Güssing is a city in Burgenland in Austria. It is the administrative center of the district of the same name. The city is located in southern Burgenland in the Strem valley at an altitude of 229 meters above sea level. A little less than half of the area is used for agriculture, almost forty percent is forested.
The roots of Güssing go back to a suburbium that arose in the shadow of Güssing Castle and was surrounded by a lenticular hill around the castle rock. In 1427 it was called civitas and in 1459 civitas et suburbium. In 1540 the magnate Franz Batthyány received permission from Emperor Ferdinand I for Güssing to develop ore mines, and in 1549 the emperor also granted him the right to hold markets in Güssing. The town has a market every first Monday of the month. Like all of Burgenland, the place belonged to Hungary (German West Hungary) until 1920/21. Since 1898 the Hungarian toponym Németújvár (“Deutsch-Neuburg”) had to be used due to the Hungarian government’s policy of Hungarianization. After the end of the First World War, after tough negotiations, German-West Hungary was awarded to Austria in the Treaties of Saint-Germain and Trianon in 1919. The place has belonged to the newly founded federal state of Burgenland since 1921 (history of Burgenland). 1973 Güssing was raised to town. From 1909 until after the end of the Second World War, Güssing had a rail connection via the Güssing Railway to Körmend, which was primarily used to transport timber. After 1945 it seemed pointless to maintain rail operations, not least because, on the one hand, the traffic was only directed to Hungary and, on the other hand, because the “Iron Curtain” now separated the railway line. Rail traffic was discontinued, the tracks were rotting. Today, the new federal highway 56 between Güssing and Strem mainly runs along the former railway body. The station building in Güssing, built in 1899, has been renovated and is still standing.
From the mid-19th century, Jews began to play a role in the city’s commerce. In 1824 the rapidly growing Jewish community already had 491 members. Güssing reached the highest Jewish population in 1859 with 766 people. Since 1860, however, many Jewish families moved away, so that in 1934 only 74 Jews lived here. The takeover of power by the Nazis brought the end of Jewish life in Güssing through expulsion and deportation.
Under Mayor Peter Vadasz, the city developed an energy concept for independent and sustainable energy generation in the early 1990s. As a measure for economic development, the European Center for Renewable Energy Güssing (EEE) was founded with EU funding. This should create jobs in the region and slow down the outflow of purchasing power through energy imports. By means of wood gasification, electricity and heat with a value of 20 million euros could be produced in-house on the basis of renewable energy sources. In 2005 Güssing was already generating significantly more heat (57.5 GWh) and electricity (14 GWh) from renewable raw materials than the city itself needs. The power plant with wood gasification in Güssing also included a test facility that uses Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to generate a diesel-like biofuel from the product gas. In 2013 the power plant was insolvent. After the decline in biodiesel production, the community’s level of self-sufficiency was only 51%. The photovoltaic company Blue Chip Energy Güssing had already gone bankrupt in 2011.
