Lichtenwörth

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Lichtenwörth is a small market town in Lower Austria, Austria. It lies by the rivers Leitha and Warme Fischa, near Wiener Neustadt. The town has a kindergarten, an elementary school, a high school, and a music school. It covers about 23 square kilometers and has around 2,700 residents.

History: The town is first mentioned in 1174. In the 12th century a water castle was built there, but it was destroyed at the end of the 15th century. In 1747, under Empress Maria Theresa, the needle factory Nadelburg began. It later expanded with a cotton mill in the early 1800s, and a workers’ settlement grew around the factories. The Nadelburg closed in 1930 and today it is a museum. Lichtenwörth became a market town in 1992.

During World War II, Lichtenwörth had a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Mostly Jewish women were forced to march here from Budapest. The conditions were brutal, and more than 300 people died from malnutrition and typhus.

Local government: The town council has 21 members from four parties (as of the 2020 elections).