Jedlesee

Jedlesee is most notable for being the site of the estate of Countess Anna Maria Erdődy, close friend and patron of Beethoven, who stayed there with her on numerous occasions between 1805 and 1818.

[1] Originally a farming and fishing settlement situated on the Danubian flood-plain, the village of Jedlesee was re-established by the Franconians at the embarkation point of the Marchfeld to Nussdorf ferry crossing, after the victory of Otto I over the Magyars at the battle of Lechfeld.

The place-name "Uotcinessevve" - ascribed to Jedlesee - is mentioned in a deed of gift of the diocese of Passau, to which the area belonged, made by Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich II to Bishop Berengar on 5 July 1014.

In 1642 Andre Gurlandt bought the fief for 200 guilders as a free inheritance; 18 different owners followed him (among them Albert Lonqueval Count Bouquoy in 1696 and the personal physician of Maria Theresa, Anton Freiherr von Störck, in 1778), the last of whom sold the domain to Klosterneuburg Monastery in 1841.

It was built on a tributary of the Danube known as the "black lacquer" (Schwarzen Lacke), which is still recognizable today as a strip of meadow abutting the church and close to the Erdödy-Beethoven Memorial.

With the Vienna Danube regulation, the "black lacquer" was separated from the river's main stream and filled in after the Second World War with rubble from bombed Viennese houses and industrial waste.

[5] The "Black Lacquer" area north of the old arm of the Danube forms its own cadastral community, which today is regarded as part of the Jedlesee sub-district.

It was thanks to the efforts of the music-loving Countess that Beethoven was eventually furnished by noble patrons with the economic means to make his permanent adoptive home in Vienna.

A cooperative venture with the Floridsdorf District Museum has made it possible for the association's events to be held there and for the exhibits of the memorial to continue to be accessible to the public.

Along the way, sculptures designed by the artist Manfred Satke and produced by Josef Frantsits, four metres high, were erected in the shape of broken tuning forks to memorialize Beethoven's hearing loss.

On 5 July 1769, Pope Clement XIV granted the Maria Loretto church a plenary indulgence for the annual feast of Mary's birth.

The church received its tower in 1885 on the initiative of the priest Vinzenz Wenhart, who in 1873 laid out the current Jedlesee cemetery, the now abandoned one in Jeneweingasse having become too small.

[9] On the northern outer wall is a war memorial created by Adolf Weilguni with military insignia, a cross, laurel branches and inscriptions commemorating the fallen of the two world wars from Jedlesee, beside it another plaque commemorating the Capuchin priest Joachim Haspinger, a companion of the Tyrolean freedom fighter Andreas Hofer, who worked temporarily as a chaplain at the church.