Mödling

Mödling, Lower Austria, town in the district of Mödling, alt. 246 m, pop. 20,290, area 9.95 km², where the Mödling river flows into the Vienna Basin, south of Vienna. - District commission, local court, tax office, employment services, office of surveying, forest administration of the town of Mödling, Federal Institute for the Control of Animal Epidemics (Bundesanstalt für Tierseuchenbekämpfung), office of the Lower Austrian provincial government (construction supervision), economic chamber, chamber of labour, local chamber of agriculture, local health and insurance office, hospital with nursing school, centre for industrial and social medicine (AMZ), centre for educational psychology, Kalksburg drug clinic (Anton Proksch Institute), public life-counselling centre, social welfare centre, information centre for Lower Austrian trade and industry, Austrian Development Service (ÖED) with centre of education for development aid, Austrian Institute for Further Education, Protestant parish (church), Protestant free church community, Trinitarian monastery with boarding school, retreat centre of the Society of the Sacred Heart, several types of secondary schools such as Bundes-Gymnasium and Bundes-Realgymnasium, Höhere Technische Lehranstalt (technical secondary school), Handelsakademie der Wiener Kaufmannschaft (commercial secondary school), Höhere Lehranstalt für Mode und Bekleidungstechnik (advanced-level school of fashion and dressmaking), institute for occupational pedagogics, Wirtschaftsförderungsinstitut (WIFI) of the Chamber of Commerce, training centre and social academy of the Chamber of Labour, rural police central school (Gendarmeriezentralschule), adult education centre, town theatre, central heating plant, water works, control station of the 1^st Vienna spring water main (Wiener Hochquellenleitung); Föhrenberge nature park (since 1989, earlier landscape conservation area); 7,717 persons employed (1991), about 72 % of which in the service sector (mainly personal, social and public services); building and related trades dominate in the industry sector (construction companies, pre-cast concrete and pre-casting plant, building carpentry, etc.), industrial furnace construction industry, electrical industry, various small and medium-sized commercial enterprises; large number of commuters to and from Vienna. - First documented mention 903, from around 1177 seat of a collateral line of the Babenbergs (Heinrich von Mödling, followed by his son of the same name, known as "Duke of Mödling"); 1529 and 1683 destroyed by the Turks, until the 19^th century mainly wine-growing region, since the Vormärz (period between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the Revolution of 1848) popular summer tourist resort and place of residence of Viennese artists (L. van Beethoven, F. Schubert, F. Grillparzer, F. Raimund). Industrial site since the turn of the 18^th to the 19^th century, status of town in 1875. - Medieval town centre with Renaissance houses; impressive late Gothic parish church of St. Othmar, former fortified church (1454-1523), Baroque vaults, early Classicist high altar (1760), important gravestones, flags (18^th century), late Romanesque charnel house decorated with frescoes (beginning of 14^th century), upper floor from 1698; hospital church (1443-1453), Renaissance paintings and epitaphs from the 2^nd half of the 16^th century; Trinity column (1714); Renaissance town hall (1548); duke´s court (15^th century); castle (restored 1812, today a ruin). "Black tower" (1810); Pfefferbüchsl castle ruin (1818) and Amphitheater (1810), both from the Romantic period, now in ruins. Thonetschlößl mansion, today district museum (also houses the folklore museum with Via Sacra pilgrim museum, the sacral museum with mechanical Egerländer Crib, the A. Wildgans House and the A. Schönberg House); former Capuchin monastery (1740) today museum (founded 1898, with finds from early history, Hyrtl Collection, keepsakes of J. Schöffel and L. van Beethoven); public indoor swimming-bath in Bauhaus style by A. Tamussino (1928). In a picturesque ravine with a high limerock (Klausen) lies the village of Vorderbrühl (with refugee camp). Nearby, Kleiner Anninger hill (494 m) with the "Husarentempel" ("Hussar Temple", 1813 built by J. Kornhäusel).

Literature: W. Breitschedl (ed.), Mödling. Landschaft, Kultur und Wirtschaft, 1975; Österreichisches Städtebuch, vol. IV, part 2, Die Städte Niederösterreichs, 1976; E. Kleinert, Das Mödling-Buch, 1989; G. Waldner, Das alte Mödling, 1992.