Pitten

Pitten lies in the eastern Alpine foothills south of Vienna. A document of 869 records the gift of property here by the nun Peretcunda to the bishopric of Freising. The county of Pitten belonged to Styria until the early sixteenth century. Its parish was required to pay tithes to Reichersberg Abbey in 1144 and was incorporated into the Augustinian house in 1456.

Iron ore began to be mined at Pitten in the eighteenth century, and from 1789 it was smelted locally. The ore was valued for its purity and high manganese content. Early in the nineteenth century a foundry worked the iron produced there. In 1828 Vinzenz Sterz established a paper manufactory in a former flour and saw mill, adding another trade to the valley's mills and furnaces.