Bleiburg/Pliberk

History

The area was part of the Liupicdorf estate in the Duchy of Carinthia, which about 1000 Bishop Albuin I of Brixen dedicated to his brother Count Aribo. The oldest surviving document mentioning the town as castrum et forum Pliburch is dated to 1228. The comital estates of Bleiburg Castle were seized by the Habsburg dukes Albert III and Leopold III in 1369, the settlement received town privileges the next year. On 16 March 1393 Duke Albert granted the citizens the right to hold the annual Wiesenmarkt ('meadow market') fair, which has taken place on 1 September every year up to today at least since 1428. In 1601 the castle was ceded to the Thurn-Valsassina comital family, who had it rebuilt in its present Renaissance style and still owns it today, together with the nearby Castle Hagenegg in Eisenkappel-Vellach. Between 1918 and 1920, Bleiburg was occupied by Yugoslav troops. In spite of the overwhelming Slovene majority in the area, the town remained in Austria after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire along national/ethnic lines after the end of World War I. In the Carinthian Plebiscite of 1920, in fact, the inhabitants of southern Carinthia rejected the proposal to unite with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the later Yugoslavia), and chose to remain in Austria. In the constituency of Bleiburg, however, a slim majority of the population (51%) cast its vote for Yugoslavia. In the territory of the present-day municipality of Bleiburg, 59.8% of the voters chose Yugoslavia over Austria. On 15 May 1945, the Independent State of Croatia capitulated to the victorious Yugoslav Army in Bleiburg. It was the initial location of a series of extrajudicial executions during the course of which Partisans killed tens of thousands of Ustaše, Croatian Home Guard,…

Geography

The border town is located in the valley of the Feistritz creek, a right tributary of the Drava, north of the Peca massif of the Karawanks mountain range. It is home to a district court, military barracks and to the local productive and services industry. The name of Bleiburg, literally meaning 'Lead Castle', can be attributed to the lead mining operations in the Peca mountain.

Most-observed species

• Common wall lizard

  Podarcis muralis (Laurenti, 1768) · Squamata
  250
• Japanese oak silk moth

  Antheraea yamamai Guérin-Méneville, 1861 · Insecta
  186
• Common Toad

  Bufo bufo (Linnaeus, 1758) · Amphibia
  161
• Great Crested Grebe

  Podiceps cristatus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  99
• Mute Swan

  Cygnus olor (J.F.Gmelin, 1789) · Aves
  99
• European green lizard

  Lacerta viridis (Laurenti, 1768) · Squamata
  98
• Indian Balsam

  Impatiens glandulifera Royle · Magnoliopsida
  97
• Willow Gentian

  Gentiana asclepiadea L. · Magnoliopsida
  97

Most recent

• M 4 — 2020-07-17
  5 km SSE of Bovec, Slovenia
• M 4.3 — 2015-11-01
  5 km SSW of Brežice, Slovenia
• M 4 — 2015-08-29
  4 km E of Kobarid, Slovenia
• M 3.7 — 2014-05-29
  8 km W of Cerkno, Slovenia
• M 4.4 — 2014-03-13
  9 km E of Ribnica, Slovenia
• M 4 — 2013-06-16
  5 km WSW of Žužemberk, Slovenia