The city was part of the realm of King
Ottokar II of Bohemia, considered one of the greatest rulers of Bohemia. In 1276, Ottokar II laid the foundation stone for the
Gothic Minorites Church. After Ottokar II's death in the
Battle on the Marchfeld, his
embalmed body was initially kept in the Minorites Church before his burial in
Prague, whereas his heart was buried in the Saint Catherine Chapel in Vienna. At its peak, in 1900, out of 1,674,957 inhabitants of Vienna, 102,974 people claimed Czech or Slovak as their colloquial language. However, as Umgangssprache (everyday language) was not properly defined by the Austrian authorities, there are claims that the Czech minority numbered as high as 250,000-300,000, making Vienna a city with the second largest Czech speaking population, only after Prague. After World War I, many
Czechs and other nationalities returned to their ancestral countries, resulting in a decline in the Viennese population. Czechs were among the prisoners of the Vienna-Schönbrunn
subcamp of the
Mauthausen concentration camp operated in the city during
World War II. After the war, the
Soviets used force to repatriate key workers of Czech and Hungarian origins to return to their ethnic homelands to further the Soviet bloc economy. In 1994, the
Czech Centre in Vienna was founded.
21st century The number of Czech citizens in Vienna grew from 3,179 in 2013 to 4,215 in 2019. During the same period, the population born in the Czech Republic fell from 16,193 (2013) to 13,620 (2019). ==See also==