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The Schrottenturm or the Schrottenburg

is a shot tower in the Klagenfurt cadastral community Gurlitsch I (St. Martin, 12. District).

The 67 m high tower was built from 1814 or 1818 to 1824 by Johann Ritter von Rainer zu Harbach. The tower has a square plan, tapers towards the top and is covered by a flat pyramidal roof. On the mountain side there is a relief by Johann Ritter von Friedel. In 1830, Emperor Franz I paid a visit to the tower. It was shut down immediately after it was acquired by the BBU in 1893 or 1898. In 1927, the future mayor Adolf Wolf bought the property. He had the tower converted into a lookout tower and set up an excursion restaurant underneath, for which he introduced the name Schrottenburg. The view from the tower and restaurant over Lake Wörthersee is excellent. The hospitality business ceased in 1970. Since then the property has fallen into disrepair. In 2005, the remains of the restaurant were damaged by fire. Efforts by the owners since 2007 to sell the listed tower have so far (end of 2016) failed.

A shot tower

is a tower in which shotgun pellets for shotgun shells were once manufactured. Liquid lead was poured through a sieve at the top of the tower. In free fall, spherical drops formed due to the cohesive force and surface tension of the material. If the drop was sufficient, the lead had already cooled and solidified when it was collected at the bottom in a water basin in which the balls cooled down further.

Today, shot towers are mostly only preserved as industrial monuments (especially in the USA and Australia) - but modern drop towers are still used to make bullets from special materials.

Well known is the shot tower of the Lead Pipe & Shot Factory in Melbourne, which was only taken out of operation in the 1960s and was later integrated into the dome-like inner courtyard of a large shopping center as a listed attraction.

The shotgun tower in Berlin-Rummelsburg, built in 1908, is the landmark of the Victoriastadt district there.

A shot tower was built in Vienna-Favoriten in 1825, which achieved the necessary fall height by combining a 25 m high wooden tower with a 35 m deep shaft underneath. In Carinthia and the Mießtal there were shot towers that were not built free-standing, but took advantage of natural drops to which they were attached like bay windows.

St. Martin (also: St. Martin-Waidmannsdorf, slow. Smartin pri Celovcu-Otoče)

is the 12th District of the state capital Klagenfurt am Wörthersee (Austria).

geography

St. Martin is located west of Klagenfurt city center. In the west the district borders on Lake Wörthersee and the communities of Krumpendorf and Maria Wörth, in the south Glanfurt forms the border with the Viktring district, in the east the border runs along the line Rosentaler Straße - Wiegelegasse - Schmelzhüttenstraße - Goethestraße - Bahnstraße - Humboldtstraße - Josef -Gruber-Straße - Egger-Lienz-Weg - Linsengasse - Adolf-Tschabuschnigg-Straße, north of the Kreuzbergl, further along the line Ziggullnstraße - Schloßweg - Feldkirchner Straße and runs in the north along Trettnigstraße and Falkenbergweg south of the town of Winklern and south of the Halleger Teiche nature reserve.

The highest elevations in the district are the Falkenberg (671 m), the Kalvarienberg (588 m) and the Zillhöhe (536 m).

Story

Until 1938, St. Martin was an independent municipality, consisting of the towns of St. Martin and Waidmannsdorf, which is now more populous and larger in terms of area, which was originally called Weitmannsdorf (1192 Witansdorf, 1248 Witensdorf, 1480 Weykersdorf, 1785 Weitensdorf, 1830 Weidmannsdorf) and as a "village "The Witman" can be interpreted.

The community of St. Martin near Klagenfurt was founded on the 15th. In October 1938, it was incorporated into the city of Klagenfurt together with part of the municipality of Krumpendorf (today's cadastral municipality of Gurlitsch I, which borders the lake) and small parts of the municipalities of Maria Wörth and Viktring located on the Glanfurt. Only since this city expansion has the municipality of Klagenfurt bordered on Lake Wörthersee. (Gurlitsch II is a cadastral community in the neighboring community of Krumpendorf.)

In 1938, the National Socialists planned a Greater Klagenfurt and a redesign of the entire urban area. However, due to the Second World War, this did not happen.

With the founding of the University of Klagenfurt, St. Martin has become a student center.

Josefinum

The Nazi regime expelled the nuns who looked after mentally and physically disabled children from the Josefinum in Josefinumgasse. The home was founded on an initiative by the teacher Maria Wratisch. The association “For the Founding and Preservation of the Carinthian Idiot Asylum” in Klagenfurt, which was founded in 1898, acquired the large property from a bankruptcy estate in 1911 for 4,000 crowns and built the home on it. The Nazi regime transferred the property to the city in 1939. The British occupying forces confiscated the house in 1945 and only released it again late. It was then available to foster children for a long time before it had to be demolished due to its dilapidation.

City expansion

At the beginning of the 1890s, the city of Klagenfurt was in a phase of change. A new expansion of the city would create building land again and allow expansion into the outskirts. The areas between Ostbahnhof and the future Völkermarkter Ring, the Lerchenfeld north of Linsengasse and the area at the foot of the Kreuzbergl were considered for development.

The neighboring communities of St. Martin, St. Peter and St. Ruprecht affected by these plans had agreed to a change in the boundaries from the 15th to the 17th. In December 1891 a border inspection took place and the state government announced on December 14th. In March 1892, the change in the area of the municipality was approved in accordance with the border inspection protocol. This was generally announced with the addition that the date of activation and effectiveness of the new municipal boundaries would be announced at a later date. This was the case in the same year and with 1. The new city limits came into force in January 1893.

To mark this occasion, the author Urban Ehrlich hastened to self-publish a new city booklet in 1893 to take account of this memorable year of expansion and the incorporation of parts of the area from the local communities of St. Martin, St. Peter and St. Ruprecht. He informed the readers that 51 hectares and 17 ares came to Klagenfurt from the local community of St. Martin, 60 hectares and 24 ares from the local community of St. Peter, 35 hectares and 51 ares from the local community of St. Ruprecht and from the tax community of Waidmannsdorf 7 hectares and 75 ares. He describes the new city border in the Calvary area as follows: “Towards the west, the border begins on Feldkirchner Straße opposite Wanggo-Färber, runs along the path to Zigguln Castle and below it on the path to lowest Kreuzberglteich, from there in a southwesterly direction to the Kreuzbergl, where it connects to the path to the shooting range, so that the shooting range is still in the city area, but the target ranges are outside of it. From there the border extends in a south-easterly direction to the point mentioned above. Scheriau leads to the city and at the end of the field path it joins the path to St. Martin, from where it continues after some strange zigzag directions to the first Lendkanal bridge and there connects to the southern railway line.

Mantschemühle on the Glan

The miller was formerly a subject of the Grafenstein and Ehrenhausen lordships. Its owner from 1855 was Johann Grimschitz.

The Mantschemühle originally belonged to the Mantschehof estate on the other side of the Glan. In ancient times, the mill was called Köglmühle (1544) and Holzermühle (1622) after the respective owner families. The vulgar name Mantschemühle gave it the Mantsche von Liebenheim family. She kept this name until her demolition. Johann Christian Mantsche was raised to the nobility by the emperor in 1691 because of his father's services as a long-time paymaster on the Croatian military border and was also admitted to the Carinthian estates in 1698. Around 1700 he acquired Mantschehof and Mantschemühle, but after just a generation there was the next owner. At times the mill was its own property, freely inheritable and sellable. Johann Lainacher rebuilt the mill he acquired in 1821 and on the other side of today's Feldkirchner Straße he built a residential and farm building. In 1823 he bought the adjacent Katzel or Tschurtsche chaise, which had already been mentioned in a document in 1666. Lainacher's property was in three tax communities. The grinding mill, located in the village of Kalvarienberg between the road and the river, belonged to KG Spitalmühle and consisted of land consisting of pasture, meadow and a small garden. In the KG St. Martin near was the thatched-roof Tschurtsche chaise, consisting of a stable, residential and farm buildings as well as the new Mantsche residential building. The property consisted of small pastures, a field and a bit of high forest. In the Ehrental KG there was a small field, three small meadow plots and a stamp. Lainacher had three cows, three mother pigs, two running pigs and two horses in the stable.

As a result, the property was able to be increased several times. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Mantschemüller had a large warehouse building (1912) built on his property. But then things went downhill for this old property and it went under the hammer in the late 1920s. The mill was spared final closure because it and the water rights were acquired by the miller Ignaz Kraßnig in 1929. He added a black bread bakery to his business. He had the Homeland Security as a tenant in the magazine building in the 1930s.

Village of Calvarienberg

Although the town of Kalvarienberg had no center at all, as there was neither a municipal office nor a school nor a church, neither a police station nor a fire department (founded only in 1924), the residents formed a community in cultural and social terms. Popular customs included New Year's celebrations with a music band, the carnival funeral and the two-day firecracker shooting at Easter. The Kalvarienbergs had their church days with prize cones and later their fire brigade balls with Glückshafen, their forest festivals above the Urabl quarry and on the Schlachtealm, which spanned three days. The drag pond was available for ice skating and people met up on the Krainerwiese to play ball.

How did the Kalvarienbergs see their world? Alfred Schlagg, born in 1920, experienced this area very consciously in the interwar period. He was particularly impressed by the businesses and other industries that existed at the time. And there were many of them. Keywords: “Mantschemühle, Weiß sawmill and fruit press, Triebelnig wheelwrighting shop, Safertal gardening shop, Schuhmann chicken farm, Willner glass factory, Wartburg restaurant, Bayer hairdresser, Tomaschitz general store, Gilch/Ronacher wheelwrighting shop, Wigisser carpentry shop, the butchers Wölbitsch and Urabl, Sussitz blacksmith shop Horse shoeing, Huber plumber’s shop, Puntschart inn with bowling alley...”

(from Wikipedia)