Graz : Austria
Graz [gra?ts] (Slovenian: Gradec), with a population of 305,000 (council census 2000) is the second-largest city in Austria and the capital of the province of Styria (Steiermark in German). It has a long tradition as a student city, with four Universities and two Universities of Applied Sciences with over 50,000 students. During Graz’s brief Lutheran phase, Eggenberg founded the Paradies or Lutheran school in 1540, in which Johannes Kepler later taught.
The city is situated on the Mur river, in the southeast of Austria. Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria had 20,000 Protestant books burned in the square of what is now a mental hospital, and succeeded in returning Styria to the authority of Rome. Nikola Tesla studied electrical engineering at the Polytechnic in Graz in 1875. Nobel Laureate Otto Loewi taught at the university from 1909 until 1938. Erwin Schrdinger was briefly chancellor of the University of Graz in 1936. Soon thereafter, a small concentration camp was set up nearby (a sub-camp of Mauthausen) and Schrdinger fled.
The name Graz is derived from the Slovenian word for castle, grad; gradec, pronounced gradets, means “small castle”. Graz was built around the Schlossberg. The first mention of it under its present name is in a document of A.D. 881, after which its stronghold became the residence of the rulers of the surrounding district, known later as Styria. The privileges of its ancient charter were confirmed by the Habsburg Rudolph I in 1281. With a strategic location at the head of the open and fertile Mur valley, Graz was often assaulted (unsuccessfully), e.g. by the Hungarians under Matthias Corvinus in 1481, and by the Ottoman Turks in 1529 and 1532.
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