Sankt Lambrecht is a

market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...

in the district of Murau in

Styria Styria (german: Steiermark ; Serbo-Croatian and sl, ; hu, Stájerország) is a state (''Bundesland'') in the southeast of Austria. With an area of , Styria is the second largest state of Austria, after Lower Austria. Styria is bordered to ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. It is known for

St. Lambrecht's Abbey St. Lambert's Abbey (german: Stift St. Lambrecht) is a Benedictine Abbey in the village of Sankt Lambrecht in the Styrian ''Grebenzen'' nature reserve in Austria. The monastery is located above sea level. The monastery complex and its gardens ...

, one of the most important

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , foun ...

monasteries in Austria. The monastery complex and its gardens are part of the Zirbitzkogel-Grebenzen

nature park A nature park, or sometimes natural park, is a designation for a protected natural area by means of long-term land planning, sustainable resource management and limitation of agricultural and real estate developments. These valuable landscape ...

. In the course of a Styrian administrative reform, the former municipality of Sankt Blasen merged into Sankt Lambrecht with effect from 1 January 2015.

Geography

The Upper Styrian municipality is located in the Thaja valley (''Thajagraben'') within the northern Gurktal Alps, east of the district capital Murau and near the Styrian-

Carinthian Carinthia (german: Kärnten ; sl, Koroška ) is the southernmost Austrian state, in the Eastern Alps, and is noted for its mountains and lakes. The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Bavarian group. Carint ...

border. At a height of above sea level, Sankt Lambrecht is the highest situated market town in Styria. Trades practiced here are woodworking (windows, furniture, chairs), a

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and Stabilizer (chemistry), stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish people, Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germa ...

factory (explosives, military products), and tourism. The municipal area comprises the

cadastral communities A cadastral community or cadastral municipality, is a cadastral subdivision of municipalities in the nations of Austria,Cadastral Template for Austria, web-pageCT-AT Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, ...

of Sankt Lambrecht and Sankt Blasen.

History

The Benedictine abbey was established in 1076 by the

Margraves of Styria Margrave was originally the medieval title for the military commander assigned to maintain the defence of one of the border provinces of the Holy Roman Empire or of a kingdom. That position became hereditary in certain feudal families in the Emp ...

. A first Romanesque basilica was consecrated in 1160, after a blaze it was rebuilt in the preserved

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

hall church style until 1421. After the Austrian ''

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

'' to

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

in 1938, St. Lambrecht Abbey was seized by the Nazi authorities. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

the premises housed two sub-camps of the infamous

Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...

, one for male inmates and one for females.

Politics

Seats in the municipal assembly (''Gemeinderat'') as of 2015 local elections: *

Austrian People's Party The Austrian People's Party (german: Österreichische Volkspartei , ÖVP ) is a Christian-democratic and liberal-conservative political party in Austria. Since December 2021, the party has been led provisionally by Karl Nehammer. It is currentl ...

(ÖVP): 8 *

Social Democratic Party of Austria The Social Democratic Party of Austria (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs , SPÖ), founded and known as the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (german: link=no, Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs, SDAPÖ) unti ...

(SPÖ): 5 * Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ): 2

Sister city / Twin city

The city is twinned with: *

Lukovica The Municipality of Lukovica (; sl, Občina Lukovica) is a municipality in the eastern part of the Upper Carniola region in Slovenia. The seat of the municipality is Lukovica pri Domžalah. It lies on the main road from Ljubljana to Celje and ha ...

References

Cities and towns in Murau District {{Styria-geo-stub