A cadastral community[1] [2] (or cadastre community,[3] cadastral [or '''cadastre'''] municipality,[4] [5] [6] cadastral [or '''cadastre'''] commune,[7] [8] cadastral [or '''cadastre'''] unit,[7] cadastral [or '''cadastre'''] district,[9] [10] cadastral [or '''cadastre'''] area,[7] cadastral [or '''cadastre'''] territory[7]) is a cadastral subdivision of municipalities in the nations of Austria,[11] Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,[5] [12] the Czech Republic,[13] Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia,[2] [4] the Netherlands, and the Italian provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino, Gorizia and Trieste. A cadastral community records property ownership in a cadastre, which is a register describing property ownership by boundary lines of the real estate.
The common etymology in the Central European successor states of the Habsburg monarchy comes from German: Katastralgemeinde (KG; literally "cadastral municipality" or "cadastral community"), plural: Katastralgemeinden,[5] [11] translated as Italian: comune censuario or comune catastale, Slovenian: katastralna občina, Croatian: katastarska općina. In Czech and Slovak, the historical name (katastrální obec, Slovak: katastrálna obec, literally "cadastral municipality/community") was changed to katastrální území and Slovak: katastrálne územie (literally "cadastral area" or "cadastral territory") in 1928 and today, on official websites, it is usually translated to English by the (misleading) terms "cadastral unit" in Czechia and "cadastral district" in Slovakia. In what is today Hungary, the concept and term (Hungarian: kataszteri község) existed only in the past.
In 1764, at the behest of Empress Maria Theresa, a complete survey of the Habsburg lands was begun,[14] initiated by the general staff of the Imperial and Royal Army under Field Marshal Count Leopold Joseph von Daun, who had become aware of the lack of reliable maps in the Seven Years' War. Maria Theresa's son Emperor Joseph II ordered the implication of a complete urbarium for property tax purposes in 1785. The present-day cadastre was completed after the Napoleonic Wars from 1817 onwards under Emperor Francis I of Austria (Franziszeischer Kataster). Since then, the Austrian (i.e. Cisleithanian) crown lands were subdivided in Katastralgemeinden; surveying in the Hungarian (Transleithanian) lands started in 1850. Municipalities as administrative subdivisions with certain rights of self-governance were not established until after the 1848 revolutions.
Most of the nowadays Katastralgemeinden once had been independent communes and were incorporated on the occasion of a municipal territory reforms. They can be further divided into smaller villages and localities (Ortschaften). There were 7,847 Katastralgemeinden in Austria in 2014. For land registration, the unit identifier used in a Katastralgemeinde is "KG-Nr" (KG-Nummer, or number).[11]
The Dutch system of kadastrale gemeenten was set up around 1830. When municipalities are merged, often the cadastral communes remain as they were, so one civil municipality can consist of more than one cadastral commune; but again, a cadastral commune can never be part of more than one civil municipality.