Lower Austria Overview

Lower Austria, with 19,186 km ² the largest federal state in Austria with (2017) 1.67 million residents (around 19% of the Austrian population), is located in the northeast of the country (on both sides of the Danube) and thus borders the Czech Republic in the north and in the north-east to the Slovak Republic; in the southeast borders of Lower Austria to the Burgenland, on the south by Styria and on the west by Upper Austria. In the central east lies Vienna (until 1997 the administrative seat of Lower Austria), which forms a separate federal state; The state capital has been Sankt Pölten since July 10, 1986(since 1997 also the seat of the state government). Lower Austria consists of 20 political districts, 4 cities with their own statutes and 573 municipalities (including 76 municipalities and 327 market municipalities).

Law

According to the state constitution of 1979 (amended several times), the state parliament (56 members, each elected for 5 years according to proportional representation) exercises the legislation and elects the nine-member state government, headed by the governor. The citizens of the country and the municipalities are granted the right of initiative, objection and complaint.

Flag and coat of arms: According to hyperrestaurant, the flag consists of two equally wide stripes horizontally blue over gold. In the middle is the state coat of arms. – The coat of arms (proven since 1335) has been regarded as the coat of arms of “Old Austria” since around 1360, and since 1805 it has been related to Austria under the Enns. Five golden eagles lie on a blue background, the upper ones facing each other, the lower one heraldically looking to the right. A golden crown has been resting on the shield since 1920.

Country nature

In the northwest, in the Waldviertel, Lower Austria has a share in the granite and gneiss highlands of the Bohemian Massif, which occurs in the Neustadtler Platte and in the Dunkelsteiner Wald also south of the Danube, which is why the Danube formed the narrow valley stretches of Strudengau and Wachau. The Weinviertel in the northeast is a tertiary, partly loess-covered hill country, which is traversed by a limestone cliff zone (Rohrwald, Leiser Berge, Galgenberg) in a south-southwest-north-northeast direction and in the south with a steep edge (Wagram) to the Tullnerfeld and the Marchfeld, embankment plains formed from glacial and fluvial gravel, falls away. South of the Danube, Lower Austria has a share in the Alpine foothills, the Northern Limestone Alps, here the Styrian-Lower Austrian Limestone Alps (with the highest elevation in Lower Austria, 2,076 m above sea level, the monastery coat of arms of the Schneeberg), and the flysch zone in between, the greater width in the Vienna Woods and occurs in the Bisamberg also north of the Danube. The Vienna Basin (with the Steinfeld) forms the south-east of Lower Austria and then the hill country to the south Hunchback world.

Lower Austria: administrative structure

Climate: The spatial proximity of low mountain ranges, hill countries and plains characterizes the climatic conditions in this transition area from a more oceanic climate in the west to the Pannonian variant of the continental climate in the east. While the Waldviertel and the western foothills of the Alps receive 800–1,500 mm of precipitation annually, the Kalkhochalpen even more than 2,000 mm, the Weinviertel, Marchfeld and the Vienna Basin suffer from drought (in places only 600 mm of precipitation annually). The last-mentioned room is also the warmest part of Lower Austria (summer mean 19 ° C).

Population

The settlement density is very different. The greatest density occurs around Vienna, where suburbanization extends far to the north, which has led to a rapid population increase here in recent years. A chain of settlements was created on the eastern edge of the Alps from Vienna via Mödling and Baden to Wiener Neustadt. The formation of a central area around Sankt Pölten – Krems an der Donau took place with the expansion (from 1991) of Sankt Pölten to the state capital. Waldviertel and Weinviertel, on the other hand, are extremely rural settlement areas (migration areas). The rural settlements in northern Lower Austria are mostly closed villages with three-sided, stretched and hooked farms; The foothills of the Alps, the foothills of the Alps and the Bucklige Welt are characterized by scattered settlements with four-sided courtyards, the south-east by planned street villages.

Religion: The last census to collect data on religious affiliation was in 2001. At that time over 79% of the population were Catholic and around 3.3% Protestant. Since then, only the number of members of individual religious communities can be used as a basis. The Catholic population of Lower Austria is ecclesiastically administered in part by the Archdiocese of Vienna (2015: a total of 1,223,131 members; according to official statistics [2014], just under 650,000 Catholics in the city of Vienna are to be accounted for) and in part by the Diocese of Sankt Pölten (2015: a total of 506,415 members). The Protestant Christians belong to the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg and Helvetic Confessions in Austria. The number of Muslims living in Lower Austria was almost 76,000 in 2012 (source: statista).