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Hans Georg Bahre (1586-1646) unknowingly combined the Bustletown books of Rotraut Suzanne Berner and Richard Scarry' Busytown. Just like in these books, we move from the suburbs towards the city centre and we list the inhabitants of the city by their crafts. It doesn't really matter who lived first, who knew whose work, but like the authors of children's books, Bahre has done a thorough job, so thorough that if we wanted to illuminate the background to his entire oeuvre, it would not be a blog post but a p.H.d of local history written with scholarly rigour. In its heyday, Regensburg was one of the largest, most populous and most important cities in Central Europe, the centre of the Holy Roman Empire, an important Danube crossing point where no ferrymen had to be bothered with wagons and carts on their ferries, but a massive stone bridge arched over the river, concentrating a considerable amount of trade traffic between the north and south in the free imperial city bordering the Danube for two kilometers.
The purpose of the picture was not to entertain children, but to represent the wealth, grandeur and importance of Regensburg, and for practical reasons it was appropriate to use the Danube as the main viewpoint, the main commercial artery of the city, where most of the trade took place. Like in Richard Scarry's Busytown, this image is easy to navigate, for two reasons; the notable buildings, such as churches, towers and farm buildings, were inscribed, and the second reason is prosaic, as most of the notable buildings are still to be found in Regensburg today. It is also an important historical source for buildings that have since disappeared, such as the two demolished towers of the Stone Bridge.
The term monumental is not an exaggeration, the parameters of the drawing are impressive, with a length of 8 meters and a width of 40 centimeters, a format similar to ancient papyrus scrolls. It is divided into two four-meter sections, the centre being the famous Stone Bridge, where the image breaks slightly. The 8-meter-long image on Wikipedia has been broken down into 18 separate images, which makes it less enjoyable, but certainly more manageable for those who cannot go to the Bavarian State Library in Munich to see it in person. In this publication, picture 18 is not included, as Prüfening and the Naab estuary, several kilometers from Regensburg, are already included in a somewhat exaggerated way, as the Mariaorter Wöhrd is missing, for example, and the style is somewhat different from the rest of the image.
A particular feature of Regensburg's Danube side is the conflict between the city's defence and economic interests. Already the Roman fortress of Castra Regina, built in 175 AD, had one side of the Danube, the northern (shorter) wall of the rectangular legionary camp opposite the estuary of the Regen river was approximately 450 meters long, joined on two sides by civilian suburbs. On this Danube wall, facing north, stood a huge gate, the Porta Praetoria, whose ruins, preserved at a height of one storey, are among the most important Roman landmarks in Regensburg. In addition to the gate towers and the corner towers, several smaller towers punctuated the walls of the legionary camp. After the end of Roman rule, although there was a lack of continuity in the population, the fortress was settled by Bavarian tribes within its remaining walls as early as the 6th century and soon became an important centre of power once again. In 920, the first duke of Bavaria, Arnulf, extended the city walls, enclosing the western outskirts as far as the present-day Eiserner Steg footbridge. Masons extended the Danube wall to 700 meters. Another four centuries later, another extension of the fortifications became necessary, as one of Europe's most populous cities was now home to around 40,000 people. New suburbs were built to the east and west of the Arnulfian walls, and in 1320 they were added to the old city core. This meant that Regensburg's 15-towered walls followed the Danube for two kilometers, but the distance between the walls and the river was no more than a few tens of meters, where defence and economic interests clashed, since all the goods traffic on the Danube had to be carried out at the base of the city walls and entered through a relatively large number of gates and passages. In fact, there is a tower (Kräncherturm) on the city wall which was used for the economy and topped by a crane structure.
In Bahre's view of Regensburg, in front of the city walls of Regensburg, we see quays built all along the city walls, with piles and beams to make them suitable for economic activity. In this narrow area, we can observe six distinct wharves for major commodities, which have survived to the present day in the form of districts or street names, despite the fact that, with few exceptions, Regensburg's city walls were demolished in 1856. Their common characteristic is that they belonged to the part of the city west of the Stone Bridge. Of all the products, salt had the most significant impact on the townscape, the old, not much smaller building is located on the other side of the new salt warehouse, the Salzstadel next to the Stone Bridge. To the west the meat market quay comes next, which was accessed via the Fleischtor, followed by the fishermen's huts, and next to it is the Weinlände quay, which was accessed via the Weintor to the wine market within the wall (Am Weinmarkt), as it is still called today. To the west was the wharf of the ironmongers and timber merchants (Holzlände), iron goods were transported by ship from the mines and smelters around Amberg, while timber was relatively plentiful in the area around the city, but the reason for the wharf was mainly that it was easier to float logs on the Danube to Regensburg. We can see industry dangling like shells on pebbles on the eastern piers of the Stone Bridge, but economic activity can also be observed to the east, with a gunpowder mill harnessing the Danube's hydroelectric power in the foreground of the surviving Eastern Gate at the base of the city wall.
Before we move on to the Danube itself, it is worth observing the figures who populate the picture, both men and women, and all social classes. As with modern wimmelbooks, you can also discover animals, both wild and domestic. The author, Hans Georg Bahre, even depicted himself among his peers in Figure 17, initialled H.G.B. There are fishermen walking their dogs, anglers sitting on the shore, merchants haggling on the quayside, stevedores huddled under their full puttons, horsemen towing boats against the tide, or women washing clothes by the brick manufactury, with ducks and other fowl wandering about. The vegetation is also remarkable, although the town itself is mostly treeless, with some waterfront stumps harvested by basket weavers in the outskirts, but it is interesting that they have allowed larger trees to grow on the lower parts of the piers of the Stone Bridge.
As the Stone Bridge has given the city its economic importance, it is no coincidence that the pride of Regensburg is prominently featured on Bahre's picture. As the image of the bridge has changed over the centuries, it has become much simpler, even puritanical, and has lost its baroque bustle. In 1809, the northern Black Tower in Stadtamhof was demolished due to war damage, while the central tower marking the border between the two towns was destroyed by an icy flood in the 1780s. In 1630, both were still standing in all their glory. The bridge had two distinct faces, mainly due to the devastating icy floods. On the west side of the bridge's piers, huge blocks of stone served as icebreakers, breaking up the ice blocks that attacked the bridge. This was extremely important for the protection of the bridge, because the architectural possibilities of the 1130s meant that the bridge's arches had relatively limited permeability, even in summer, causing the Danube to swell, and the water level was harnessed by the water wheels of the wooden huts on the south side, which would be as futile to search for today as trees would be left to grow on bridge piers. From the bridge, as today, a side bridge led to the island called Oberer Wöhrd (Upper Island).
If there was an upper island, there had to be a lower one, and this was accessed by a wooden bridge (Die Hülzern Prucken) built east of the Stone Bridge. The lifespan of the Wooden Bridge was greatly increased by the Stone Bridge's icebreakers, the broken ice slabs probably caused less damage and the pillars did not have to be rebuilt after every icy flood. Regarding the Regensburg material names, a new bridge was built in 1863 to replace the wooden one destroyed in February 1784, and was simply called the Eiserne Brücke (Iron Bridge). In 1630, between the two bridges, we see a water control structure in the Danube, about 300 meters long, built of wooden planks and littered with stones to make it easier for sailors to moor in the blocked area.
The most important detail in Bahre's picture for this blog is the first two pictures. In addition to the two large Wöhrd that still exist today, there is also a now-vanished island, the Bruder Wöhrd on tha right riverbank, in the eastern suburbs of Regensburg. The first two pictures show two separate islands, only one of which has a name. The dried up and waterlogged riverbeds, the bridge spanning over them, are documented in incredible detail with ducks, bushes and bank protection works. The location of this island can no longer be reconstructed, nor can the church of St Nicholas, for whose monks the island is presumably named.
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| Situation of each section on a XVII. century map of Regensburg. |
So this is what a short stretch of the Danube must have looked like four centuries ago, this is how people lived on its urban banks, and looking at the pictures you think, if only there was a similar one of every town on the Danube!
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