Town History 
According to legend, Saint Vitus, the Catholic patron saint who gives the town its name, is said to have come from Sicily and to have been martyred together with his tutor Modestus and his nurse Crescentia in Rome under the Emperor Diocletian. One of his emblems, the oil cauldron, forms part of the city arms of St. Veit.
Owing to a lack of reliable sources, it is only possible to guess at the origins of the town of
St. Veit is first mentioned in a document in 1131, drawn up during the establishment of the parish of the Diocese of Gurk, whose southern border follows the line of the road which ran “per medium ville Sancti Viti”. It has been possible to refute the assumption that St. Veit was one of the estates owned by the Bambergs in Carinthia:
Wadl confirms that the town remained clearly connected to the Dukes of Spanheim without any interruption. In 1149, Duke Heinrich V received King Konrad III, who was returning from a crusade, in St. Veit. In 1174, the same Duke presided over a one-day court of law in St. Veit. This important act of sovereignty would certainly never have taken place in St. Veit if the town had not already been in the possession of the Duke at this time.
The close relationship with the Spanheims was decisive in the rapid rise of the town. Under Duke Ulrich II, the Duke’s kitchen and a barn belonging to him in St. Veit are mentioned in a document of 1199. A whole series of ducal civil servants are also listed in documents of the late 12th century for the first time. Under Duke Bernhard, those dynasties which stood in a close relation with the Dukes of Spanheim, namely the Osterwitz, Kraiger and Karlsberg families, are named for the first time as the occupants of posts at court – cupbearers, stewards and marshals. The far-reaching family relationships of the Spanheims (who originally came from the Rhineland), which extended as far as Bohemia and Hungary, were the reason for the worldwide cultural contacts of the ducal family. As well as travelling minstrels like Walther von der Vogelweide and Ulrich von Lichtenstein, literature was cultivated by native poets too, such as Heinrich von dem Türlin, a citizen of St. Veit. He is regarded as the composer of the courtly romance “Der Aventiure Crone”, which was composed between 1215 and 1230. The romance relates the adventures of Sir Gawain of Arthur’s court on his search for the Holy Grail. Heinrich was either a citizen of St. Veit or presumably occupied the post of chancellery official or minister at the court of Duke Bernhard.
St. Veit was first designated a town in 1224. However, St. Veit cannot be described as a fixed residence of the provincial ruler, as Duke Bernhard spent most of the period of his rule in the retinue of the German emperors and kings.
In 1252, a document mentions other ducal castles besides St. Veit, namely those in Völkermarkt and Klagenfurt. Duke Ulrich (1256 – 1269) transferred the focus of his activities to Krain, However, St. Veit remained his preferred place of residence in Carinthia. The town was not only of strategic but also economic importance for the Dukes. Particularly worthy of mention are the ducal toll and mint, whose oldest coin designs originate from as far back as the last decades of the 12th century. Thus, the first coin bearing a German inscription is a St. Veit penny minted at the court of Duke Bernhard.
Regional capital
At the end of the Spanheim period, Carinthia became a subsidiary province of ducal families who were not resident in the region. Of the governors who were now sent to St. Veit, Ludwig, the son of Duke Meinhard II of Görz-Tyrol, was taken prisoner in 1292 in a conspiracy of Count Ulrich von Heunburg in connection with the Salzburg Archbishop, in which St. Veit citizens also assisted. After the suppression of the revolt at the battle at Wallersberg (1293), not only the noble-born conspirators, but also the St. Veit citizen Konrad von dem Türlin was executed in the main town square. The St. Veit Trabant Guard has probably also existed since that time; it was presumably set up for the Duke’s protection, later enjoying the special favour of the Habsburgs, and today plays a ceremonial role on festive occasions.
Meinhard’s sons, who ruled Carinthia together from 1295 onwards, held a big courtly gathering in St. Veit in 1299, whose magnificence was described in detail by the Abbot-historian Johann von Viktring. In 1294, the administration of Carinthia was transferred to the Provincial Governor Konrad von Auffenstein who had moved there from Tyrol. He acquired extensive estates in Carinthia and, as the founder of the Convent of St. Clare, also played a very important role in the history of St. Veit.
After the death of Duke Heinrich, who died without a male heir in 1335, the Habsburgs managed to gain the enfeoffment of the Duchy of Carinthia from Kaiser Ludwig. As a result, the Habsburgs attached great importance to St. Veit, extended the rights of the town and decisively furthered its development by granting it new commercial prerogatives.
As Carinthia was only a relatively insignificant subsidiary province of the Habsburgs, from 1335 onwards the ruler of the province only stayed in St. Veit in exceptional circumstances. However, his absence furthered the complete development of the sovereign provincial authorities, which had already come into being in the 13th century. As their seat, St. Veit became the centre of administration, and from 1450 onwards St. Veit was also designated in documents as the provincial capital.
As an economically-flourishing and up-and-coming location, the town attracted immigrants for centuries. Whereas these were Northern Italians and Tyroleans at the time of the Dukes of Tyrol, in the 15th century wealthy citizens from Upper German towns moved there, such as the Gleismüllners und Kaltenhausers, who originally came from Nuremberg and amassed great wealth in St. Veit as mining entrepreneurs and wholesale merchants.
Conflicts with the nobles
In the course of the 15th century, conflicts repeatedly arose between the self-confident citizens of St. Veit and the Carinthian nobles, and these again reached a crisis point in 1516, when the citizens refused to allow corporative mercenary troops, who had been summoned to crush a peasant uprising at Krappfeld, to enter the town. The infuriated provincial rulers now sought to gain possession of a town of their own, and so Klagenfurt, which had just been destroyed by a conflagration and seemed to suit the purpose, was handed over to the Carinthian rulers by Kaiser Maximilian on 24th April 1518, with the simultaneous abolition of all the civic liberties which it had hitherto enjoyed, This endowment started a process in the course of which Klagenfurt was allocated ever more of those functions which belonged to a capital city. However, even as late as 1523 the armoury of the provincial ruler was built, not in Klagenfurt, but in St. Veit. In1599, Ferdinand II summoned the Regional Parliament in the old ducal town of St. Veit, even though the newly-constructed parliament building in Klagenfurt was already available for the purpose. Up to 1529, and then again between 1622 and 1747, St. Veit had the right to mint and issue coins. Not until 1754 did the Empress Maria Theresia command that the main shops of some guilds, which were still located in St. Veit, should be moved to Klagenfurt because the central representative bodies for each trade had to be based in the capital of the province.
Construction of the railway
The gradual loss of the functions belonging to a capital city from 1518 onwards had no serious consequences for the commercial life of the town: the town was able to retain its commercial privileges right up to the last quarter of the 18th century. It was the loss of the iron-trading privileges in 1781 which first led to the rapid impoverishment of the town, where only 1509 people were still living in 1847. The traditional industries in the south of the town, the paper mills from the 16th century and the white lead factory founded in 1801, decayed in the course of the 19th century. The elevation of the town to district capital, and the resulting arrival of well-to-do officials brought an economic upturn. The St. Veit economy received a further boost thanks to the construction of the railway, which led to a dramatic rise in the population. With the expansion of railway facilities with workshops, shunting yards and boiler houses, St. Veit became a “railway workers’ town”. The laying of the railway line and the construction of the new main railway station in 1912 were decisive steps for the town.
In the twenties, the town saw the building of saw mills, which guided its economic development in a new direction.
In the local elections of 1920, the Social Democrats achieved a clear absolute majority and henceforth appointed the mayor. Following the murder of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, Nazi insurgents occupied some parts of the town on 26th July 1934. The corporative state regime enjoyed little public support in St. Veit and its functionary levels were infiltrated by illegal Nazis.
Soon after the Nazis seized power in March 1938, some St. Veit railway workers formed an anti-fascist resistance group, whose members were condemned to death in show trials. A memorial plaque at the main railway station pays tribute to the executed railway workers.
As a railway intersection point, St. Veit became a target of Allied bomber squadrons from 16th October 1944 to 12th April 1945. The railway facilities were severely damaged and the Funder fibre-board factory was almost completely destroyed. The Funder factory was reconstructed in the early fifties and was able to resume operations in 1953. In recent times, it has been brought up to a cutting-edge technological standard. In addition, two more works have been built, one of them in St. Veit, designed by the renowned “Coop Himmelblau” Wieder architectural group. It is currently the most modern factory in Carinthia.
Following the end of Nazi rule, there was a conscious desire to link up to the political structures which had existed before the overthrow of democracy. The Regional Government of Carinthia ordered the establishment of temporary local authorities that were to be composed in accordance with the results of the last election in 1932, which meant a clear Social Democratic majority for St. Veit and a Social Democratic mayor.
The modern town
In recent times, the town council has sought to introduce initiatives aimed at improving the municipal infrastructure and revitalising the old part of the town.
The town centre with its exquisite facades has been redesigned to create a pedestrian precinct, lavishly decorated with flowers. In 1999, St. Veit was awarded the “Entente Florale” silver medal in Augsburg, as the second most beautiful flower town in Europe.
Through renewing the paving of individual streets of houses and roofing over the Town Hall courtyard and the Herzog-Bernhard-Platz Square (formerly called “Klagenfurter Strasse”), it is hoped to further enhance the attractiveness of the town centre, which is encircled by the old town walls. In the immediate area, multi-storey car parks have been constructed flanking the centre. Additional facilities, such as a therapy centre, two indoor tennis centres and an indoor & outdoor pool, with the most attractive sauna landscape in Carinthia, are likewise aimed at increasingly enhancing the town’s image.
In the environmental sector, the drain system has been completed (the rural areas have also been connected up to the drain network), and highly-efficient compost works have been constructed to process the organic waste.
The construction of the “Ernst-Fuchs-Palast” seminar hotel in Friesacher Strasse, in the immediate area of the city centre, has brought a further enhancement of the town’s image. It was possible to engage the services of the world-famous artist Ernst Fuchs, a celebrated exponent of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, to design the facade and the inner rooms.
The construction of an 18-hole golf course in St. Veit – Lake Längsee, as well as the construction of a Blumenhotel (“Flower Hotel”) with 220 beds next to the Klosterkirche (Minster), has made it possible to create additional tourist attractions.
