History
Aechaeological findings indicate that the area was settled at least since the days of the Celtic kingdom of Noricum. Judenburg itself was first mentioned in a 1074 staple right deed as mercatum Judinburch, a market town within the estates of Eppenstein Castle, the ancestral seat of the Bavarian Eppensteiner noble family, who ruled as Styrian margraves in the 11th century. The name literally means "Jews' Castle", referring to the town's origin as a trading outpost on the route from the Mur Valley across the Obdacher Sattel mountain pass to Carinthia, in which Jews played an important role, being represented in the city's coat of arms.
Upon the extinction of the Eppensteiner dynasty in 1122, the estates passed to the Styrian Otakars and in 1192 to the House of Babenberg, Dukes of Austria since 1156. Judenburg received town privileges in 1224 and the right to collect tolls in 1277. The town grew to an important commercial centre for iron ore mined at nearby Eisenerz, but also for valeriana celtica used in perfumes during the 13th and 14th century. Judenburg was even granted a valeriana trade monopoly by the Habsburg emperor Frederick III in 1460. After several pogroms, all Jews were expelled from the Duchy of Styria by order of Emperor Maximilian I in 1496.
In the beginning of the 20th century, the town was one of the centres of Austria's steel industry and also a garrison town of the Austro-Hungarian Army. From 1910 to 1914 one of the first trolleybusses in Austria connected Judenburg station with the town's centre. Today, only minor aspects of the former industry are left, but Judenburg remains an industrial and trade centre.
After the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany in 1938, the authorities planned to rename the city, but these plans were never carried out. During World War II, a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp was located nearby, where a displaced persons' reception centre was established after the war. Judenburg was also one of several towns that saw the handover of Cossacks to the Red Army.
Read more about this topic: Judenburg
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)