Steyr, Austria

Steyr is a town (population 39,495 as of 2001) in the Austrian federal state of Upper Austria, located on the Enns river. It has long been a manufacturing center, and has given its name to several manufacturers headquartered there, such as Steyr Mannlicher (a firearms manufacturer known for the Steyr AUG), Steyr Tractor, and Steyr Automobile.

Home of Museum Industrielle Arbeitswelt (museum of industrial workspace).

The city marked its 1,000th anniversary in 1980, receiving a good deal of "sprucing up" of its older sections. The city is famous for its "Stadplatz" or town square, which has been very well preserved for several hundred years, and which was largely restored following World War II. Its best-known piece of architecture is called The Bummerlhaus, which was built in 1497 and is considered one of the finest pieces of Gothic architecture for its size in Central Europe. The city is very attractively sited, with two rivers the Steyr and the Enns flowing through it and meeting in the town centre where the confluence is towered over by an old Babenberg castle and the church of St. Michael. To the south of city rise a series of hills that climb in altitude and stretch out to the Alps. To the north, the hills roll downward towards the confluence of the Enns and Danube rivers, where the large industrial city of Linz is situated.

Historically, the city has had a number of well-known residents or visitors, including Franz Schubert who wrote his "Trout Quintet" there while on holidays, composer Anton Bruckner, who was also the organist for the local parish church and a moody high school kid named Adolf Hitler, who spent a brief period there while in his teens.

In 1934, the city became one of several battlegrounds between Social Democrat and Christian Social Parties (and their respective Schutzbund and Heimwehr militias) in the brief civil war that brought about the fascist corporate state that ruled the country until the German Anschluss in 1938.

Because it was such a major producer of arms and vehicles during the Second World War, Steyr became a target of Allied bombing raids which tried to knock out its factories. Much of the town was badly damaged, but the factories continued to function until near the end of the war. The city was a meeting point in May 1945 when units of the Soviet Army and black troops of the US 761st Armoured Regiment contacted each other on the bridge over the Enns River. The city continued to be occupied -- divided, like Berlin -- by Soviet and American troops until 1955 when Austria was declared a neutral country and the occupiers left.

Steyr is an ancient city with modern amenities, very beautiful but which lives in the present rather than trading on its past, like Vienna and many other more heavily-touristed areas in Austria.