Around Klagenfurt, Austria : Sicily to Ukraine by camper van part 54

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• published: 01 Dec 2013
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SEE MY MOTORHOME GROUP ON FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/motorhomefulltime Wonderful weather, wonderful scenery, what better place to be than in a camper van travelling through the Austrian Alps at the beginning of June? I left the Rosenthal Strasse (Austrian route B85) in my previous film and am now on the Austrian route 91 as I go over the Loiblpass Strasse, however I could have stayed on the B85 as it more or less ends up in the same place as the route I took. Incidentally this is not the Loiblpass which is further to the south and cuts through the Alps to join Austria with Slovenia. The road takes me through Klagenfurt but this film does not show much of the city. If you want to see Klagenfurt, you have come to the wrong video! Klagenfurt is at 446 metres. It is on the lake Wörthersee and on the Glan River. The city is surrounded by several forest-covered hills and mountains with heights of up to 1,000 m as you can see in this film. Ulrichsberg is the highest. To the south is the Karawanken mountain range, which separates Carinthia from Slovenia and Italy which you can see in the beginning of the film as I turn the van around as well as in other films in this series. The name is quite odd. It appears to me that there is no shortage of linguists in Carinthia who have given all sorts of suggestions. Basically the name in German translates to "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints". Here is one suggestion about where this could come from. A baker's apprentice was accused of theft and executed, but a few days later he was proved to be innocent, the citizens' lamented (= 'Klagen'). This story was reported by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II. Legend has it that Klagenfurt was founded after a couple of men killed the abominable Lindwurm, a winged dragon in the moors adjoining the lake. There is a nine ton Renaissance monument in the city centre. Klagenfurt was founded by the Spanheim Duke Herman as a stronghold on commercial routes. In 1252 the town received a city charter. Klagenfurt suffered fires, earthquakes, invasions of locusts and attacks from Turks, and was ravaged by the Peasants' Wars. In 1514 a fire almost completely destroyed the city, and in 1518 Emperor Maximilian I, unable to rebuild it, ceded Klagenfurt to the nobility. The new owners brought about an economic and cultural renaissance. A canal was dug to connect the city to the lake as a supply route for timber to rebuild the city and to supply the city's new moats. The city was enlarged along a geometrical chequer-board lay-out according to the Renaissance ideas of the Italian architect Domenico dell'Allio; a new city centre square, the Neuer Platz, was constructed; and the new fortifications that took half a century to build made Klagenfurt the strongest fortress north of the Alps until Napoleon destroyed then in 1809. In 1863 the city was connected by railway with an imposing central station which was destroyed in World War II. In 1919, the city was occupied by the Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes which claimed part of Carinthia. In 1920, the Yugoslavs withdrew after the Carinthian Plebiscite in October 1920, when the majority of voters ]decided to remain part of Austria. During World War II, the city was bombed 41 times, killing 612 people, completely destroying 443 buildings, and damaging 1,132 others. 110,000 cubic metres of rubble had to be removed. On 3 May 1945 General Löhr of Army Group E (Heeresgruppe E) declared Klagenfurt an open city. On 8 May 1945, at 9:30 a.m., the British Eighth Army under General McCreery entered Klagenfurt. General Noeldechen surrendered the 438th German Division to Major General Horatius Murray. Three hours later groups of partisans arrived on a train which they had seized in the Rosental valley the day before, and Yugoslav regular forces of the IVth army moved in. They claimed the city with its South Carinthian hinterland and set up a HQ for the Carinthian Military Zone under Major Egon Remec. On 7 May 1945, a committee of locals took power from the Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter Friedrich Rainer. Several days passed before the Yugoslav troops withdrew from the city. Protected by British soldiers, the members of the Provisional State Government took the reins of power. It took months before basic communication and public transport, mail service and supply were working again. Part of the British Eighth Army had their headquarters in Klagenfurt, since Carinthia and Styria formed the British occupation zone in liberated Austria, which lasted until 26 October 1955. In 2007 the city changed its official name to "Klagenfurt am Wörthersee" (Klagenfurt on Lake Wörth). As there are no other settlements by the name of Klagenfurt anywhere, the previous shorter name remains unambiguous.