Ajka () is a city in
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croa ...
with about 35,000 inhabitants. It is situated in the hills of
Bakony.
History
Around 1000 BCE, the area was inhabited by
Celts
The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancien ...
. By the second century CE, the territory was conquered by the
Romans. The Hungarians occupied the area in the early 10th century.
The village Ajka was named after the Ajka clan, which, in turn, got its name after its ancestor, a knight named Heiko, who was a member of the retinue of
Gisela, Princess of
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total l ...
, wife of King
St. Stephen in the early 11th century. The village itself was first mentioned in 1214, when it was already about 100 years old.
The village developed slowly during the next few centuries. Real prosperity came only in the second half of the 19th century, when coal resources were found nearby. In the 1930s, vast
bauxite
Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(O ...
resources were found, too. In 1937, the world's first
krypton
Krypton (from grc, κρυπτός, translit=kryptos 'the hidden one') is a chemical element with the symbol Kr and atomic number 36. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas that occurs in trace amounts in the atmosphere and is often ...
factory was built near Ajka.
During the industrialization wave of the Socialist Communist era, Ajka was a natural choice to build a new industrial town. The new town – like several other industrial cities and towns – came into existence with the unification of several villages.
Today's Ajka was created on January 1, 1960, by the unification of four villages (Ajka, Bódé, Tósok, and Tósokberénd). In the following decades, four additional villages (Csékút, Bakonygyepes, Padragkút, and Ajkarendek) were annexed to the town. At the time of the unification, Ajka had 15,375 residents. Many workers came to Ajka to find new jobs and homes there. Most of the population is working class.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Jews lived in the village. In
1840, 93 Jews lived in the village and there was a
Jewish cemetery
A Jewish cemetery ( he, בית עלמין ''beit almin'' or ''beit kvarot'') is a cemetery where Jews are buried in keeping with Halakha, Jewish tradition. Cemeteries are referred to in several different ways in Hebrew, including ''beit k ...
there. Some of them were murdered in the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
.
Main sights
* Roman Catholic Church of Tósokberénd (late baroque, 1807–1808)
* Roman Catholic Church of Ajka (late baroque, 1788)
* Reformed Church of Ajka (late baroque, 1783)
* Evangelical Church of Ajka (late baroque, 1786–89)
* House of the Steward (manor house, 18-19th centuries)
* Museum of Mining (industrial heritage site)
* Crystal Glass Factory
Ajka alumina plant accident
A flood of
bauxite tailings occurred in 2010, releasing of red caustic toxic industrial sludge, which affected some ; 10 people were killed and 150 were injured.
Twin towns – sister cities
Ajka is
twinned
Twinning (making a twin of) may refer to:
* In biology and agriculture, producing two offspring (i.e., twins) at a time, or having a tendency to do so;
* Twin towns and sister cities, towns and cities involved in town twinning
* Twinning inst ...
with:
*
Cristuru Secuiesc, Romania
*
Donghai County, China
*
Rovaniemi, Finland
*
Unna, Germany
*
Weiz, Austria
Sport
*
FC Ajka, association football club
References
;Notes
External links
* in Hungarian
Aerialphotgraphs of AjkaExtinct volcano locality
{{Authority control
Populated places in Veszprém County
Socialist planned cities
Planned cities in Hungary
Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust