District (Austria)

In Austrian politics, a district (German: Bezirk) is a second-level division of the executive arm of the country's government. District offices are the primary point of contact between resident and state for most acts of government that exceed municipal purview: marriage licenses, driver licenses, passports, assembly permits, hunting permits, or dealings with public health officers for example all involve interaction with the district administrative authority (Bezirksverwaltungsbehörde).

Austria's 94 current districts. Statutory cities in red.

Austrian constitutional law distinguishes two types of district administrative authority:

• district commissions (Bezirkshauptmannschaften), district administrative authorities that exist as stand-alone bureaus;
• statutory cities (Städte mit eigenem Statut or Statutarstädte), cities that have been vested with district administration functions in addition to their municipal responsibilities, i.e. district administrative authorities that only exist as a secondary role filled by something that primarily is a city (marked in the table with an asterisk (*).

As of 2017, there are 94 districts, of which 79 are districts headed by district commissions and 15 are statutory cities. Many districts are geographically congruent with one of the country's 114 judicial venues.

Statutory cities are not usually referred to as "districts" outside government publications and the legal literature. For brevity, government agencies will sometimes use the term "rural districts" (Landbezirke) for districts headed by district commissions, although the expression does not appear in any law and many "rural districts" are not very rural.

District commissions

A district headed by a district commission typically covers somewhere between ten and thirty municipalities. As a purely administrative unit, a district does not hold elections and therefore does not choose its own officials. The district governor (Bezirkshauptmann) is appointed by the provincial governor; the district civil servants are province employees.

In the provincial laws of Lower Austria and Vorarlberg, districts headed by district commissions are called administrative districts (Verwaltungsbezirke). In Burgenland, Carinthia, Salzburg, Styria, Upper Austria, and Tyrol, the term used is political district (politischer Bezirk). National law, including national constitutional law, uses all three variants interchangeably. [note 1]

Statutory cities

Main article: Statutory city (Austria)

A statutory city is a city vested with both municipal and district administrative responsibility.[4] Town hall personnel also serves as district personnel; the mayor also discharges the powers and duties of a head of district commission. City management thus functions both as a regional government and a branch of the national government at the same time.

Most of the 15 statutory cities are major regional population centers with residents numbering in the tens of thousands. The smallest statutory city is barely more than a village, but owes its status to a quirk of history: Rust, Burgenland, current population 1900 (2017), has enjoyed special autonomy since it was made a royal free city by the Kingdom of Hungary in 1681; its privilege was grandfathered into the district system when Hungary ceded the region (later called Burgenland) to Austria in 1921.

The constitution stipulates that a community with at least 20,000 residents can demand to be elevated to statutory city status by its respective province, unless the province can demonstrate this would jeopardize regional interests, or unless the national government objects. The last community to have invoked this right is Wels, a statutory city since 1964. As of 2014, ten other communities are eligible but not interested.

The statutory city of Vienna, a community with well over 1.8 million residents, is divided into 23 municipal districts (Gemeindebezirke). Despite the similar name and the comparable role they fill, municipal districts have a different legal basis than districts. The statutory cities of Graz and Klagenfurt also have subdivisions referred to as "municipal districts," but these are merely neighborhood-size divisions of the city administration.[5][6]

Naming quirks

Austria strictly speaking does not name districts but district administrative authorities. The German term for "district commission" and "city," Bezirkshauptmannschaft and Stadt, respectively, is part of the official proper name of each such entity. This means that there can be pairs of districts whose two proper names contain the same toponym. Several such pairs do in fact exist. There are, for example, two district administrative authorities sharing the toponym Innsbruck: the (statutory) city of Innsbruck and the Innsbruck district commission.

To avoid confusion, the names of the rural districts in these pairs are commonly rendered with the suffix -Land, in this context roughly meaning "region." The customary name for the city of Innsbruck is Innsbruck, the customary name for the district headed by the Innsbruck district commission is Innsbruck-Land. While this usage is nearly universal both in the media and in everyday spoken German and even appears in the occasional government publication, the suffix -Land is not part of any official, legal designation.

History

Austrian Empire

Voitsberg District district border sign

From the middle ages until the mid-eighteenth century, the Austrian Empire was an absolute monarchy with no written constitution and no modern concept of the rule of law. [7] [8] Provinces were ruled by the monarch, usually the emperor himself or a vassal of the emperor, supported by their personal advisors and the estates of the realm. The precise nature of the relationship between ruler and estates was different from region to region. Regional administrators were appointed by the monarch and answerable to the monarch. The first step towards modern bureaucracy was taken by Empress Maria Theresa, who in 1753 imposed an empire-wide system of district offices (Kreisämter). A major break with tradition, the system was unpopular at first; "in some provinces considerable resistance had to be overcome." The district offices never became fully operational in the Kingdom of Hungary.[9]

Following the first wave of the revolutions of 1848, Emperor Ferdinand I and his minister of the interior, Franz Xaver von Pillersdorf, enacted Austria's first formal constitution. The constitution completely abolished the estates and called for a separation of executive and judicial authority, immediately crippling most existing regional institutions and leaving district offices as the backbone of the empire's administration. Ferdinand having been forced to abdicate by a second wave of revolutions, his successor Franz Joseph I swiftly went to work transforming Austria from a constitutional monarchy back into an absolute one but kept relying on district offices at first. In fact, he strengthened the system. His March Constitution retained the separation of judiciary and executive. It prescribed a partition of the empire into judicial venues, with courts to be headed by professional judges, and a separate partition into administrative districts, to be headed by professional civil servants. An 1849 Imperial Resolution fleshed out the details.[1] The districts started functioning in 1850, many of them already in their present-day borders.

The March Constitution was never fully implemented and formally scrapped in 1851.[10] Officially returning to full autocracy, the Emperor abolished the separation of powers. Administrative districts were merged with judicial venues; district administrative authorities with district courts. [11] Intellectuals aside, few objections were raised. The bulk of the population was still living and working on manorial lands and was still used to the lord of the manor being head of some form of manorial court.

Cisleithania

Following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Franz Joseph was forced to assent to the December Constitution, a set of five of Basic Laws that restored constitutional monarchy in Cisleithania. One of these Basic Laws, in particular, restored the separation of judiciary and executive.[12] Pursuant to this stipulation, the merger of administrative and judicial districts was reversed the following year;[2] the law in question established the districts in essentially their modern form. No attempt was made this time to impose the scheme on Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary was now a separate country, fully independent in every respect save defense and international relations, and neither needed nor wanted to copy civil administration policies enacted in Vienna.

No significant changes were made between the 1868 restoration and the 1918 collapse of the Habsburg monarchy. Vienna was growing significantly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, absorbing dozens of suburbs. Three districts disappeared between 1891 and 1918 due to their domains being incorporated into the imperial capital wholesale. Two other districts lost parts of their territories to Vienna. Eleven new districts were carved out of existing districts between 1891 and 1918 due to general population growth.

First Republic

Following the collapse of the monarchy, the 1920 constitution of the First Austrian Republic retained the district system.[13] At least one of the principal framers, Karl Renner, had suggested to endow districts with county-like elected councils and some degree of legislative authority, but could not gain consensus for this idea.

The 1920 constitution characterizes Austria as a federal republic and its provinces as quasi-sovereign federated states. A 1925 constitutional reform, a broad revision of general devolutionary tendency, transformed districts from divisions of the national executive into divisions of the new "state" executives.[14][15] The replanting had virtually no practical consequences; enforcing national law and handling applications to the national government remain every district's main activities. Province governments have the authority to redraw district boundaries but can neither create nor dissolve districts, nor change how they work, without the assent of the cabinet.[16]

In 1921, Hungary ceded Burgenland to Austria. While part of the Kingdom of Hungary, the rural border region had been partitioned into seven wards (Oberstuhlrichterämter), clusters of small towns and villages headed by a magistrate who served as both the district judge and the supervisor of the local administrators. Austria simply transformed the seven wards into seven new districts. The region also included two royal free cities, Eisenstadt and Rust; these were made into statutory cities, thus also becoming districts.

Land Österreich

With the March 1938 annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, Austria initially became a state (Land) of the German Reich. In May, Vienna was expanded to create Greater Vienna (Groß-Wien), absorbing another four districts. Two weakly populated rural districts were discontinued as well. In October, Burgenland was dissolved, its northern half being attached to Lower Austria and its southern half to Styria. [17]

Between May 1939 and March 1940, Austria was dissolved. Its eight remaining provinces became seven Reichsgaue, answerable not to Vienna but directly to Berlin. Several statutory cities lost their special status and were incorporated into the respectively adjacent rural districts; the city of Krems on the other hand was promoted to district status. The districts otherwise remained intact, but they were now German Kreise instead of Austrian Bezirke.

Second Republic

Reborn with the downfall of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Republic of Austria immediately restored the administrative structure torn down between 1938 and 1940, putting the districts back in place. The only exception were the districts that had been absorbed into Vienna.

Austria had been divided into four occupation zones and jointly occupied by the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and France. Lower Austria, the region surrounding Vienna, was part of the Soviet zone. The capital itself was considered too valuable to be left to any one power and was, just like Berlin, separately divided into four sectors. In drafting their plans, the allies worked from the city's pre-1938 borders. The Nazi expansion of Vienna, however, had made some sense. A number of rural areas incorporated into Greater Vienna were inimical. Most of Lower Austria had been leaning conservative to nationalist for a century; Vienna had been a bastion of Social Democracy for decades. The bureaucracy steering Vienna, a city of industry and finance, was sociologically distant from the agricultural countryside. Some of the suburbs affected, however, had long had much closer ties to the capital than to the rest of their former province, both socially and in terms of infrastructure. Permanently ejecting these suburbs from Vienna would have been inadvisable. Reaffirming the Nazi border changes either entirely or in part, on the other hand, would have led to demarcation discrepancies between Austrian and allied administrative divisions. Disputes regarding communal debt added to the problem.

Hotly contested between the Social Democrats dominating Vienna and the People's Party ruling Lower Austria, the question was not resolved until 1954. One of the traditional districts annexed by the city in 1938 was restored. Parts of several other traditional districts annexed were united to form a second new district.

In 1964, the city of Wels was elevated to statutory city status.

Two other new districts were established in 1969 and 1982, respectively.

Effective January 1, 2012, Styria merged the districts of Judenburg and Knittelfeld to form the Murtal district. The merger was part of program aimed at streamlining the regional bureaucracy. On January 1, 2013, three more mergers followed: Bruck was merged with Mürzzuschlag, Hartberg with Fürstenfeld, and Feldbach with Radkersburg.[18] Effective January 1, 2017, Lower Austria split the districts of Wien-Umgebung into parts which were merged with the districts of Bruck an der Leitha, Korneuburg, Sankt Pölten and Tulln.

List of current districts

The suffixes -Land and Umgebung is not part of the official name of any of the districts using it. In cases where a statutory city and a rural district share the same toponym, the rural district has -Land or Umgebung attached to its name as a matter of customary usage to avoid ambiguity (officially not in Lower Austria). All 13 of these rural districts have their administrative centers located in the respective statutory cities, thus outside of the districts themselves.

Code	District	Established	License plate	Administrative seat	Population 2014
101	Eisenstadt *	1921	E	–	13,485
102	Rust *	1921	E[note 2]	–	1,942
103	Eisenstadt-Umgebung	1921	EU	Eisenstadt (not part of the district)	41,474
104	Güssing	1921	GS	Güssing	26,394
105	Jennersdorf	1921	JE	Jennersdorf	17,376
106	Mattersburg	1921	MA	Mattersburg	39,134
107	Neusiedl am See	1921	ND	Neusiedl am See	56,504
108	Oberpullendorf	1921	OP	Oberpullendorf	37,534
109	Oberwart	1921	OW	Oberwart	53,573
201	Klagenfurt *	1850	K	–	96,640
202	Villach *	1932	VI	–	60,004
203	Hermagor	1868	HE	Hermagor-Pressegger See	18,547
204	Klagenfurt-Land	1868	KL	Klagenfurt (not part of the district)	58,435
205	Sankt Veit an der Glan	1868	SV	Sankt Veit an der Glan	55,394
206	Spittal an der Drau	1868	SP	Spittal an der Drau	76,971
207	Villach-Land	1868	VL	Villach (not part of the district)	64,268
208	Völkermarkt	1868	VK	Völkermarkt	42,068
209	Wolfsberg	1868	WO	Wolfsberg	53,472
210	Feldkirchen	1982	FE	Feldkirchen in Kärnten	30,082
301	Krems an der Donau *	1938	KS	–	24,085
302	Sankt Pölten *	1922	P	–	52,145
303	Waidhofen an der Ybbs *	1868	WY	–	11,341
304	Wiener Neustadt *	1866	WN	–	42,273
305	Amstetten	1868	AM	Amstetten	112,944
306	Baden	1868	BN	Baden	140,078
307	Bruck an der Leitha	1868	BL, SW[note 3]	Bruck an der Leitha	43,615
308	Gänserndorf	1901	GF	Gänserndorf	97,460
309	Gmünd	1899	GD	Gmünd	37,420
310	Hollabrunn	1868	HL	Hollabrunn	50,065
311	Horn	1868	HO	Horn	31,273
312	Korneuburg	1868	KO	Korneuburg	73,370
313	Krems	1868	KR	Krems an der Donau (not part of the district)	55,945
314	Lilienfeld[note 4]	1868	LF	Lilienfeld	26,040
315	Melk	1896	ME	Melk	76,369
316	Mistelbach	1868	MI	Mistelbach	74,150
317	Mödling	1897	MD	Mödling	115,677
318	Neunkirchen	1868	NK	Neunkirchen	85,539
319	Sankt Pölten	1868	PL	Sankt Pölten (not part of the district)	97,365
320	Scheibbs	1868	SB	Scheibbs	41,073
321	Tulln	1892	TU	Tulln	72,104
322	Waidhofen an der Thaya	1868	WT	Waidhofen an der Thaya	26,424
323	Wiener Neustadt	1868	WB	Wiener Neustadt (not part of the district)	75,285
325	Zwettl	1868	ZT	Zwettl	43,102
401	Linz *	1866	L	–	183,814
402	Steyr *	1867	SR	–	38,120
403	Wels *	1964	WE	–	59,339
404	Braunau am Inn	1868	BR	Braunau am Inn	98,842
405	Eferding	1907	EF	Eferding	31,961
406	Freistadt	1868	FR	Freistadt	65,208
407	Gmunden	1868	GM	Gmunden	99,540
408	Grieskirchen	1911	GR	Grieskirchen	62,938
409	Kirchdorf an der Krems	1868	KI	Kirchdorf an der Krems	55,571
410	Linz-Land	1868	LL	Linz (not part of the district)	141,540
411	Perg	1868	PE	Perg	66,269
412	Ried im Innkreis	1868	RI	Ried im Innkreis	58,714
413	Rohrbach	1868	RO	Rohrbach-Berg	56,455
414	Schärding	1868	SD	Schärding	56,287
415	Steyr-Land	1868	SE	Steyr (not part of the district)	58,618
416	Urfahr-Umgebung	1919	UU	Linz (not part of the district)	82,109
417	Vöcklabruck	1868	VB	Vöcklabruck	131,497
418	Wels-Land	1868	WL	Wels (not part of the district)	68,600
501	Salzburg *	1869	S	–	146,631
502	Hallein	1896	HA	Hallein	58,336
503	Salzburg-Umgebung	1868	SL	Salzburg (not part of the district)	145,275
504	Sankt Johann im Pongau	1868	JO	Sankt Johann im Pongau	78,614
505	Tamsweg	1868	TA	Tamsweg	20,450
506	Zell am See	1868	ZE	Zell am See	84,964
601	Graz *	1850	G	–	269,997
603	Deutschlandsberg	1868	DL	Deutschlandsberg	60,466
606	Graz-Umgebung	1868	GU	Graz (not part of the district)	145,660
610	Leibnitz	1868	LB	Leibnitz	77,774
611	Leoben	1868	LE, LN[note 5]	Leoben	61,771
612	Liezen	1868	GB, LI[note 6]	Liezen	78,893
614	Murau	1868	MU	Murau	28,740
616	Voitsberg	1891	VO	Voitsberg	51,559
617	Weiz	1868	WZ	Weiz	88,355
620	Murtal	2012	MT	Judenburg	73,041
621	Bruck-Mürzzuschlag	2013	BM	Bruck an der Mur	100,855
622	Hartberg-Fürstenfeld	2013	HF	Hartberg	89,252
623	Südoststeiermark	2013	SO	Feldbach	88,843
701	Innsbruck *	1850	I	–	124,579
702	Imst	1868	IM	Imst	57,271
703	Innsbruck-Land	1868	IL	Innsbruck (not part of the district)	169,680
704	Kitzbühel	1868	KB	Kitzbühel	62,318
705	Kufstein	1868	KU	Kufstein	103,317
706	Landeck	1868	LA	Landeck	43,906
707	Lienz	1868	LZ	Lienz	48,990
708	Reutte	1868	RE	Reutte	31,672
709	Schwaz	1868	SZ	Schwaz	80,305
801	Bludenz	1868	BZ	Bludenz	61,100
802	Bregenz	1868	B	Bregenz	128,568
803	Dornbirn	1969	DO	Dornbirn	84,117
804	Feldkirch	1868	FK	Feldkirch	101,497
–	Wien *	1850	W	–	1,766,746

Historical districts

This section only lists districts covering regions that are still part of present-day Austria. Districts lost following the dissolution of Cisleithania in 1918 are omitted.

Code	District	Years	License plate	Administrative seat	Population 2011
–	Floridsdorf	1897–1905	–	Floridsdorf
–	Floridsdorf Umgebung	1906–1938	–	Floridsdorf
–	Gröbming	1868–1938	–	Gröbming
–	Groß-Enzersdorf	1868–1896	–	Groß-Enzersdorf
–	Hernals	1868–1891	–	Hernals
–	Hietzing	1868–1891	–	Hietzing
–	Hietzing Umgebung	1892–1938	–	Hietzing
–	Pöggstall	1899–1938	–	Pöggstall
–	Sechshaus	1868–1891	–	Sechshaus
–	Urfahr	1903–1919	–	Urfahr
–	Währing	1868–1892	–	Währing
324	Wien-Umgebung	1954–2016	WU, SW[note 7]	Klosterneuburg	117,343
602	Bruck an der Mur	1868–2012	BM	Bruck an der Mur	62,000
604	Feldbach	1868–2012	FB	Feldbach, Styria	67,046
605	Fürstenfeld	1938–2012	FF	Fürstenfeld	23,000
607	Hartberg	1868–2012	HB	Hartberg	66,000
608	Judenburg	1868–2011	JU	Judenburg	44,983
609	Knittelfeld	1946–2011	KF	Knittelfeld	29,095
613	Mürzzuschlag	1903–2012	MZ	Mürzzuschlag	40,207
615	Radkersburg	1868–2012	RA	Radkersburg	22,911

Notes

1. The 1849 Imperial Resolution creating the district system calls districts just that, "districts."[1] The 1868 Act establishing districts in their modern form adds the terms "administrative district" (Amtsbezirk) and "political administrative district" (politischer Amtsbezirk).[2] The 1920 Federal Constitutional Law prefers "district" but occasionally uses "political district" to emphasize is it not referring to jucidial districts. Over the course of the dozens of revisions the Law has undergone since 1920, all occurrences of either were excised; the version currently in force still mentions district administrative authorities but no longer mentions districts. The 1955 Austrian State Treaty contains a reference to the "administrative districts" of Carinthia, Burgenland, and Styria, even though local legal documents would have called them "political districts."[3]
2. Rust shares Eisenstadt's E code.
3. SW for the city of Schwechat, BL for the rest of the district.
4. Lilienfeld was established in 1868, dissolved in 1890, and restored in 1897. From 1933 to 1938 Lilienfeld was a branch office of St. Pölten, from 1938 to 1945 a German Kreis, and from 1945 to 1952 a branch office of St. Pölten again. In 1953 it was restored to full district status once more.
5. LE for the city of Leoben, LN for the rest of the district.
6. GB for subdistrict (Expositur) Gröbming; LI elsewhere.
7. SW for the city of Schwechat, WU for the rest of the district.

References

1. Kaiserliche Entschließung vom 26. Juni 1849, wodurch die Grundzüge für die Organisation der politischen Verwaltungs-Behörden genehmiget werden; RGBl. 295/1849
2. Gesetz von 19. Mai 1868, über die Einrichtung der politischen Verwaltungsbehörden; RGBl. 44/1868
3. Staatsvertrag, betreffend die Wiederherstellung eines unabhängigen und demokratischen Österreich; BGBl. 152/1955
4. Federal Constitutional Law article 116; BGBl. 1/1930; last amended in BGBl. 100/2003
5. "Die 17 Bezirke". Stadt Graz. 2014. Archived from the original on October 22, 2014. Retrieved November 26, 2014.
6. "Registerzählung vom 31 October 2011, Bevölkerung nach Ortschaften" (PDF). Statistik Austria. 2013. Retrieved November 26, 2014.
7. Hoke, Rudolf (1996) [1992]. Österreichische und deutsche Rechtsgeschichte (in German) (2nd ed.). ISBN 3-205-98179-0.
8. Brauneder, Wilhelm (2009) [1979]. Österreichische Verfassungsgeschichte (in German) (11th ed.). ISBN 978-3-214-14876-8.
9. Lechleitner, Thomas (1997). "Die Bezirkshauptmannschaft". Retrieved November 28, 2014.
10. Kaiserliches Patent vom 31. Dezember 1851; RGBl. 3/1851
11. Gesetz vom 19. Jänner 1853, RGBl. 10/1853
12. Staatsgrundgesetz vom 21. Dezember 1867, über die richterliche Gewalt; RGBl. 144/1867
13. Gesetz vom 1. Oktober 1920, womit die Republik Österreich als Bundesstaat eingerichtet wird (Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz); SGBl. 450/1920
14. Verordnung des Bundeskanzlers vom 26. September 1925, betreffende die Wiederverlautbarung des Übergangsgesetzes; BGBl. 368/1925
15. "Bezirkshauptmannschaft (english)". Austria-Forum. March 27, 2014. Retrieved November 24, 2014.
16. Federal Constitutional Law article 15; BGBl. 1/1930; last amended in BGBl. 100/2003.
17. Gesetz über Gebietsveränderungen im Lande Österreich vom 1. Oktober 1938; GBLÖ 443/1938
18. "Maßnahmen der Verwaltungsreform". Land Steiermark. 2010. Retrieved November 28, 2014.

See also

• District Captaincy (Austria)