The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Archipelago (1527-2010)

Cutting the Gordian Danube, Vienna 1875. (source)

IN HUNGARIAN

My absolute favourite book of 2023 was Wasser | Stadt | Wien. 458 pages of solid hydrology about Vienna, much of it of course about the Danube. The volume also includes nine full-page pictures of the changes in the river meanders around the city of Vienna. Lovers of urbanism will certainly find things of interest in the previously published images, but it is the floodplain patterns, which are now mainly similar to those of the Danube at Gemenc, Hungary, that are worth observing. It is a little known fact in Hungary that the Danube has caused far more serious problems in Vienna than in Budapest throughout the city's history. In historical times, the Danube flowed through a floodplain up to seven kilometres wide in Vienna, creating and destroying countless islands along this river section. The Viennese had an ambivalent relationship with the river, fearing its difficult crossing between the two banks and the many flood damages, but it was an advantage for the city in terms of trade. Around 1565, the main branch of the Danube moved away from the city and efforts by locals to bring the main shipping route back close to the city failed, leading to a compromise solution of extending the Vienna branch of the Danube, which later became the Donaukanal. 

Ugyanakkor a folyókanyarulatok vándorlása mellett a rendkívül fonatos meder gyakran okozott jégtorlaszokat. A budapestinél sokkal kevésbé stabilabb mederben a zátonyokon és szigetcsúcsokon kialakuló jégdugók gyakran eredményezték azt, hogy a télen levonult jeges árvíz kártételeinek felszámolása után a bécsiek már teljesen máshol találták meg a folyót. Ez az állandóan változó ártéri világ egyre inkább akadályává vált a város terjeszkedésének, amelyre megoldást kellett találni. Végül egy meglehetősen drasztikus beavatkozás szüntette meg a bécsi szigetvilágot 1870-1875 között, amikor is egy új, nyílegyenes medret ástak a Dunának, meghagyva egy széles, hasonlóan egyenes elöntési területet az árvizek számára. Az utóbbi időszak módosításai ezt a területet érintették, amikor a széles, kopár parti sáv helyén létrehozták a Donauinsel-t, melyet a bécsiek már sokkal inkább birtokba vehettek. 1875 után a lefűzött, kiszáradó folyókanyarulatok két utat jártak be. Ahol városi zöldfelületek területére estek, ott javarészt fennmaradtak (Prater, Alte Donau, Lobau, stb.), ahol viszont a város szövete ugrásra készen várta a kiszáradást, ott esetleg csak az utcák nyomvonala emlékeztet a régi medrekre (pl. Schwarze Lacke), többségük több méter feltöltés és beton alatt húzódnak. 

However, in addition to the migration of river meanders, the extremely braided riverbed was often clogged by iceblocks. In a much less stable bed than Budapest's, ice jams on sandbanks and islands often meant that, after the damage caused by the winter ice flood had been cleared up, the Viennese found the river in a completely different place. This ever-changing floodplain world became an increasing obstacle to the expansion of the city, and a solution had to be found. Eventually, a rather drastic intervention eliminated the Danubian archipelago in Vienna between 1870 and 1875, when a new, straight-edged bed was dredged for the Danube, leaving a wide, equally straight floodplain for the floods. More recent modifications to this wide, barren flood area included the creation of the Donauinsel, that was more easily occupied by the Viennese people. After 1875, the story of the newly created oxbows and drying river meanders took two paths. Where they fell into urban green spaces, they were largely preserved (Prater, Alte Donau, Lobau, etc.), but where the urban developers eager for more territory, only the street network may be reminiscent of the old riverbeds (e.g. Schwarze Lacke), most of them beneath several metres of landfill and concrete. 

Half a thousand years of river bend changes in Vienna 1529-2010 (source)

The nine detailed landscape reconstructions created using geographic information methods were almost begging for a .gif version. This version was most certainly created by the authors, but unfortunately the format is not compatible with the capabilities of the Guttenberg Galaxy. So I quickly put together my own version. In varying time-intervals, nine dates in total (1529, 1570, 1662-1683, 1704, 1780, 1825, 1875, 1912 and 2010), we can see the immediate surroundings of Vienna, with the Praterstern roughly in the centre. 

The Ancient Peninsula of Regensburg

MAGYARUL

It is a generally accepted view among local historians in Regensburg that the city's islands were formed from an extremely long and extremely narrow peninsula by the catastrophic flood of 1304. This serpentine stretch of land stretched from the mouth of the Naab to Regensburg, i.e. the estuary of the Naab ran parallel to the Danube for about six kilometres. There are, however, some aspects that may call into question the existence of this rare hydrological phenomenon.

I first came across the above illustration on the inside cover of the publication "Regensburg zur Römerzeit", which depicted the hydrological situation shown in the above picture as a fact. According to a brief description of the landscape, the Naab did not flow into the Danube at Mariaort in Roman times, but ran parallel to the Danube for almost six kilometres, passing Kneiting, Winzer, Steinweg and Stadamhof, taking the Regen river on the left bank and flowing into the Danube somewhere at the lower tip of the present-day Unterer Wöhrd, east of Regensburg. In other words, when the second stone bridge was built on the Danube between 1135 and 1146, the famous Steinerne Brücke was still arching over this peninsula to the north bank. The huge peninsula was carved up into four separate islands (Mariaorter Wöhrd, Winzer Wöhrd, and in Regensburg the Lower and Upper Wöhrd) by the catastrophic flood of 23 May 1304. Local vernacular is calling the Danubian islands Wöhrd, which derives from the Middle German word 'werd', while in northern Germany the more familiar sounding form 'Werder' is used.

The "Regensburg Peninsula" already appear in the work of Otto von Freising, who said that the Naab flowed into the Danube at Regensburg. The local chronicler Eberhard von Regensburg is consistent in his description of the events of 1304:

„Anno Domini 1304. Cum aqua Danubii transiens per pontem Ratisponensem omnio versus litus apuilonare declinasset, et litora prope civitatem sicca et arida reliquisset, ceves Ratisponenses artificiose et mulits laboribus et expensis ipsam aquam, ut iterum prope civitatem flueret, ad loca pristina per strues lignorum et congeries lapidum reduxerunt.”

Early medieval hydrographic conditions were already described by the local historians of Regensburg, Plato-Wild (1710-1777), Gemeiner (1726-1823) and Gumpelzhaimer (1766-1841), whose views were later confirmed by detailed research by Adolf Schmetzer. Karl Bauer, in his monumantal local history book (Regensburg - Kunst, Kultur und Alltagsgeschichte), adds to the above theory that at the time of the construction of the Roman legionary camp Castra Regina (A.D. 180), a change in the riverbed probably caused the Unterer Wöhrd to form a separate island. At Bauer, the date of the flood disaster was two days later, 25 May 1304. On that date, the Danube between Winzer and Pfaffenstein broke through the Regensburg Peninsula and the main riverbed was moved into the old bed of the Naab between the present-day Oberer Wöhrd and Stadtamhof. According to some local oral traditions, the northern branch of the Danube was still called the Naab around 1915.

The section of the Danube between the Naab and the Regen in 1829 (source)

The result was that the free imperial city of Regensburg lost its Danube port, its customs revenue, its mills ran dry, all of which threatened the city's economical power. As the city was in frequent dispute with the town of Stadt am Hof, on the other side of the old Naab, under the jurisdiction of the Bavarian prince-elector, the locals had to act very quickly. It is not clear whether in the same year or in the summer of 1305, during a very dry period when it was possible to cross the shallow Danube, a water control structure called Wöhrloch was built at the top of the Oberer Wöhrd, which was intended to both return most of the Danube's discharge to its original course and leave some (border) water between the Regensburg-owned Oberer Wöhrd and the neighbouring Stadamhof. The Wöhrloch, consisting of a combination lock and weir, was, like the stone bridge, a marvel of engineering on such a grand and rapid scale. However, for centuries it was the source of strife between the city of Regensburg and the Bavarian prince-elector, who wanted to widen the basin to allow larger ships to enter Stadtamhof, boosting trade. Disputes over water management sometimes led to the Wöhrloch being destroyed by the military.

The Wöhrloch in 1638 (source)

In addition to the historical plot, which is worthy of Ken Follett's 'Pillars of the Earth', the question arises: can such an unstable formation be created hydrologically on a river with such a variable flow over such a long period of time? Although the historical sources are clearly "pro-peninsula", there are some hydrological factors that may call into question its existence and its persistence over many centuries.

• The Danube reaches its most northerly point at Regensburg, where it makes an almost right-angled bend at Winzer, changing from a northeasterly to a southeasterly course. There is also a bend with similar parameters just above the mouth of the Naab, both of which have in common that they head towards a steep hillside. The development of the bend in the river has therefore washed the left bank year after year, and has thinned the peninsula most in the vicinity of Winzer, which is consistent with what historians say about the site of the 1304 breach. 
• The parameters of the peninsula also suggest that it was not very stable: it was 6 km long from the mouth of the Naab to Regensburg and probably 100 m wide at most. If we take the distance between the Roman castellum of Großprüfening and the hillside above Mariaort, the peninsula was located in a river floodplain cross-section of up to 600 metres in width. In such a section, major floods have had the opportunity to breach the floodplain several times over a period of 1200 years.
• The only permanent watercourse between the Naab and the Regen is on the left bank, the Brückelgraben. This is a relatively short stream with a low discharge, but it probably built up a cone of sediment in the Danube (or earlier in the Naab bed) from the alluvium carried by the hillside area during major rainfalls, forcing the river of the northern branch southwards, which may ultimately have caused the gradual thinning of the land mass. 

Based on the sources, it seems more likely that the Danube's longest peninsula did exist, but reconstructing exactly how long and how its gradual thinning took place would deserve further research.

Sources and literature:

• Christian Heinrich Kleinstäuber: Geschichte und Beschreibung der altberühmten Steinernen Brücke zu Regensburg. 1878.
• Iris Nießen, Doris Wollenberg: Aus Fluss wird Stadt – Die Stadtentwicklung im Osten von Regensburg im Fokus von Hochwassern und Landgewinnung. 2019.
• Oliver Wetter: Urban stream works in Central Europe 1200–1700: municipal administration, hydraulic engineering and flood reconstruction. 2019.
• Karl Bauer: Regensburg - Kunst, Kultur und Alltagsgeschichte. Buchverlag 2014. 6. kiadás
• Karlheinz Dietz, Thomas Fischer: Regensburg zur Römerzeit. Friedrich Pustet Verlag 2018.

L'ouverture du Rollerdamm

MAGYARUL

IN ENGLISH

Le 30 mai 1875, en présence de Sa Majesté François-Joseph Ier, empereur d'Autriche et roi de Hongrie, le Danube fut inauguré à Vienne lors d'une cérémonie dans son nouveau lit rectiligne et canalisé. Le 15 avril, un mois et demi avant la cérémonie d'inauguration, la digue de protection en terre (Rollerdamm) fut ouverte et le Danube entra dans son nouveau lit canalisé juste au-dessous du pont des chemins de fer du Nord-Ouest (Nordwestbahnbrücke). Trois jours plus tard, le premier bateau à vapeur franchissait déjà le nouveau tronçon. L'histoire de la Rollerdamm est reconstituée ci-dessous sur la base des écrits du livre Wasser | Stadt | Wien.

La digue de protection en terre (Rollerdamm) à Vienne le 10 avril. 1875. (Image originale)

À Vienne, le Danube était déjà un fleuve relativement régulé avant le début des grands travaux de régulation en 1870, malgré les méandres naturels qui subsistaient. La quasi-totalité des berges du lit principal avait été stabilisée en 1869 sur la base d'une planification locale ou centrale. Cependant, le lit principal, stabilisé par des épis, des blocs de pierre et des pieux, était encore trop large, créant un potentiel pour la formation de nouveaux bancs de graviers, comme dans le Gänsehaufen près du port de Kaisermühlen. À cette époque, les travaux de régularisation étaient encore principalement destinés à la navigation, la protection contre les inondations n'étant qu'une préoccupation secondaire. Lorsqu'en 1862, une embâcle inonda les faubourgs de Vienne, le gouvernement monarchique créa une commission de régulation du Danube, qui ne put commencer ses travaux qu'après la guerre perdue avec la Prusse en 1867. Les membres de la commission (ingénieurs, administrateurs et experts en navigation, chemins de fer) se partagèrent rapidement autour de deux positions très divergentes. Le groupe de Pasetti était en faveur d'un redressement du lit principal existant, tandis que l'autre groupe plaidait pour un nouveau lit unique et canalisé. La question est restée longtemps dans l'impasse et a finalement été tranchée par le retrait de Pasetti au profit des partisans de la version canalisée. Ce plan était principalement soutenu par les défenseurs du commerce et des transports.

L'entreprise française "Castor, Couvreux et Hersent", qui avait déjà fait ses preuves sur le canal de Suez, s'est vu attribuer le contrat. Le tracé du nouveau canal en courbe, établi en 1868, comportait trois points fixes : l'affleurement près de Nußdorf, le pilier récemment érigé de l'Ostbahnbrücke près de Stadlau et la section de la digue déjà achevée au niveau de la Lobau. Ce plan nécessitait deux grandes coupes sous et au-dessus de l'Ostbahnbrücke. L'entaille supérieure avait une longueur de 6 640 m, l'entaille inférieure une longueur de 2 550 m, et une zone d'inondation stérile de 475 m de large (Inundationsgebiet) devait être créée sur la rive gauche pour évacuer l'excédent d'eau des crues.

La position du Rollerdamm (source)

La section inférieure du nouveau Danube près de Freudenau à Weidenhaufen a été réalisée par la construction d'un fossé de 114 à 170 mètres de large, qui a ensuite été élargi par le Danube, emportant la plupart des sédiments vers le Marchfeld. La partie supérieure avait été entièrement excavée, mais lorsque le nouveau lit de la rivière fut dragué près de Nußdorf, les ouvriers eurent une mauvaise surprise : le lit de la rivière était jonché des restes de travaux d'ingénierie fluviale des siècles précédents. Pendant des années, les dragues à vapeur se sont efforcées de les dégager, mais les machines utilisées à l'époque étaient trop faibles pour enlever ces défenses massives. Au total, des milliers de pieux en bois datant de plusieurs siècles et 18 kilomètres et demi de structures en bois diverses furent retirés.

Pour la construction du canal, les dragues à vapeur et les transporteurs ont été utilisés pour la première fois à grande échelle et ont dû déplacer une quantité incroyable de sédiments pour l'époque. La plupart des 16,4 millions de mètres cubes de sédiments, de gravier et de sable excavés ont été utilisés pour remplir les zones suburbaines de Brigittenau et de Leopoldstadt, contribuant ainsi grandement à l'augmentation de la zone urbaine de Vienne. Le nouveau lit du Danube à Vienne comprenait la construction de digues de protection contre les inondations des deux côtés, l'approfondissement du canal du Danube et la construction de cinq nouveaux ponts sur le Danube.

Lors du dragage du nouveau lit, une étroite digue de terre appelée "Rollerdamm" a été laissée dans la partie la plus septentrionale du lit, maintenant jusqu'au dernier moment la direction de l'écoulement vers l'Alte Donau. À l'origine, cette digue n'était pas perpendiculaire au nouveau lit de la rivière, mais suivait la ligne d'écoulement de l'Alte Donau depuis la rive gauche des ponts actuels de Florisdorf jusqu'au Handelskai sur la droite. Il était également surmonté d'un chemin de fer industriel, dont l'un des terminaux se trouvait sur l'actuelle Friedrich-Engels-Platz. Le 15 avril 1875, un mois et demi avant la cérémonie d'ouverture officielle, le Rollerdamm a été ouvert sous la direction du géologue Eduard Suess, la petite brèche étant rapidement élargie par le Danube jusqu'à ce que le barrage soit complètement emporté sur la largeur du nouveau lit du fleuve.

Dans un premier temps, le Danube s'est montré réticent à occuper le nouveau lit. Après le retrait des crues de printemps, la fermeture technique de l'Alte Donau a commencé, mais dans le lit rétréci, le fleuve exerçait encore une force considérable, déplaçant les bateaux chargés de pierres enfoncés dans le lit, détruisant la digue en cours de construction et creusant de profondes fosses dans les sédiments meubles. Finalement, des structures en bois remplies de blocs rocheux ont été reliées entre elles par des câbles et mises en place sur des voies ferrées, fermant définitivement l'ancien lit de la rivière. Peu de temps après, en février 1876, le premier "test de résistance" du nouveau système d'approvisionnement en eau de Vienne a été effectué. Dans le tronçon du Danube encore non régulé de Vienne, sous le pont Ostbahnbrücke à Stadlau, la glace s'entassa et l'eau en crue, repoussée par le barrage de glace, trouva son exutoire dans le bras mort de l'Alte Donau. La digue inférieure et la digue supérieure se rompirent et les trente-trois bateaux de la compagnie "Castor, Couvreux et Hersent" furent emportés hors de l'ancien bras et mis à terre, endommagés, dans une prairie fluviale près de Fischamend. Le 25 février 1876, le London Times a également fit état de la prétendue défaillance totale des ouvrages de régulation à Vienne et publia une fausse nouvelle selon laquelle le nouveau cimetière central de Vienne était tellement inondé que les cadavres avaient été emportés hors de leurs tombes.

L'ouverture du Rollerdamm le 15 avril 1875.
Au-delà se trouve le pont du chemin de fer du Nord-Ouest, construit en 1872. (source)

Après la fermeture du Vieux Danube (Alte Donau), de vastes étendues de champs de graviers furent laissées à sec. La zone a rapidement été envahie par les baigneurs viennois. En leur faveur, les autorités ont dragué le bras mort pour améliorer la qualité de l'eau, ce qui a finalement permis à cette zone humide urbaine de survivre. En raison de la régulation du Danube à Vienne, le niveau de la nappe phréatique s'est abaissé de 1,3 mètre en moyenne, de sorte que la valeur immobilière de la plaine inondable du Danube a fortement augmenté parallèlement à celle des décharges. La disparition des méandres naturels, la formation d'îles et de bancs de graviers et l'arrêt de leur migration ont finalement conduit à l'urbanisation rapide des berges et, parallèlement, à la dégradation et à la disparition rapides des habitats naturels.

Traduit par deepl.com et Eric Baude (http://www.danube-culture.org/).

Opening the Rollerdamm

MAGYARUL

EN FRANÇAIS

On 30 May 1875, in the presence of His Majesty Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, the Danube in Vienna was inaugurated with a ceremony in its new, straight, canalised riverbed. On 15 April, a month and a half before the inauguration ceremony, they opened the Rollerdamm and the Danube entered into its new channel just under the Nordwestbahnbrücke. Three days later, the first steamship was already crossing the new stretch. The below history of the Rollerdamm is reconstructed on the basis of the writings of the book Wasser | Stadt | Wien.

The Rollerdamm in Vienna on April 10. 1875. (Original image)

In Vienna, the Danube was already a relatively regulated river before the start of the Great Regulation Works in 1870, despite its remaining natural meanders. Almost the entire banks of the main riverbed had been stabilised by 1869 on the basis of some local or central plannning. However, the main bed, stabilised with groynes, stone boulders and piles, was still too wide, creating the potential for further gravel bar formation, such as in the Gänsehaufen near the port of Kaisermühlen. At that time, regulation works were still primarily for the benefit of navigation, flood protection being only a secondary concern. When an icy flood in 1862 inundated the lower suburbs of Vienna, the Monarchy's government set up a Danube regulation commission, which could only begin its work after the lost war with Prussia in 1867. Members of the committee (engineers, administrators and shipping, railways experts) soon began to group around two widely divergent positions. The Pasetti group was in favour of a straightening of the existing main riverbed, while the other group argued for a new, single, channelised riverbed. There was a long stalemate on the issue, which was finally settled by Pasetti's withdrawal in favour of the supporters of the chanellized version. This plan was mainly supported by trade and transport advocates.

The French company "Castor, Couvreux et Hersent", which has already proved its worth in the Suez Canal, was awarded the contract. The route of the new, curved canal, which was laid out in 1868, had three fixed points: the outcropping near Nußdorf, the recently erected pillar of the Ostbahnbrücke near Stadlau and the section of the already completed dyke at Lobau. This plan required two major cuts under and above the Ostbahnbrücke. The upper cut was 6640 m long, the lower one 2550 m long, and a barren 475 m wide inundation area (Inundationsgebiet) was planned to be created on the left bank to drain off the excess flood water.

The position of the Rollerdamm (source)

The lower section of the new Danube near Freudenau at Weidenhaufen was done by the construction of a 114-170 metre wide ditch, which was then widened further by the Danube, washing out most of the sediment towards the Marchfeld. The upper section had been fully excavated, but when the new riverbed was dredged near Nußdorf, the workers were in for a nasty surprise: the riverbed was littered with the remains of river engineering works from previous centuries. For years, steam dredgers had struggled to dredge them out, but the machines used at the time were too weak to remove the massive defences. In all, thousands of wooden piles from different centuries and 18 and a half kilometres of various wooden structures were dredged out.

To build the canal, the steam dredgers and transporters were used for the first time on a mass scale had to move an incredible amount of sediment for the time. Most of the 16.4 million cubic metres of sediments, gravel and sand excavated were used to fill the suburban areas of Brigittenau and Leopoldstadt, contributing greatly to the increase in the urban area of Vienna. The new Danube riverbed in Vienna included the construction of flood protection embankments on both sides, the deepening of the Danube canal and the construction of five new bridges over the Danube.

During the dredging of the new riverbed, a narrow earth dike called the "Rollerdamm" was left in the northernmost part of the riverbed, maintaining the flow direction towards the Alte Donau until the very last moment. It was not originally perpendicular to the new riverbed, but followed the flow line of the Alte Donau from the left bank of the present-day Florisdorf bridges to the Handelskai on the right. It also had an industrial railway on top, one of its terminal was at today's Friedrich-Engels-Platz. On 15 April 1875, one and a half months before the official opening ceremony, the Rollerdamm was opened under the direction of geologist Eduard Suess, the small gap being rapidly widened by the Danube until the dam was completely washed away along the width of the new riverbed.

At first, the Danube was reluctant to occupy the new riverbed. After the spring floods receded, the technical closure of the Alte Donau began, but in the narrowing bed the river still exerted considerable force, displacing stone-laden boats sunk into the bed, destroying the embankment under construction and carving deep pits in the loose sediment. Finally, wooden structures filled with boulders were wired together and lowered into place on railway tracks, permanently closing the old riverbed. Relatively soon afterwards, in February 1876, the first "stress test" of the new Vienna water system was carried out.  In the still unregulated Danube section of Vienna, under the Ostbahnbrücke in Stadlau, the ice was piled up and the raising water, pushed back by the ice dam, found its outlet in the Alte Donau oxbow. Both the lower and upper embankment broke and the thirty-three ships of the company "Castor, Couvreux et Hersent" were washed out of the old branch and put ashore, damaging them, in a riverine meadow near Fischamend. On 25 February 1876, the London Times also reported on the alleged total failure of the regulation works in Vienna, and published the fake news that the new central cemetery in Vienna was so flooded that dead bodies had been washed from their graves. 

The opening of the Rollerdamm on 15 April 1875.
Beyond is the Nordwestbahnbrücke, constructed in 1872. (source)

After closing the Alte Donau, large stretches of gravel fields were left dry. The area was soon swarmed by bathers from Vienna. In their favor authorities dredged the oxbow to improve water quality, which ultimately led to the survival of this urban wetland. As a result of the Danube regulation in Vienna, the groundwater level has sunk by an average of 1.3 metres, so that the real estate value of the Danube floodplain has increased greatly in parallel with the landfills. The loss of natural meander development, the formation of islands and gravel bars and the cessation of their migration ultimately led to the rapid urban development of river banks and, in parallel, to the rapid degradation and disappearance of natural habitats.