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Stadtgemeinde Heidenreichstein

Heidenreichstein is a municipality with 3864 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2022) in the district of Gmünd in the northwestern Waldviertel region of Lower Austria.

Heidenreichstein owes its name to one of the first burgraves, whose name was Heidenreich. The privately owned and still inhabited Heidenreichstein Castle is a moated castle and is considered the landmark of Heidenreichstein. The market, like the castle, may have been established in the last decades of the 12th century. In 1369 the village was designated as a market with its own seal.

From the second half of the 19th century Heidenreichstein became the location of several companies, especially in the textile, wood, leather and metal processing industries, which provided jobs in the region in the 20th century, interrupted by the war and interwar period. After the end of the occupation period in 1955, private small and medium-sized enterprises as well as industrial enterprises belonging to large banks expanded. Due to the general structural change, Heidenreichstein lost its importance as an industrial and commercial town at the end of the 1960s and, starting in 1971, had to accept not only a significant reduction in the number of jobs but also a considerable decline in the resident population.