User:Spitzmauskc/St. Johann

Sankt Johann in Tirol, called Sainihåns in the local dialect, is a market municipality in the Kitzbühel district of Tyrol, Austria. In the regional ductus, the last syllable of the name is stressed as "Sankt yo-Hahn'".

Geography
St. Johann in Tyrol is located in the center of the Leukental in the Tyrolean Unterland. The municipality is situated in a wide glacial cirque, intersected by the Leukental in a broadly north-south direction. Northwest of St. Johann are the Wilder Kaiser, the southern range of the Kaisergebirge in the Northern Limestone Alps. To the east is the mountain group of the Loferer and Leoganger Steinberge. Extending to the southeast is the valley of the Fieberbrunner-Ache. In the south is the Kitzbüheler Horn, a nearly 2000 m mountain that sits at the centre of the Kitzbühel district and is part of the Kitzbühel Alps.

Due to its location in a valley basin, St. Johann in Tyrol is largely spared from the Alpenföhn storms that plague the Inntal to the east-northeast, but gets extremely abundant snowfalls due to its location on the southern, windward side of the Wilder Kaiser. The town center sits at an altitude of 660 m above sea level. The municipal area covers an area of 5915 ha and the highest elevation within the municipality is the Maukspitze in the Wilder Kaiser with a height of 2231 m above sea level.

The Großache, the principal river of the Leukental, flows through the center of St. Johann in Tirol; the section flowing north from Kitzbühel to St. Johann is known as the Kitzbüheler Ache. Several tributaries join the Großache within the municipality of St. Johann: the Aschauer Ache (called the Aschauer Ache in its upper course) joins the main stream south of the town proper and the Fieberbrunner Ache joins to the north of the town centre. The Großache ultimately empties into the Chiemsee in Bavaria as the Tiroler Achen.

The town’s train station serves as a regional transport hub and several federal highways (Bundesstraßen) intersect in the municipality. The Loferer Straße (B 178) runs from west to northeast through the municipality. Traveling west from St. Johann, the Loferer Straße leads into the Sölllandl valley and region via Going am Wilden Kaiser and, traveling northeast, it continues through the Leukental towards Kirchdorf in Tirol. The Kössener Straße (B 176) branches from the Loferer Straße to extend north of St. Johann into the Kohlental towards Schwendt via the Huberhöhe mountain pass. Following along the Fieberbrunner Ache, the Hochkönigstraße (B 164) branches from the Loferer Straße to run southeast from St. Johann towards Fieberbrunn.

Subsidiary settlements
The municipality of St. Johann in Tirol includes the Weiler (hamlets) and Dörfer (villages) of Almdorf, Apfeldorf, Bärnstetten, Berglehen, Fricking, Hinterkaiser, Mitterndorf, Niederhofen, Oberhofen, Reitham, Rettenbach, Scheffau, Sperten, Taxa, Weiberndorf, Weitau, Winkl Schattseite, and Winkl Sonnseite.

Population
On the day of the census in 2001 (final result in 2004) St. Johann had 7,959 inhabitants. The population of the town is steadily increasing; in 2004 it was growing at 1.8 per cent. Since autumn 2007 St. Johann in Tirol has been the most populous municipality in the district of Kitzbühel.

History
No archeological discoveries indicating settlement during the prehistoric or early historic period have been made in the specific area of St. Johann in Tirol, however, human occupation since the Paleolithic is confirmed in valleys within 25 km of the town. Remains of a bridle path through the Leukental, which connected the Felber Tauern mountain pass that divides the Venediger Group and the Granatspitze Group of the Hohe Tauern mountains in the south with the Northern Alpine foothills in the north, dates to at least the Bronze Age and indicates the presence of humans in the the area, though it does not suggest settlement in itself. Copper extraction is well evidenced in the southern Leukental from at least the Middle Bronze Age (c. ) and archaeological finds dating from the Late Bronze Age (beginning in the ) connect the region to the Urnfield culture.

By the, the Ambisontes and Alauni, Gallic tribes of the late-Hallstatt culture and La Tène culture, had settled the region and were engaged in copper mining. Beginning in the, the area belonged to the western foothills of Noricum (Regnum Noricum), a federation of thirteen Gallic tribes that extended over most of modern Austria. The name of the hamlet Sperten in St. Johann in Tirol has Celtic language roots, likely of Noric or Rhaetic origin.

During, the Regnum Noricum and Eastern Alpine region came under Roman rule and became the Roman province of Noricum. In the, the province was divided along the central part of the Eastern Alps into the Noricum ripense and the Noricum mediterraneum; the western edge of the Noricum ripense was formed by the Inn river and the Leukental was thus located near the western limit of the province.

Throughout the, rule over the area shifted from Roman to that of the early medieval kingdoms. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in, the Leukental was situated in the Kingdom of the Rugii (modern Austria), near the border with the Kingdom of Odoacer (modern Italy). The transition period from Roman rule through the decades following Roman collapse in the former Noricum ripense is well documented by Eugippius in The Life of Saint Severinus (Commemoratorium vitae sancti Severini), which describes the withdrawal of the Roman population from the former province to the Kingdom of Odoacer on the order of Odoacer after he destroyed the Rugian kingdom in. Writen in the early, Eugippius' hagiography documents the removal of the entire Roman population in an event "comparable to the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt," leaving behind a deserted territory.

After the Vitae Severini, more than two centuries passed before the region reappeared in the historical record, with mentions in the Traditio Machelmi de Polasinga from and the charter of Kremsmünster Abbey from. The absence of written sources led to a long-held belief that there was a total depopulation of the region between the Inn, Salzach, and Enns rivers (in the east of which the Leukental is located) during the two hundred year period, until migrants of the Baiuvarii (Bajuwaren), ancestors of the Austrians and Bavarians, began settling the area in the late. The archaeological record reflects a significant decline in population and the near-total collapse of infrastructure in the, but revaluation of material findings has reduced the chronological gap to about 70 years and there is indication that a Roman population may have remained in the former province and assimilated with Germanic-speaking immigrants in the later.

The region was absorbed into the Duchy of Bavaria (Herzogtum Bayern) during the 7th century, in the wake of the European migrations and settlement by the Baiuvarii. The clearing of forests and other actions taken to make the land arable by Baiuvarii farmers during this period left the first archeological evidence of settlement of the St. Johann valley basin. The settlement names Fricking, Schwentling, Obing, and Reitham are remnants of an early form of the Austro-Bavarian language spoken during this period.

The Bavarian noble family of Liuchinger established a Grafschaft – an administrative region analogous to a county – in the valley during the late 7th or early 8th century. The Leukental is named after the Liuchinger family and it has been suggested that the Großache may have been known as the Liuche during the high medieval period. The administrative, judicial, and ecclesiastic seat of the county was Burg Leukenstein ('Leukenstein Castle'), which was situated at the foot of the Niederkaiser (the peak directly east of the Maukspitze). It is believed that a landslide in the 13th century destroyed and buried the castle and its exact location is no longer known. However, Burgwiesen (lit. 'castle meadows' or 'castle fields'), a holding in the hamlet of Bärnstetten, is a toponymic reminder of the former castle.

An ecclesiastical building dedicated to John the Baptist (Johannes der Täufer) is thought to have been constructed by missionaries in the area before 738. No conclusive physical evidence of such a building has been found, however there is consensus that, at a minimum, a baptistery dedicated to St. Johann was erected in the area during the 8th century. It is assumed that this earliest church of St. Johann was privately owned by the Liuchinger family, as it is not mentioned by Archbishop Arno of Salzburg as a possession of the Archdiocese of Salzburg in the Indiculus Arnonis (c. 788). The earliest record of the church dates to 1150, in which it is named in Latin as "sancti Johannis in Liuckentale."

The male line of the Liuchingers died out in or before 1168 and the county was then bestowed upon Sigiboto IV von Falkenstein-Neuburg, a Graf of the House of Falkenstein. Upon the death of Sigiboto around 1200, the county in the Leukental was subsequently ruled by officials representing the Bavarian Herzöge – a hereditary title analogous to 'dukes.'

St. Johann is first described as a parish, i.e. a community settlement, in the founding document of the Diocese of Chiemsee, which was issued by Pope Innocent III on 26 January 1216. In the document, Archbishop Eberhard II of Salzburg, also known as Eberhard von Regensberg, describes the geographic extent of the diocese. St. Johann is mentioned in the passage "... per vallem que vocatur Leuchental, claudendo parrochias Chirchdorf et Sci Johis…" which broadly translates as "... through the valley, which is called Leukental including the parishes of Kirchdorf and St. Johann..." – the abbreviation Sci Johis was commonplace at that time and should be read as Sancti Johannis. Record of the Apfeldorf hamlet predates that of St. Johann by over a century, with mention in a cartulary of Scheyern Abbey from circa 1102–1104 as "Affoltrach in montanis videlicet in Liuchental."

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Velben (noble family) held extensive possessions in the area of St. Johann in Tirol. The Velbens were an edelfrei Bavarian-Salzburger noble family, which had their ancestral seat in Felben near Mittersill in the Pinzgau region of Salzburg; in Salzburg, the family name is spelled 'Felben' whereas the 'Velben' spelling is more common in Tyrol. The Velben family is documented in the 12th century as ministeriales of the Counts of Lechsgemünd-Graisbach and, after the death of Heinrich II/III of Lechsgemünd-Frontenhausen (who also styled himself as Heinrich von Mittersill) in 1208, they acquired possessions formerly belonging to the Lechsgemünds.

The first Velben to arrive in the Leukental was Gebhard I in the mid-1200s. A liegeman of considerable grant-holdings, Gebhard I was a Lehnsmann of the Archbishop of Salzberg, the Herzog of Bavaria, the Bishop of Regensburg, and the Bishop of Bamberg. He and his son, Ulrich II, established the Sankt Nikolauskirche ('Saint Nicolas Church') and hospital in the hamlet of Weitau; Ulrich II became the first Benefiziat of the hospital in Weitau.

The Velbens had a castle in the hamlet of Rettenbach called Burg Forchtenstein, which may have dated to the 10th century. The castle no longer exists but the hill where it stood, called Schlossberg (lit. 'castle hill'), bears clear marks of a moat and cistern, and the farm names Oberbürg and Stallbürg in Rettenbach also recall the former castle. The absence of foundation remains or evidence of masonry have lead researches to assume the complex must have been an early example of medieval earth and timber castle construction.

Gebhard II, another of son of Gebhard I, was enfeoffed with the Mittersill Castle in 1292 and also managed the district court of Kitzbühel until 1320. When Otto, the eldest son of Gebhard II, was not appointed Pfleger of Mittersill like his father, he and his younger brother, Ekke (or Eck), started a feud with the archbishop of Salzburg, Konrad IV von Fohnsdorf. The feud did not bring the brothers success and they became robber barons, raiding as far as the Inntal by land and water.

Otto von Velben later feuded with the Bishop of Regensburg, Nikolaus von Ybbs, and was forced to surrender to him in 1314, though he refused to relinquish Burg Forchtenstein. In response, soldiers fron the Duchy of Upper Bavaria, the Duchy of Carinthia, the Duchy of Lower Bavaria, the Archdiocese of Salzburg, and the Diocese of Regensburg were granted imperial authority in 1316 to take the castle by force and raze it

In the immediate vicinity there was another castle, called Sperten, which was owned by the Palatine Counts of Ortenburg and which is still remembered today by the court name Unterbürg.

In 1446, the bishops of Chiemsee were given the responsibility of the parish of St. Johann, from which time onwards it became their summer residence.

The opening of the copper and silver mines in 1540 increased the wealth of St. Johann. The mines were located in the small hills, known as Rerobichl close to Oberndorf, which belonged to St. Johann. In the 17th century the Heilig-Geist-Schacht ("Holy Ghost Shaft") was the deepest shaft in the world, over 780 m deep.

The mining of copper and silver continued until the 18th century. In 1875, the construction of the Gisela Railway linked St. Johann to the international railway network, with the result that the economy boomed and tourism began to take hold.

20th century
In 1927, Oberndorf and St. Johann split and from this time onwards Oberndorf became a separate parish. In 1954, St. Johann received its own Coat of Arms; in 1956, St. Johann reached the elevated status of a market town.

Parish Council
The parish council (Gemeinderat or Ortsparlament) comprises 19 members, the Bürgermeister acting as chairman.

The council is made up as follows (2010):
 * St. Johann People's Party (St. Johanner Volkspartei): 10 seats
 * Young St. Johanners (Junge St. Johanner): 3 seats
 * The Greens and Independents (Die Grünen und Unabhängigen): 2 seats
 * Bernhofer/Wallner Social List (Soziale Liste Bernhofer/Wallner): 2 seats
 * Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs) – St. Johann in Tirol: 1 seat
 * Freedom Party and Independent (Freiheitliche Partei und Parteifreie): 1 seat

Parish board
The St. Johann parish board consists of seven members. It is chaired by the Bürgermeister who is directly elected by the villagers of St. Johann. The two vice Bürgermeisters are chosen by the council.


 * Bürgermeister: Mag. Stefan Seiwald, (ÖVP), since 2012

Coat of arms
On 13 May 1954 the Tyrolean state government granted the following coat of arms to the municipality of St. Johann in Tirol:



In a green and red vertically-divided shield are, on the right, an inverted, silver ibex horn and, on the left, a gold bishop's crozier.

The shield bears the colours of the old flag of the court, whose first seat was in St. Johann before 1271. The ibex horn commemorates the "nobles of Velben" (Edlen von Velben) who lived near St. Johann in the 13th and 14th centuries. The bishop's crozier recalls that the village used to be a summer residence for the bishops of Chiemsee.

Communal membership

 * Climate Alliance parish since July 1997.

Twinned towns

 * 🇩🇪 Fuldabrück, Hesse, Germany
 * 🇺🇸 Redford, Michigan, United States
 * 🇫🇮 Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland
 * 🇮🇹 Valeggio sul Mincio, Veneto, Italy

Economy
Tourism and the restaurant trade are amongst the most important branches of the economy in the area. With approximately 520,000 overnight stays per year, roughly evenly split between summer and winter, St. Johann is one of the major tourist resorts in the Tyrol. Its holiday infrastructure ranges from hotels to campsites and from restaurants to discothèques.

In recent decades, St. Johann has experienced an economic boom in trade, services and light industry and it has become the shopping centre for the district of Kitzbühel. Many new firms have settled here, especially along the B 178 federal road, where they benefit from its central location. In addition, the opening of a pedestrian zone in the 1990s has improved the town centre, which receives an average of 20,000 visitors per day.

Several firms are based in St. Johann, such as the headquarters of the Fritz Egger GmbH & Co, one of the best-known chip board manufacturers in Europe.

Today, the region around St. Johann in Tirol is one of the agricultural centres of Tyrol, despite its harsh climate and heavy precipitation. Agriculture in the wide basin of the St. Johann bowl has a great tradition as the former breadbasket of Tyrol and, even today, farming continues to play an important role.

A relatively large number (for the Tyrol) of farms are established in the wide, level basin and on its fairly gently (with a few exceptions) slopes. According to Statistik Austria about a third of the farms form the main source of income. These primary income farms use rather more than half the agricultural and forested land in the municipality.

St. Johann in Tirol is an important tourist centre with impressive ski-slopes and related facilities. The ski resorts are especially populous starting after Christmas into early January. It is also popular in summer, especially with British, Irish and German tourists. Located near the Wilder Kaiser (Wild Emperor) mountains, the Kitzbühler Horn dominates the town. It is well served by ski lifts and cable car.

Transport
St. Johann is a major traffic junction, to which the following roads are connected: B 178 - Loferer Straße; B 164 - Hochkönig Straße; B 176 - Kössener Straße; B 161 - Pass Thurn Straße. European route E641, which connects Wörgl with Salzburg, passes through St. Johann in Tirol, intersecting here with highway B161 to Mittersill.

The market town also has an express train station on the route of the Giselabahn, which is also called the Salzburg-Tyrol Railway and has access to the international railway network to Salzburg, Innsbruck and to Munich via Wörgl.

In addition there is an airport for light aircraft and gliders, airfield (ICAO Code LOIJ), used by light aircraft, parachutists and gliders: runway length 645 m, radio frequency 120,350 MHz, 47.52°N, 12.44833°W, 670 m altitude. It is the second largest airport in Tyrol.

The distance between St. Johann and Salzburg is 65 km, between St. Johann and Innsbruck 100 km, and between St. Johann and Munich 125 km.



Public Services
In St. Johann there are some important public services, like the district hospital, the Wintersteller army barracks and the Military Supply Centre West for the Armed Forces based in the west of Austria.

Additionally, you can find the following institutions in St. Johann: the District Forest Inspector, the District Administration for Agriculture, the Road Maintenance Department, the nursing home in St. Johann, the health and social care service and the police department.

Water supply and waste disposal
The market town has water supply, sewage and waste disposal systems that are organised by the parish council. In addition to electricity and natural gas there has also been an environmentally friendly district heating system since the end of 2008 which supplies the largest buildings in the village.

Since December 2007 The St. Johann Village Heating Company (Ortswärme St. Johann in Tirol GmbH) has supplied households, firms and public institutions in St. Johann in Tirol with district heating. The firm is 74% owned by the parish of St. Johann in Tirol and 26% by the firm of Fritz Egger. The head office is in Bahnhofstraße 5, in the parish office. The heating company does not have its own energy generation with the exception of backup and peak-load boilers in the centre of the village. The energy is generated by the Egger factory from waste heat and biomass in conjunction with an absorption heat pump and is transferred at the boundary of the factory site into the district heating network. At the end of 2009 around 400 buildings and 1,300 households in St. Johann were heated by district heating. These include the district hospital, the barracks, the schools, traders, single and multi-family homes. A total of about 28 km of routing, or 56 km (double) of piping has been laid. In 2009, 29 GWh of heating was purchased, that corresponds to an oil consumption of about 3.4 e6L per year. In the medium term the introduction of district heating in St. Johann will save about 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually in the village centre. To read the heat meters and to visualize the individual house systems, an optical fibre was laid as part of the installation of the heating district network.

Education

 * 1 Grammar School
 * 1 Institution of Higher Education for Tourism
 * 1 Agricultural School
 * 1 Music School
 * 1 Polytechnic Institute
 * 2 Secondary Schools
 * 2 Elementary Schools
 * 1 Special Needs Educational Centre
 * 1 Montessori School
 * 1 Adult Education Centre
 * 4 Kindergartens
 * 2 Nursery Schools

Museums

 * Town Museum (Museum der Marktgemeinde St. Johann in Tirol) - portraying the local history of St. Johann. The museum also houses the art gallery (Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst)
 * Alpine Museum (Alpinmuseum der Heeresversorgungsanstalt) - in Oberhofenweg.

Sights

 * Dekanatspfarrkirche St. Johann in Tirol ('Deanary Parish Church of St. Johann in Tyrol'), also called Dekanatspfarrkirche Maria Himmelfahrt and colloquially known as the Leukentaler Dom ('Leukental Cathedral'), a Baroque church dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, and St. Katharina
 * Antoniuskapelle ('St. Anthony's Chapel'),
 * St. Nicholas' Church (St. Nikolaus) in Weitau
 * Town centre

Sports
There are many sports facilities for locals and visitors alike:
 * Indoor and outdoor swimming pool with sauna and steam bath
 * Tennis courts, indoor and outdoor
 * Crazy golf
 * Mountainbike routes
 * Cycle and walking paths
 * Archery, low calibre rifle shooting range, pistol shooting range, air gun shooting range
 * Circuit training exercise path
 * Football stadium (Koasastadion)
 * Riding hall, bridleway, horse-trotting course
 * Kayaking and rafting
 * 60 km of ski runs, 48 km (half) with artificial snow making facilities; gondola, chairlift, draglifts and children's lifts
 * Cross country circuit

Annual events
Since 2004 St. Johann has a modern event hall: the Kaisersaal. The term is derived from the mountain chain "Der Wilde Kaiser". There are many events such as lectures, corporate events and pop or rock concerts in this hall.


 * Koasalauf - one of the biggest cross-country races held in January
 * summer night festival "Jaggasn" held in July
 * UCI cycling race of the seniors held in August
 * a festival celebrating dumplings held in September



People

 * Edmund Angerer (1740–1774), composer of a children's symphony
 * Emma Hellenstainer (1817–1904), pioneer of Tyrolean catering trade
 * Axel Theimer (born 1946), choir conductor, composer, singer and professor
 * DJ Ötzi (born Gerhard Friedle in 1971), singer and entertainer
 * Andreas Widhölzl (born 1976), ski jumper

History of Kitzbuehl
There is no archaeological record of prehistoric or early historic settlement specific to St. Johann in Tirol, but copper mining by peoples belonging to the Urnfield culture is well evidenced in the southern Leukental from around, determined via the excavation of various Bronze Age mining sites and copper smelting locations in the Kitzbühel mining district, which spanned from south of Jochberg to Brixen im Thale in the west, and north of Kitzbühel to include the mining site at Kelchape and the smelting locations around Aurach bei Kitzbühel. Only chalcopyrite was utilized as copper ore in the Eastern Alps during the Early Bronze Age (which began in the region around the ) until the emergence of the Late Bronze Age in the and, from that chalcopyrite-oriented mining industry emerged a supra-regional archaeological culture, called the eastern alpine copper technology.

, expansion models suggest the eastern alpine copper technology spread from the western Greywacke zone and reached the Kitzbühel mining district during the Middle Bronze Age. Initial extractions and processing were focused on the southern zone of the district around Jochberg and Aurach which belongs to the copper-iron ore Glemmtal tectonic unit and featuring only chalcopyrite deposits. The eastern alpine copper technology first spread from the to Lower Austria through, of  and fahlore