Linz

This article is about the city of Linz in Austria. There is another much smaller Linz in Germany: see Linz, Germany.

Linz is a city and Statutarstadt in northeast Austria, on the Danube river. It is the capital of the state Upper Austria (Oberösterreich). Linz is located at 48°19′ N 14°17′ E. Population 200,000.

History

The city was founded by the Romans, who called it Lentia.

The city was most of the times only a provincial and local government city of the Holy Roman Empire and an important waypoint between several trade routes, spanning the river Danube from the west to the east and Czechoslovakia and Poland from north to the Balkans and Italy to the south.

Being the city where the Hapsburg Emperor Friedrich III spend his last years, it was for a short period of time the most important city of the empire. It lost its status, however back to Vienna and Prague, after the death of the emperor in 1493.

Another important milestone of the city was Johannes Kepler, who spent several years of his life as a local mathematician in this city. There he discovered on May 15, 1618 the distance-cubed-over-time-squared (or 'third') law of planetary motion (he first made the discovery on March 8 but rejected the idea for a while). Kepler is the namesake of the local public university, the only one in Austria that embraces the campus system.

The third milestone of the city was Anton Bruckner, who spent the years of 1855-1868 working as a local composer and church organist in this city. The local concert hall and a local private music and arts university are named after him.

Near Linz, in the town of Leonding, the parents of Adolf Hitler were buried. Adolf Hitler himself went to school ("Fadingergymnasium") in Linz, but left before finishing it, and instead went to a school in Steyr (Upper Austria).

During World War II, Linz became a major industrial area, manufacturing chemicals and steel for the Nazi war machine. Many of these factories had been dismantled in the newly acquired Czechoslovakia, and reassembled in Linz. After the war, the river Danube that runs through the eastern most portion of Linz, separating the Urfahr district in the north from the rest of Linz, served as the border between the American and Russian occupation troops.

The Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex, the last Nazi concentration camp to close, is located mostly around Linz, with the main camp in Mauthausen just 30 kilometres away.

Economy

Linz today is still an industrial city. The VOEST ALPINE a rather large steel mill (Founded as "Hermann Göring Werke" during WWII, famous for the LD- ("Linz- Donawitz") procedure for the production of steel) and the former "Chemie Linz" a chemical group, now split up in several companies, made Linz to one of Austria's most important economical centers. The city itself is not signed by these heavy industries.

Sights

The main street "Landstrasse" leads from the "Blumauerplatz" to the main square. In the middle of this square the high "Pestsäule" ("plague monument", also known as "Dreifaltigkeitssäule") was built to remember the people who died in the plague epidemics.

Near the castle, which is located at the same place as the old roman fortress Lentia once was built, being the former seat of Friedrich the III, the oldest Austrian church is located – the Martins church. It was built during the early medieval carolingian times.

Other sights include:

• St. Mary's Cathedral (Mariendom), Roman Catholic
• Pöstlingberg-Kirche

Culture

The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 36 (1783) in Linz for a concert to be given there, and the work is today known as the Linz Symphony. The first version of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 1 in C minor is known as the Linz version.

The city is now home to a vibrant music and arts scene that is well-funded by the city and the state of Upper Austria.

Ars Electronica Center on the north bank of the Danube (in the Urfahr district), across from the Alt Stadt is home to one of the few public 3D CAVEs in Europe (the very first 3D CAVE world-wide that was publicly accessible) and attracts a large gathering of technologically oriented artists every year for the Ars Electronica Festival.

Recently built (2003) was the new modern art gallery called "Lentos". It is situated on the banks of the river Danube. The building can be illuminated in blue, pink and violet at night.

Colleges and universities

At the northern outskirts of Linz, the local public university can be found (The Johannes Kepler University), which hosts law, business, social sciences, engineering, and science faculties and currently has c. 11,000 students. A spinoff of the university as well as a Fachhochschule (polytechnic) can be found 20 miles north of linz in the small town of Hagenberg. There are also three other universities in Linz:

• University of Arts and Industrial Design Linz, public, for arts and industrial design (c. 800 students)
• Anton Bruckner Private University for Music, Drama, and Dance, private, for music (c. 800 students)
• Catholic-Theological Private University Linz, private, for Catholic theology (c. 400 students), a Papal faculty since 1978

Miscellaneous

Linz is twinned with:

• Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, since 1995
• Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, since 1987
• Chengdu, China, since 1983
• Gabès, Tunisia, since 1977
• Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, since 1975
• Kansas City, Kansas, United States, since 1988
• Kwangyang, South Korea, since 1991
• Linköping, Sweden, since 1995
• Linz am Rhein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, since 1987
• Modena, Italy, since 1992
• Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, since 1993
• Norrköping, Sweden, since 1995
• San Carlos, Nicaragua, since 1988
• Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, since 1983
• Tampere, Finland, since 1995

External links

• http://www.linz.at/ (in German)
• Travel guide to Linz from Wikitravel
• Johannes Kepler University Linz (German only)
• University of Arts and Industrial Design Linz
• Anton Bruckner Private University for Music, Drama, and Dance (German only)
• Catholic-Theological Private University Linz (German only)