P. Jacobus Tisch OSB

Böheimkirchen is an ancient settlement- the present little town was built up on the place of the so called "Hochfeld" where the church, vicarage and the schools are situated. This "Hochfeld" is surrounded by the little rivers of Perschling and Michelbach.
In 1913 a day labourer planted a tree in the garden of the vicarage and found a collection of 30 jars made of bronze which were sold and have disappeared from that moment on.
The archeological research happened in several steps: when they wanted to enlarge the school and cementary in 1929, 1945-47, 1948/49, 1955,1973/74 and 1979/80 they did a lot of excavation and found 8 tons of pottery, bones, objects of bronze and stone.

After they had found tracks in the Neolithic Age, the settlement developed to an important centre in the Bronze Age. Consequently the regional group which was found south of the Danube (Veterov culture- about 1500 before Christ) was called "Böheimkirchen group".
There were settlements in low lying areas developing and also some in high lying areas- such as the Böheimkirchen one. It consisted of a fortification and was protected by an interior rampart and a ditch around the fortification.
From the 9th century on the area was settled by Slaves. They built a lot and took the stones from the fundaments of the early Bronze Age.

In context with a public hearing at court where the Bavarian Duke Heinrich the Zänker confirmed the bishopric of Passau its rights- Böheimkirchen started existing in the written history. The note told about "Persnicha, which was owned by Wilhelm and where Bohemians worked in the fields". The settlement got its name from a river which it was situated by.
William the owner was a member of a wealthy lineage of counts. When they died out Böheimkirchen was given to Kremsmünster and in the 10th century the property was given to Passau.

Who were the so called "Boemani"? The warlike expansion of the Great Moravian Empire brought the Wilhelminian species a bloody decline. In 845 14 noblemen fled to Regensburg to get baptized. We don´t exactly know what happened to them afterwards, but we think they got some land to work on it. They are said to be the ancestors of the later Boemani. Because they were baptized it´s quite sure that they built a church. So we think the origin of Böheimkirchen in the early Middle Ages can be supposed in 850.

The next time Böheimkirchen was mentioned was in context with the foundation of the parish in the 11th century. The name of the village "Pehaimschirchen" goes back to the "Boemani" of 985. The book of death of the monastery of St. Pölten told that the bishops of Passau- Engelbert and Berengar- handed over the parish to the monastery. Böheimkirchen was connected with St. Pölten until 1784.In a pontifical document of 1180 Böheimkirchen is mentioned as a parish. Also in 1248, and the subsidiary churches of Außerkasten, Kasten, Lanzendorf, Schildberg and Stössing were written down. The first priests mentioned were Dieprand, who was remunerated for building the church and parish of Kirchstetten- and Perhard, who was mentioned in 1202. In 1285 they told about the first chaplain who was a clergyman called Christian. He was supposed to help the priest with the pastoral care.
Already in the 13th century they founded a parish school in Böheimkirchen, but a teacher was only mentioned in 1532.

The secular residence was situated outside the village of Böheimkirchen- the so called "Öden Schloss". It was next to the river Perschling, built on a hill and surrounded by a ditch. The owners - we know them from a document from 1197, were in an fief relationship to the bishops of Passau and belonged to the circle of the "Lengenbacher". When the lords of Wolfsberg died out about 1381, the fortress and Böheimkirchen got a new owner: Albrecht von Ebersdorf (1450). He was King Friedrich III.´s vassal but he sold these possessions to the Masters of Zelking in 1458. The fortification ramshackled. There are no photos, so we don´t know what it really looked like. 

Since 1443 Böheimkirchen had been called a "marketplace". Albrecht von Ebersdorf convinced Friedrich III. to give Böheimkirchen a formal awarding of a yearly and weely market. The yearly marketday took place on the day of Jakob and the weekly one every Monday. At the same time civil trades were established: butchers and two mills in 1445, a bakery and a swimming bath. At the beginning of the 16th century they extended the marketplace and joined the "Neustift" to it. From that time we have got a precious document about history of economy and law. This book called "Banntaidingbook" has its origin in a conference of house owning men in Taidingen. 

Böheimkirchen had developed to an upcoming marketplace at the end of the Middle Ages.
36 citizens who had possessions lived under the reign of the Masters of Wolfsberg. They elected a judge and a council. People in four houses on the hill were servants of the priest. Besides there was a church, a vicarage, a townhall a "Halterhaus" and cellar houses on the marketplace. There were 50 houses in Böheimkirchen and the judge and council sentenced little offences.
Dangerous criminals were taken prisoner by the "market judge", but later on they were taken to a "county judge". A visible sign of the judgement at the marketplace was the pillory.
Böheimkirchen was quite a wealthy place and so they started to rebuild the church. In 1518 they started to build a new church.

In the following years Böheimkirchen was drawn into misery which put a sudden end to the time of prosperity of the late Middle Ages. The invasion of the Turks in 1529 had caused terrible consequences. In an assessment was written that Böheimkirchen was completely burnt down.

Another consequence was that the sovereign told them to fortify the walls of the cementery.
The next crisis was caused by the reformation. In 1527, ten years after Luther´s propositions,
Christoph Seidl, the priest of Böheimkirchen complained about David of Trauttmansdorff from Totzenbach. Soon after that the Catholic priest was driven away and replaced by a Protestant priest. So for the next 100 years Böheimkirchen was a Protestant centre.
After the convent of St. Pölten had got over its crisis, Böheimkirchen got a Catholic priest again in 1586, he was called Canon Matthias Leopold.
After years of devastation Leopold built a new vicarage: a beautiful one columned hall in the style of late Renaissance which is still preserved.

After the Lords of Zelking had died out the reign of Wolfberg and Totzenbach was united.
In 1670 fifty families from Böheimkirchen got the permission to flee to the castle of Totzenbach in case of a war.
When a huge crowd of Turks attacked Vienna many villages were destroyed and so was Böheimkirchen. I t was said that the church, the vicarage and 23 houses were burnt down. But in the end the Turks were defeated and a new era started: the Baroque period.

The most important thing which happened in that period was the renovation of the church from 1731 to 1734. The convent of St. Pölten decided to renovate it. They had also planned an impressive façade with a tower in the Baroque style, but in the end they could not afford it.
In 1732 the monument of the Saint Johannes of Nepomuk was erected close to the bridge across the Michelbach.
In 1752 a hospital was built. This social institution was used as an old people´s home. The hospital owned a chapel which was dedicated to Friedrich and Florian. There the beneficiaries
had to pray for the citizens. In the 18th century the historical documents tell about civil soldiers. They were responsible for protecting people against fire and they were also responsible for processions. For that reason they got a new flag in 1750.
At that time Böheimkirchen was an economical centre in that area.
The real estate register of the reign of Wolfsberg writes about 20 manufacturers: a doctor, a salesman, an ironmonger, a blacksmith, a joiner, a weaver, a tailor, etc. There were also two
mills, a shoemaker, a baker, 3 butchers and an inn. In addition to the usual charge, they got their income from the brick kiln and for the fairs ( at Jakobi and Jubilate).
But there were also setbacks after disasters caused by nature, water and fire which damaged the efforts of decades.

We are told by the chronicle that on August 22nd, 1756, the water was running through the village.
In 1757 and 1758 the grain went bad on the fields. The consequence was a bad harvest and misery.
Another disaster was the plague of locusts which covered the ground and darkened the sun.
People tried to get rid of them by ringing the bells, shooting and different kinds of noise. In the end they disappeared.
Last but not least fire caused misery .The straw and shingle roofs easily caught fire and the buildings were very close to each other. And they didn´t have any tools to put out the fire.
In 1734 the whole marketplace was on fire, only 3 houses remained. Another fire in 1749 left 2 houses and in 1786 everything was burnt down, even the church, the vicarage, school and townhall.
So in 1700 they decided to celebrate a service once a year, on 4th May- the day of Saint Florian. He was the protector of the fire and so he became the saint of the village.

In the beginning of the 19th century there was the invasion of the army of Napoleon. Although many people died, it was not that terrible as the invasions by the Turks. In 1805 French soldiers blackmailed the judges several times and one inhabitant was shot. In 1809 most of the citizens had fled and so the soldiers could only loot empty houses. They destroyed the church, but they didn´t set the village on fire.

In 1833/34 a road from Neulengbach to St. Pölten was built.On that purpose it was necessary to build two bridges across the rivers Michelbach and Perschling. Franz Schweickhardt described Böheimkirchen in his book "Description of the archduchy Österreich under the river Enns" in 1836: "The village has got 55 houses and there live 424 persons in 93 families. They are mainly workmen. Böheimkirchen is a nice and friendly village without walls. It consists of a mainstreet and 2 small streets. The houses have only one floor and are covered with bricks." After the revolution of March 1848 the reigns were substituted by selfgoverning communities. The community of Böheimkirchen got some villages attached (the number of the houses are in brackets): Außerkasten (16), Blindorf (4); Dorfern (8), Dürnhag (6), Furth (12), Gemersdorf (7), Grub and Eggenberg (5), Hinterberg (12), Hinterholz (5), Hub (4), Kollersberg (4); Lanzendorf (19), Mechters (23), Plosdorf (7), Reith (17), Röhrenbach (4), Siebenhirten (13), Untertiefenbach (9), Weisching (22) and Wiesen (17)- all in all they were 1842 inhabitants.

In the following decades many community facilities were set up: in 1851 a postoffice was installed, in 1858 the railway was built, which connected Böheimkirchen to the wide world. So it could develop to a popular summer holiday resort. By the law of Primary Schools of 1869, the schools were not longer connected to the church, but belonged to the community. Besides it was enlarged to 6 classes. In the sixties and seventies the teacher Franz Schmidl planted the trees in the park with its avenue of lime trees. The fire brigade was founded in 1873 and there had been a police station since 1877. The townhall was built in 1897. In 1910 there were 907 inhabitants in 97 houses- in the last century it has increased to the double.

During the World War I seventy two soldiers from Böheimkirchen died. The war was followed by the end of the monarchy, misery and inflation. Nevertheless there was an enormous progress: in 1920 a light association was founded, which supplied Böheimkirchen and the surrounding villages with electricity. Because the community was short of coins, they gave the citizens vouchers. In 1926 nuns from Laxenburg founded a kindergarten. A cinema was opened and a civil school was founded. School was extended to 12 classrooms and some time later it was transformed to a Secondary Modern School. In 1938 Österreich stopped to exist. In the World War II 202 inhabitants from Böheimkirchen died at the front line and about 230 died in fights during rearguard actions in 1945.

When Böheimkirchen got a new coat of arms and the first cut of the spade of the jubilee settlement had been made everybody thought of the foundation of the parish 900 years ago.
Since 1950 there has been a prosperity so the village has extended to 500 houses and 1881 inhabitants. In 1971 there was the uniting of the community Jeutendorf with Böheimkirchen.
The next years they started to build a new vicarage, a Secondary Modern School with an indoor swimming pool, an ambulance house, a centre of the fire brigade, a policestation and a kindergarten in the Stockhofstraße and another one in Aufeldstraße.
In 1985 Böheimkirchen was celebrating 1000 years of existing in documents.
Prosperity went on when Böheimkirchen got its own connection to the highway and an industrial centre of companies was built. Also the centre of Böheimkirchen was rebuilt and reorganized.
At the moment there are 4900 inhabitants in Böheimkirchen.

If you want to know more about Böheimkirchen´s history you should read "History of Böheimkirchen" written by Wolfgang Häusler. It´s including some information of historical literature and a list of sources. You can get two different editions at the local authority:
normal edition: € 22
edition with leathercover: € 37