Burgenland

Burgenland

Bundesland (federal state), eastern Austria, bordering Hungary on the east, and Bundeslander Niederosterreich (Lower Austria) on the northwest and Steiermark (Styria) on the southwest. It has an area of 1,531 square miles (3,965 square km). Derived from parts of the four former west Hungarian comitats (counties) of Pressburg (Bratislava), Wieselburg (Moson), Odenburg (Sopron), and Eisenburg (Vasvar), it became an Austrian Bundesland in 1921. The low-lying parts of northern Burgenland belong to the Pannonian Basin, which is linked with the southern Vienna basin by two gateways situated north and south of the Leitha Mountains; the area is characterized by steppe and saline-heath vegetation, and its most striking feature is the Neusiedler Lake. The crystalline Rosalien Mountain Range, linked with the Alps, lies between northern and middle Burgenland. The latter is the most mountainous part of the state, subsiding eastward to the Pannonian Basin and rising westward to the Landsee and Bernsteiner Mountains and southward to the Gunser Mountains. Southern Burgenland is hill country, drained from northwest to southeast by streams accompanied by systems of terraces.

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