Judenburg

Judenburg grew near Eppenstein Castle on routes through the upper Mur valley. A market called Judinburch appears in a charter of 1074, when Jewish merchants played an important part in Alpine trade. The town received its charter in 1224 and became a centre of commerce with Venice. Its merchants traded Styrian iron and Alpine valerian, a plant valued for perfume.

In 1460 Frederick III granted Judenburg a monopoly over the valerian trade, which the city retained for more than a century. The Jewish community had a synagogue and ritual bath in its quarter, and a cemetery outside the walls. After pogroms in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Maximilian I ordered the expulsion of Styria's Jews in 1496. The community that had helped shape the town's commerce was forced to leave.