Schladming

Schladming lies in the upper Enns valley beneath the mining mountains of the Schladming Tauern. Recorded in 1180, it had town rights by 1322, supported by the extraction of silver, lead and copper. In 1408 the mining judge Leonhard Egkelzain committed the miners' customary and procedural rights to writing in the Schladming mining charter. When miners joined the uprisings of the Reformation era, Archduke Ferdinand's forces almost destroyed the town in 1525 and deprived it of its town rights.