Feld am See 4.75

Feld am See is a municipality in the district of Villach-Land in the Austrian state of Carinthia.GeographyIt is located in the Gegend valley of the Nock Mountains range at the shore of the Brennsee (or Feldsee), between the Mirnock massif in the southwest (el. 2110m) and Wöllaner Nock (2145m) in the northeast. The municipal area consists of one cadastral community, Rauth, also the oldest settlement in the area.Neighboring municipalitiesPopulationThe census in 2001 counted 1,188 inhabitants. 66.0% are Protestants (whole Carinthia: 10.3%), 27.5% are Roman Catholics, 0.8% are Muslims and 5.1% belong to other denominations.HistoryThe hidden Gegend was not populated until the High Middle Ages, when about 1300 its sunny northern side was stubbed and the name of the valley was first mentioned in a 1308 deed. While large estates were held by the Carinthian Counts of Ortenburg, the village called Rauth (from Roden, root out) was the most important settlement in the whole area for a long time.The settlement of Feld am See itself arose with the construction of a Protestant parish church in 1787. The remote Gegend valley had long been a centre of Crypto-protestantism, until the 1781 Patent of Toleration issued by Emperor Joseph II ended the Counter-Reformation persecutions.