years of Brucker Lager” by Petra Weiß, publisher. Stadtgemeinde Bruck an der Leitha, April 2017, p. 438/439.

Web links

Commons : Kittsee - collection of images, videos and audio files

10711 - Kittsee. Community data, Statistics Austria .
Official website
Aerial photos of Kittsee

Individual evidence

↑ Michael Floiger: Kittsee. In: www.atlas-burgenland.at. Retrieved October 25, 2017 .
↑ ^a ^b Community changes from 1945 (associations, divisions, name and status changes). Statistics Austria, pp. 4, 132, 167 , accessed on February 15, 2019 .
↑ Thomas Franke: Bratislava's new suburb is called Kittsee. In: derStandard.at. March 13, 2012, accessed September 11, 2018 .
↑ The Drama on the Danube, Part 1 [1]
↑ Kittsee.at: attractions ; accessed on December 6, 2016
↑ Kittsee apricot . Entry no. 86 in the register of traditional foods of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Regions and Tourism . Retrieved February 15, 2013
↑ ^a ^b Province of Burgenland: election results Kittsee 2017 (accessed on November 30, 2017)
↑ Province of Burgenland: Election results Kittsee 2012 (accessed on November 30, 2017)
↑ Province of Burgenland: election results Kittsee 2007 (accessed on November 30, 2017)
↑ ^a ^b Province of Burgenland: election results Kittsee 2002 (accessed on November 30, 2017)
↑ mein district.at of November 10, 2017: swearing in of the mayors and vice mayors (accessed November 30, 2017)
↑ Bogus registrations Kittsee: Two convictions. ORF , May 29, 2013, accessed on October 29, 2017 .
↑ coat of arms. Market town of Kittsee, accessed on June 25, 2020 .

[1] Michael Floiger: Kittsee. In: www.atlas-burgenland.at. Retrieved October 25, 2017 .

[GemStatistik-2] Community changes from 1945 (associations, divisions, name and status changes). Statistics Austria, pp. 4, 132, 167 , accessed on February 15, 2019 .

[3] Thomas Franke: Bratislava's new suburb is called Kittsee. In: derStandard.at. March 13, 2012, accessed September 11, 2018 .

[4] The Drama on the Danube, Part 1 [1]

[5] Kittsee.at: attractions ; accessed on December 6, 2016

[6] Kittsee apricot . Entry no. 86 in the register of traditional foods of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Regions and Tourism . Retrieved February 15, 2013

[GRW2017-7] Province of Burgenland: election results Kittsee 2017 (accessed on November 30, 2017)

[8] Province of Burgenland: Election results Kittsee 2012 (accessed on November 30, 2017)

[9] Province of Burgenland: election results Kittsee 2007 (accessed on November 30, 2017)

[WE_2002-10] Province of Burgenland: election results Kittsee 2002 (accessed on November 30, 2017)

[11] strict.at of November 10, 2017: swearing in of the mayors and vice mayors (accessed November 30, 2017)

[12] Bogus registrations Kittsee: Two convictions. ORF , May 29, 2013, accessed on October 29, 2017 .

[13] coat of arms. Market town of Kittsee, accessed on June 25, 2020 .