Leibnitz

Geschichte

Leibnitz is a city in the Austrian state of Styria and at the 2001 census had a population of approximately 7,577 . It is located to the south of the city of Graz, between the Mur and Sulm rivers.The town is the capital of the Leibnitz political district, which covers about 681 km2, within which more than 75,000 people live. Leibnitz acts as a cultural, educational, judicial and economic focus for the surrounding district.HistoryAlthough the center of the current town is only about 3 km away from the archaeological site of Flavia Solva, Leibnitz cannot claim direct successorship to this Roman municipium founded in the 1st century, and finally destroyed in the early 5th century. When Bavarian settlers moved into the area during the 9th century, superseding and gradually absorbing the Slavic population that had established itself during the previous half-millennium, all recollection of the Roman city had long since faded.The first documented version of the name Leibnitz reads Lipnizza and can be found in a scroll issued by emperor Otto the Great dated 7 March 970. However, a different settlement – the civitas Zuib (or Sulb; both names recall the Roman Solva) – was actually closer to the site of the present town than the civitas Lipnizza which was located on the nearby Frauenberg hill, where human occupation had persisted since the Neolithic age. Later, when the civilian settlement moved back and down to the Mur valley while the dwelling on the hill remained a fortified place, the name was transformed to Libniz and Libenizze (12th century), Leibentz and Leybencz (13th and 14th century), and finally Leybnitz (14th and 15th century).