Weitra is a small town

Town

A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...

 in the district of Gmünd

Gmünd (district)

Bezirk Gmünd is a district of the state ofLower Austria in Austria. It is located in northwestern Waldviertel.-Municipalities:Towns are indicated in boldface; market towns in italics; suburbs, hamlets and other subdivisions of a municipality are indicated in small...

 in the Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n state of Lower Austria

Lower Austria

Lower Austria is the northeasternmost state of the nine states in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria since 1986 is Sankt Pölten, the most recently designated capital town in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria had formerly been Vienna, even though Vienna is not officially part of Lower Austria...

. It is located within the rural Waldviertel

Waldviertel

The Waldviertel is the northwestern region of the Austrian state Lower Austria. It is bounded to the south by the Danube, to the southwest by Upper Austria, to the northwest and the north by the Czech Republic and to the east by the Manhartsberg , which is the survey point dividing Waldviertel...

 region on the upper Lužnice (Lainsitz) river, near the border with the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

. The municipality consists of the Katastralgemeinde

Katastralgemeinde

A Katastralgemeinde , a German word , is a cadastral subdivision of municipalities in the nations of Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Italian provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino, Gorizia, Trieste, and in Slovenia.A cadastral community records property ownership in a cadastre,...

n Brühl, Großwolfgers, Oberwindhag, Reinprechts, Spital, St. Wolfgang, Sulz, Walterschlag, Weitra and Wetzles.

The first castle of Weitra was established in 1201 by the Austrian

Archduchy of Austria

The Archduchy of Austria , one of the most important states within the Holy Roman Empire, was the nucleus of the Habsburg Monarchy and the predecessor of the Austrian Empire...

 Kuehnring noble family, which fell from grace with the rise of the Habsburg dynasty, as they had sided with Ottokar II Přemysl

Ottokar II of Bohemia

Ottokar II , called The Iron and Golden King, was the King of Bohemia from 1253 until 1278. He was the Duke of Austria , Styria , Carinthia and Carniola also....

. Duke Albert I of Austria

Albert I of Germany

Albert I of Habsburg was King of the Romans and Duke of Austria, the eldest son of German King Rudolph I of Habsburg and his first wife Gertrude of Hohenburg.-Life:...

 acquired Weitra in 1296, it was held as a fief by the princely House of Fürstenberg

Fürstenberg (princely family)

Fürstenberg is the name of a noble house in Germany, based primarily in southern Baden-Württemberg. The family derives its name from the fortified town of the line's founder, Count Heinrich von Fürstenberg, today part of Hüfingen...

 from the early 17th century. They left a Renaissance

Renaissance architecture

Renaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance...

 castle erected on mediæval foundations, which has later been rebuilt in a Baroque

Baroque architecture

Baroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...

 design.

Beside its historic textile industry, Weitra is known as the oldest beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

-producing site in Austria with several breweries documented since the 14th century. After World War II the economy suffered from the town's peripheral location near the Iron Curtain

Iron Curtain

The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...

.

Politics

Seats in the municipal council (Gemeinderat) as of 2005 elections:

• Austrian People's Party
  Austrian People's Party
  The Austrian People's Party is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Austria. A successor to the Christian Social Party of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is similar to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in terms of ideology...
  
   (ÖVP): 13
• Social Democratic Party of Austria
  Social Democratic Party of Austria
  The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...
  
   (SPÖ): 5
• WIR (Independent
  Independent (politician)
  In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do...
  
  ): 3

Notable people

Klara Hitler

Klara Hitler

Klara Hitler née Pölzl was an Austrian woman, the wife of Alois Hitler and the mother of Adolf Hitler.-Family background and marriage:...

, mother of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

, was born on 12 August 1860 in the hamlet of Spital.