Burgenland
Webpages concerning "Burgenland"
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Wikipedia-Article "Burgenland"
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| State | AT-1 (ISO) |
| Capital | Eisenstadt |
| Governor | {{{governor}}} |
| Area - Total |
Ranked 7th 3,966 km² |
| Population - Total (2001) - Density |
Ranked 9th 277,569 70/km² |
 The flag of Burgenland |
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 The state of Burgenland on the map of Austria |
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Burgenland (Hungarian Őrvidék, Lajtabánság or Felsőőrvidék, Croatian Gradišće, Slovenian Gradiščansko) is the easternmost state or Land of Austria. It consists of two Statutarstädte (towns with a charter) and seven districts with in total 171 municipalities. It is 166 km long from north to south but much narrower from west to east (only 5 km wide at Sieggraben).
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Administration
In Burgenland there are 2 Statutarstädte and 7 districts. From north to south:
Statutarstädte
Districts
- Neusiedl am See (administrative center Neusiedl am See) (hun. Nezsider)
- Eisenstadt-Umgebung (Eisenstadt) (hun. Kismarton)
- Mattersburg (Mattersburg) (hun. Nagymarton)
- Oberpullendorf (Oberpullendorf) (hun. Felsőpulya)
- Oberwart (Oberwart) (hun. Felsőőr)
- Güssing (Güssing) (hun. Németújvár)
- Jennersdorf (Jennersdorf) (hun. Gyalafalva)
Minorities
Burgenland has notable Croatian (29,000 - 45,000) and Hungarian (5,000 - 15,000) population residing in it.
Hungarians are living in the villages of Unterwart (Alsóőr), Oberwart (Felsőőr) and Siget in der Wart (Őrsziget). The three villages together are called Felső-Őrség (Upper-Őrség, Wart), and they have formed a language island since the 11th century. The other old Hungarian language island in Oberpullendorf (Felsőpulya) has almost disappeared today. The Hungarians of Burgenland were "őrök" ie. guards of the western frontier, and their special dialect is similar to the Székelys in Transylvania. Their cultural centre is Oberwart.
The Croatians arrived after the devastating Ottoman war in 1532, when the Turkish army totally destroyed some parts of the territory. Their re-settlement by estate-owners was finished only in 1584. They preserved their strong catholic faith and their language until today, and in the 19th century their national identity grew stronger because of the influence of the National Revival in Croatia. Between 1918 and 1921 Croatians opposed the planned annexation of West-Hungary to Austria, and in 1923 7 Croatian villages voted for a return to Hungary. The Croatian Cultural Association of Burgenland was established in 1934. In the Nazi era (1938-45) Croatian language was officially prohibited, and the state pursued an agressive policy of germanization. The State Treaty of 1955 guaranteed minority rights but Croatians have to fight for the use of their language in schools and offices even in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2000 51 new bilingual village name-signs were put out in Burgenland (47 Croatian and 4 Hungarian).
The language of the Croatian minority is an interesting, 16th century dialect which is different from standard Croatian. In minority schools and media the local dialect is used, and it has a written form since the 17th century (the Evangelium was first translated to dialect-Croatian in 1711). Today the language is endangered by assimiliation, according to the UNESCO "Red Book". The Croatians of Burgenland belong to the same group as their relatives on the other side of the Hungarian border.
Geography
Burgenland is the 7th largest of Austria's 9 provinces (Bundesländer), at 3,966 km². The highest point in the province is Geschriebenstein, at 884 metres, the lowest point is 114 metres, near Apetlon.
Burgenland has a very long border: To the west it borders the Austrian provinces of Niederösterreich and Steiermark. To the northeast it borders Slovakia, Hungary to the east and Slovenia to the farthest south.
Burgenland shares with Hungary the only lake without natural outflow in Europe, the Neusiedler See.
Politics of Burgenland
Burgenland's provincial assembly (Landtag) has 36 seats. At the election held on 3 December 2000, the SPÖ won 17 seats, the ÖVP won 13 seats, the FPÖ won 4 seats, and the Green Party won 2 seats. The provincial government is a coalition of the SPÖ and the ÖVP. The voting age for regional elections in Burgenland was reduced to 16 in 2003. In an election held on October 9, 2005, the SPÖ won 19 seats, giving them a majority. The ÖVP retained its 13 seats, the Green Party retained its 2 seats, and the the FPÖ fell to 2 seats.[1]
History of Burgenland
Between Hungary and Austria
The first inhabitation of Burgenland dates back to the Stone Age. During the Roman Empire it formed the core of the province of Pannonia. After the battle at Augsburg (955), German settlers started to inhabit the area. In 1043 a peace treaty between Kaiser Henry III and King Aba Sámuel of Hungary fixed the western border of Hungary along the Leitha river. The territory of the present-day Burgenland became the western border-zone of Hungary until 1920, but the majority of the population was always German.
After 1440 Burgenland was occupied by the Habsburgs of Austria, and in 1463 the northern part of it (with the town of Kőszeg) became a mortgage-territory according to the peace treaty of Wiener Neustadt. In 1477 King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary reoccupied, but in 1491 it was mortgaged again by King Ulászló II of Hungary to Kaiser Maximilian I. In 1647 Kaiser Ferdinand II returned it to Hungary. Until the end of the First World War the area was sometimes called German West Hungary (Deutsch-Westungarn). The name "Burgenland" comes from "Vierburgenland" (Land of Four Castles), derived from the name of the four Hungarian counties known as Pozsony, Moson, Sopron, and Vas, in German Pressburg, Wieselburg, Ödenburg und Eisenburg.
After the demise of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy in 1918, the German inhabitants of Burgenland intended to join Austria. The decision was fixed in the peace treaties of Saint Germain and the Trianon. Despite diplomatic efforts by Hungary, the victorious parties of World War I set the date of Burgenland's official unification with Austria as August 28, 1921. In fact, the occupation by the Austrian police and customs was stopped on the same day, hindered by sharpshooters who offered armed resistance with the support of Hungary.
1921: The ninth state of Austria
With the help of Italian diplomatic mediation, the crisis was almost resolved in the autumn of 1921, when Hungary committed to disarm the sharpshooters by November 6, 1921, with the caveat of a poll about the unification of certain territories, including Ödenburg (Sopron), the designated capital of Burgenland, and eight other communities. The poll took place from the 14th to the 16 December, and resulted in a clear (but doubted by Austria) vote of the people for Hungary.
On July 18, 1922, the first elections for the parliament of Burgenland took place. To cope with the changeover from Hungarian to Austrian jurisdiction, a lot of interim arrangements were made. The parliament decided in 1925 on Eisenstadt as the official capital of Burgenland, and moved from the various provisional estates throughout the country to the newly built Landhaus in 1929.
In 1923, emigration to the United States of America, which started in the late 19th century, reached its climax; in some places up to a quarter of the population went overseas.
After the Nazi Anschluss of Austria, the administrative unit Burgenland was dissolved and integrated into the districts of Niederdonau (Lower Danube) and Steiermark (Styria).
In addition to the oppression of the Jews, the ethnic groups Roma and Sinti also suffered from the people's xenophobic delusion; despite the fact that the Indian origin of these ethnics actually made them, according to the Nazi logic, "Aryan".
The Nazis began, with the help of mostly Jewish forced labour and committed inhabitants, to build the Ostwall (Eastern Rampart), which showed itself utterly useless at the time Soviet troops crossed the Hungarian-Austrian border and began to invade Austria. In the last days of the Nazi regime a lot of executions and death-marches of the Jewish forced labourers took place.
Mine fields 1945 - 1970
As of October 1, 1945, Burgenland was reestablished with Soviet support and given to the Soviet forces in exchange for Steiermark (Styria), which was in turn occupied by the United Kingdom.
Under the Soviet occupation, people in Burgenland had to stand a time of serious mistreatment and an extremely slow economical progression, the latter induced by investor-discouraging presence of the Soviet troops. The Soviet occupation ended with the signing of the Austrian Independence Treaty of Vienna in 1955 by the Occupying Forces.
The brutally defeated Hungarian Revolution on October 23, 1956 resulted in a shockwave of Hungarian refugees at the Hungarian-Austrian border, especially at the Bridge of Andau (Brücke von Andau), who were received by the inhabitants of Burgenland with an overwhelming amount of hospitality.
In 1957, the construction of the "anti-Fascist Protective Barrier" resulted in a complete bulkheading of the area under Soviet influence from the rest of the world, rendering the Hungarian-Austrian border next to Burgenland a deadly zone of mine fields (on the Hungarian border) and barbed wire, referred to as the Iron Curtain. Even during the era of the Iron Curtain, local trains between the north and south of Burgenland operated as "Corridor trains" (Korridorzüge) – they had their doors locked as they traversed Hungarian territory.
Starting in 1965 and finishing in 1971, the mine fields were cleansed because people were often harmed by them, even on the Austrian side of the border. This could well be taken as a sign of the Soviet Union towards opening the borders to the Western countries, starting in the late seventies.
Wine and Iron Curtain
Despite Burgenland (especially the area around Neusiedler See) always producing excellent wine, some vintagers in Burgenland added illegal substances to their wine in the mid-1980's. When this was revealed, the wine export of Austria broke down completely. After recovering from that scandal, vintagers in Austria, not only in Burgenland, started focussing on quality and mostly dropped the production of poor quality wine.
On July 27, 1989, the Foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyula Horn, cut the Iron Curtain (in German: "Eiserner Vorhang") in the village of Klingenbach in a symbolic act with far-reaching consequences. Thousands of East Germans used this possibility to flee to the West. Again, the inhabitants of Burgenland received them with great hospitality. Later, this was often referred to as the starting shot of the German reunification.
In 2004, the complete opening of the borders in conjunction with Hungary joining the European Union has brought back the historical denotation of Burgenland being a bridge between the western and eastern territories in Central Europe.
External links
| States of Austria |  |
|---|---|
| Burgenland | Carinthia | Lower Austria | Salzburg | Styria | Tyrol | Upper Austria | Vienna | Vorarlberg | |
| Districts (Bezirke) of Burgenland | |
|---|---|
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Eisenstadt | Eisenstadt-Umgebung | Güssing | Jennersdorf
Mattersburg | Neusiedl am See | Oberpullendorf | Oberwart | Rust |