in which Archbishop Conrad II of Salzburg confirms the donation of a chapel in the area to nearby Millstatt Abbey, there is mention of Chirchem as well as of a priest called Pabo. This is considered the first mention of Bad Kleinkirchheim. The settlement is also mentioned in a 1177 deed issued by Pope Alexander III. The Benedictine monks had the forests cleared and the valley colonized by smallholder peasants. The settlement was later called Kleinkirchheim in order to distinguish it from Großkirchheim in the Carinthian Möll Valley. In 1469 Millstatt Abbey was dissolved and its estates passed to the Knightly Order of Saint George, established by Emperor Frederick III to protect the area against the Ottoman forces who after the Fall of Constantinople already campaigned the Balkans and the Duchy of Carniola in the south. Turkish troops broke into the region in September 1473, robbing the town and plundering the valleys. On 25 June 1478 a group of about 600 farmers tried unsuccessfully to drive them out. By 1480 the Turks left, possibly as a result of an invasion by Hungarians under King Matthias Corvinus. During the Protestant Reformation, many farmers in the area turned Lutheran and by the late 16th century freedom of religion had been bestowed on the residents. However, when the Habsburg archduke Ferdinand II rose to power, he ceded the Millstatt estates with Kleinkirchheim to the Jesuits and made Roman Catholicism the official religion. Nevertheless, Crypto-Protestants still managed to smuggle books and hold secret meetings during the Counter-Reformation, and according to the 1781 Patent of Toleration issued by Emperor Joseph II, a Protestant or a Jew would have nearly all the rights of a Catholic. Bad Kleinkirchheim was shortly ruled within the French Illyrian Provinces during the Napoleonic Wars, but returned to the Austrian Empire in 1816. The Revolutions of 1848 also affected the area, as farmers (which then made up most of the town's population) got more rights. Finally, in 1973, Bad Kleinkirchheim officially had the "Bad" (bath, spa) attached to its name, Kleinkirchheim, a reference to the popular hot spring. Population 93.4% of the inhabitants of Bad Kleinkirchheim are Austrian by nationality. The largest portion of the foreign population comes from South-East Europe (Yugoslavia 1.7%, Croatia 1.0%, Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.5%) as well as from Germany (1.4%). 95.2% of the population speak German, 1.8% Serbian and 1.0% Croatian. 62.3% of the population admit