Alland 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 rura ...

in the district of

Baden Baden (; ) is a historical territory in southern Germany. In earlier times it was considered to be on both sides of the Upper Rhine, but since the Napoleonic Wars, it has been considered only East of the Rhine. History The margraves of Ba ...

in the

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n state of

Lower Austria Lower Austria ( , , abbreviated LA or NÖ) is one of the nine states of Austria, located in the northeastern corner of the country. Major cities are Amstetten, Lower Austria, Amstetten, Krems an der Donau, Wiener Neustadt and Sankt Pölten, which ...

Geography

It is located in the

Industrieviertel ''Industrieviertel'' (; ; or ''Viertel unter dem Wienerwald'' (), is the southeastern quarter of the four quarters of Lower Austria (the northeast state of the 9 states in Austria). It is bordered on the north by Vienna and the , to the west by ...

region of Lower Austria, about southwest of the Austrian capital

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. Alland is situated in a valley of the

Vienna Woods The Vienna Woods (, ) are forested highlands that form the northeastern foothills of the Northern Limestone Alps in the states of Lower Austria and Vienna. The and range of hills is heavily wooded and a popular recreation area with the Viennese ...

(''Wienerwald'') mountain range and recreation area. The municipal area comprises the village of

Mayerling Mayerling is a small village (pop. 200) in Lower Austria belonging to the municipality of Alland in the district of Baden (district of Austria), Baden. It is situated on the Schwechat river, in the Vienna Woods, Wienerwald (''Vienna woods''), so ...

with its hunting lodge, today a

Carmelite The Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (; abbreviated OCarm), known as the Carmelites or sometimes by synecdoche known simply as Carmel, is a mendicant order in the Catholic Church for both men and women. Histo ...

monastery. The present-day municipality was formed in 1972 by the merger of Alland and Raisenmarkt comprising the cadastral communities of Alland, Glashütten, Groisbach, Innerer Kaltenbergerforst and Äußerer Kaltenbergerforst, Mayerling, Pöllerhof, Raisenmarkt, Rohrbach, Schwechatbach, Weissenweg, and Windhaag. It is the largest municipality in Baden District by area.

History

Archaeological excavations of Linear Pottery artifacts indicate that the valley had been settled since the

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

era. A first church in Alland was erected in the 8th century. In 1002 King

Henry II of Germany Henry II (; ; ; 6 May 973 – 13 July 1024 AD), also known as Saint Henry, Order of Saint Benedict, Obl. S. B., was Holy Roman Emperor ("Romanorum Imperator") from 1014. He died without an heir in 1024, and was the last ruler of the Ottonian dy ...

enfeoffed large estates around Alland (derived from '' Adel'', aristocratic land) up to the

Triesting The Triesting is a river of Lower Austria, in the southeastern part of the Vienna Woods. Its drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows i ...

River to the

Babenberg The House of Babenberg was a noble dynasty of Austrian Dukes and Margraves. Descending from the Popponids and originally from Bamberg in the Duchy of Franconia (present-day Bavaria), the Babenbergs ruled the imperial Margraviate of Austria fr ...

margrave Henry I of Austria. The Sts George and Margareta parish church was first mentioned in 1123. In 1133 Margrave Leopold III founded nearby

Heiligenkreuz Abbey Heiligenkreuz Abbey () is a Cistercian monastery in the village of Heiligenkreuz, Lower Austria, Heiligenkreuz in the southern part of the Vienna Woods, Vienna woods, c. 13 km north-west of Baden bei Wien, Baden in Lower Austria. It is the ol ...

. Alland remained a possession of the Babenberg rulers after their march was elevated to the

Duchy of Austria The Duchy of Austria (; ) was a medieval principality of the Holy Roman Empire, established in 1156 by the '' Privilegium Minus'', when the Margraviate of Austria ('' Ostarrîchi'') was detached from Bavaria and elevated to a duchy in its own ri ...

and the place where the last male heir Frederick I of Austria, son of Gertrude of Babenberg, was born in 1249. Frederick however was not able to assert his claims; he and his friend Conradin of Hohenstaufen were beheaded by order of King

Charles I of Naples Charles I (early 1226/12277 January 1285), commonly called Charles of Anjou or Charles d'Anjou, was King of Sicily from 1266 to 1285. He was a member of the royal Capetian dynasty and the founder of the House of Anjou-Sicily. Between 1246 and ...

in 1268. The Babenberg hereditary lands were taken over by King

Ottokar II of Bohemia Ottokar II (; , in Městec Králové, Bohemia – 26 August 1278, in Dürnkrut, Austria, Dürnkrut, Lower Austria), the Iron and Golden King, was a member of the Přemyslid dynasty who reigned as King of Bohemia from 1253 until his death in 1278 ...

and seized by the

Habsburg The House of Habsburg (; ), also known as the House of Austria, was one of the most powerful dynasties in the history of Europe and Western civilization. They were best known for their inbreeding and for ruling vast realms throughout Europe d ...

king

Rudolf I of Germany Rudolf I (1 May 1218 – 15 July 1291) was the first King of Germany of the Habsburg dynasty from 1273 until his death. Rudolf's imperial election of 1273, election marked the end of the Interregnum (Holy Roman Empire), Great Interregnum whic ...

in 1276. The parish was incorporated into Heiligenkreuz Abbey at the behest of

Pope Urban VI Pope Urban VI (; ; c. 1318 – 15 October 1389), born Bartolomeo Prignano (), was head of the Catholic Church from 8 April 1378 to his death, in October 1389. He was the last pope elected from outside the College of Cardinals. His pontificate be ...

in 1386. Held by the Lords of Kottingbrunn from 1507, the lands were devastated by Ottoman forces during the 1529

Siege of Vienna Sieges of Vienna may refer to: * Siege of Vienna (1485), Hungarian victory during the Austro–Hungarian War. *Siege of Vienna (1529), first Ottoman attempt to conquer Vienna. *Battle of Vienna, 1683, second Ottoman attempt to conquer Vienna. * Cap ...

and again in the course of the

Battle of Vienna The Battle of Vienna took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna on 1683 after the city had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman Empire (led by the Habsburg monarchy) and the Polish–Li ...

in 1683. The Mayerling hunting lodge, a Heiligenkreuz possession since 1550, was acquired by Archduke Rudolf of Austria, the heir to the

Austro-Hungarian Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...

crown, in 1886. Three years later it saw the

Mayerling Incident The Mayerling incident is the series of events surrounding the apparent murder–suicide suicide pact, pact of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, and his mistress, baroness Mary Vetsera. They were found dead on 30 January 1889 in an imperial ...

occur, when Rudolf and his beloved killed themselves here. Immediately afterwards Rudolf's father Emperor

Franz Joseph Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I ( ; ; 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the ruler of the Grand title of the emperor of Austria, other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 1848 until his death ...

ordered the conversion of the hunting lodge into a monastery which he committed to Carmelite nuns to pray for his son's salvation. Since the ''

fin de siècle "''Fin de siècle''" () is a French term meaning , a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom '' turn of the century'' and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without co ...

'', Alland has been converted to a tourist resort and a spa town that is a favorite of the nearby Vienna residents. After the ''

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

'' annexation of Austria by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

, the Mayerling monastery was dissolved, the nuns expelled, and the premises turned into a

forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...

camp in connection with the construction of the nearby ''

Reichsautobahn The system was the beginning of the German autobahns under Nazi Germany. There had been previous plans for controlled-access highway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traf ...

''. In the late days of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

the Alland area saw heavy fighting between the

I SS Panzer Corps The I SS Panzer Corps () was a German armoured corps of the ''Waffen-SS''. It saw action on both the Western Front (World War II), Western and Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Fronts during World War II. Formation and training The Corps was ...

under the command of General

Josef Dietrich Josef "Sepp" Dietrich (28 May 1892 – 21 April 1966) was a German politician, general and war criminal in the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) during the Nazi era. Despite having no formal staff officer training, Dietrich was, along with Paul Hausser, t ...

and

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

forces of the

6th Guards Tank Army The 6th Guards Order of Red Banner Tank Army was a tank army of the Soviet Union's Red Army, first formed in January 1944 as the 6th Tank Army,Glantz (Companion), p. 66. and disbanded in Ukraine in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet U ...

under Marshal

Fyodor Tolbukhin Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbukhin (; 16 June 1894 – 17 October 1949) was a Soviet Union, Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union. He is regarded as one of the finest Soviet generals of World War II. Born into a peasant family i ...

from 4 to 22 April 1945. After the war, the demolished Mayerling monastery was restored to the Carmelites and the destroyed buildings were reconstructed. In the 1950s and 60s Alland regained its status as a popular destination for daytrippers and commuters from and to Vienna. The municipality was elevated to a market town in 2002.

Politics

Seats in the municipal assembly (''Gemeinderat'') as of 2010 elections: *

Austrian People's Party The Austrian People's Party ( , ÖVP ) is a Christian-democratic and liberal-conservative political party in Austria. Since January 2025, the party has been led by Christian Stocker (as an acting leader). It is currently the second-largest p ...

(ÖVP): 13 *

Social Democratic Party of Austria The Social Democratic Party of Austria ( , SPÖ) is a social democratic political party in Austria. Founded in 1889 as the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (, SDAPÖ) and later known as the Socialist Party of Austria () from 1945 unt ...

(SPÖ): 6 *

Freedom Party of Austria The Freedom Party of Austria (, FPÖ) is a political party in Austria, variously described as far-right, right-wing populist, national-conservative, and Eurosceptic. It has been led by Herbert Kickl since 2021. It is the largest of five part ...

(FPÖ): 1 *ALL (

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

): 1

Notable people

Frederick I, Margrave of Baden Frederick I of Baden (1249 – October 29, 1268), a member of the House of Zähringen, was List of rulers of Baden, Margrave of Baden and of March of Verona, Verona, as well as claimant List of rulers of Austria, Duke of Austria from 1250 until h ...

(1249-1268). * Leopold von Schrötter (1837–1908), internist and laryngologist, opened the Alland lung clinic in 1898.

References

External links

{{authority control Cities and towns in Baden District, Austria