as a PDF - Alpen-Adria

Pantone 342
Pantone 285
ISBN 978-961-237-723-6
789612 377236
Tracing flood histories is one example for the challenges of writing
environmental histories in Central Europe. Two quite different sets of skills are
needed. One set is the historian’s craft. The historian works at making sense of
sources, constructing a compelling narrative from chaotic facts, tracing human
appreciation of the Danube, human uses of the Danube, human interventions
into the Danube … . The skills of the landscape ecologist, the hydrologist, the
historical geographer, the geomorphologist and many other natural scientists
are needed for the second building block. We need reconstructions of past
riverine landscapes, ecosystems, of paleo-meanders and we need a chronology
to answer questions of cause and effect – what was first, the intervention or
the problem? Without knowing about the substrate of perceptions of historical
actors, we cannot evaluate their perceptions for our narrative. How does the river
the newspapers are talking about actually look like? Very different from how we
perceive it today. Both are necessary, none is more important, both skills are of
equal importance for an environmental history of the Danube River Basin.
(Verena Winiwarter)
Zbirka_ZC_Man_Nature_Environ.indd 1
zbirka48
(Miha Kosi)
Man, Nature and Environment
between the Northern Adriatic and
the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times
=Ā
In the immediate vicinity of the medieval Ljubljana
there were extensive woodlands, stretching far
into the hills in the southeast and northwest. …
The greater part of Ljubljana’s supply with wood,
however, came from areas further away, 15–20
kilometres from the city. … In the time of need, as
during the threat from Ottoman incursions in 1478,
when Ljubljana was strenghtening its fortifications,
the king allowed the citizens unlimited use of wood
from any forests in the immediate vicinity. … [A]
unique source … dates back to 1510, the time of war
between Austria and the Republic of Venice. Therein
Emperor Maximilian … ordered his captain in
Ljubljana that he should, together with the citizens,
enclose or fence … forests and prohibit the cutting,
so that the young trees could grow and the forests
could flourish again, to provide for the needs of his
city and castle in the future.
Man, Nature and Environment
9
between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times
9 771408 353005
36,00 €
48
zbirka48
=Ā
3/3/15 10:08 AM
Znanstvena založba Filozofske
fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani
zbirka
Zč
Zbirka zgodovinskega časopisa
Man, Nature and Environment
Between the Northern Adriatic
and the Eastern Alps
in Premodern Times
Edited by
Peter Štih and Žiga Zwitter
Ljubljana 2014
zbirka 48
ISSN 0000–0000
Zč
ISSN 1408-3531
Peter Štih, Žiga Zwitter (editors)
Man, Nature and Environment Between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps
in Premodern Times
***
Zbirka Zgodovinskega časopisa 48
***
Editor-in-Chief of the series: Peter Štih
International editorial Board: Tina Bahovec, Bojan Balkovec, Borut Batagelj, Rajko Bratož,
Ernst Bruckmüller, Liliana Ferrari, Ivo Goldstein, Žarko Lazarević, Dušan Mlacović,
Božo Repe, Franc Rozman, Janez Stergar, Imre Szilágyi, Marta Verginella, Peter Vodopivec,
Marija Wakounig.
***
Peer reviewers: Harald Krahwinkler and Vasko Simoniti
Design: Vesna Vidmar
***
Published by: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (Ljubljana University
Press, Faculty of Arts) (for the publisher: Branka Kalenić Ramšak, Dean of Faculty of Arts),
Historical Association of Slovenia (for the publisher: Branko Šuštar, President of HAS).
The publication was financially supported by: Slovenian Research Agency (projects Man,
Nature and Environment between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in the Premodern
Times (J6-4087, 2011-2014, head: Peter Štih) and The adaptation patterns of human activities
to the environmental changes after Last Glacial Maximum in Slovenia (J6-4016, 2011-2014,
head: Dušan Plut)).
***
Print: Littera Picta d.o.o., Ljubljana 2014
Print Run: 200
***
Authors are responsible for ensuring grammatical and scientific adequacy of the submissions.
CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji
Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana
94(4-191.2)(082)
502.11(4-191.2)(082)
MAN, nature and environment between the northern Adriatic and the eastern Alps
in premodern times / edited by Peter Štih and Žiga Zwitter. - Ljubljana : Znanstvena
založba Filozofske fakultete =University Press, Faculty of Arts : Historical Association
of Slovenia, 2014. - (Zbirka Zgodovinskega časopisa ; 48)
ISBN 978-961-237-723-6 (Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete)
1. Štih, Peter
277728512
CONTENTS
Verena Winiwarter: The Emerging Long-Term View: Challenges and
Opportunities of Writing Environmental Histories in Central Europe������� 8
Katarina Čufar, Matjaž Bizjak, Manja Kitek Kuzman, Maks Merela, Michael
Grabner, and Robert Brus: Environmental History of Pišece Castle
Reconstructed with the Aid of Wood Investigation, Dendrochronology
and Written Sources��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 24
Peter Štih: Mensch und Wald in den Ostalpen (bis zur Großen Kolonisation)��� 36
Jelena Mrgić: Rocks, Waters, and Bushes–What did the Ragusan Commune
Acquire from the Bosnian King in 1399?
An Environmental History Approach������������������������������������������������������ 52
Donata Degrassi: Water, Wood, Minerals: The Resources of Friuli and
Their Use Between the XIIIth and XVth Centuries������������������������������������ 74
Dušan Mlacović: The Communes of the Northern Istria in the Late Middle
Ages and Wood���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 86
Miha Kosi: Interaction Between the City and its Environment: The Case
of Late Medieval Ljubljana�������������������������������������������������������������������� 102
Matjaž Bizjak: Medieval Account Books as a Source for
Environmental History��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 124
Günther Bernhard: Gubernialindizes, Patente und Kurrenden, Kalender,
Fuggerzeitungen und Archivalien aus Grundherrschaftsarchiven
als Quellen zur Umweltgeschichte des Alpen-Adria-Raumes in der
Frühneuzeit��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 144
Boris Golec: Erze, Wasser, Feuer und Erdbeben als Mitgestalter des
räumlichen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Antlitzes der Städte und
Märkte im Land Krain in der vormodernen Epoche ����������������������������� 156
Janez Mlinar: Das Eisenhüttenwesen und sein Einfluss auf Mensch
und Natur in Spätmittelalter und Frühneuzeit: Beispiele aus dem
westlichen Oberkrain����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 182
Marko Štuhec: Nature in Some Normative and Expressive Sources in the
17th and 18th Centuries in the Territory of Present-Day Slovenia����������� 192
Peter Mikša: Exploring the Mountains – Triglav at the End of the
18th Century�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 202
Martin Knoll: Describing Socio-Natural Sites: How Early Modern
Topographical Literature Deals with Alpine and Riverine
Landscapes��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 216
Martin Schmid: Dealing with Dynamics: The Preindustrial Danube as an
Interdisciplinary Challenge�������������������������������������������������������������������� 228
András Vadas: A River Between Worlds: Environment, Society and
War Along the River Raab/Rába (c. 1600–1660)����������������������������������� 242
Hrvoje Petrić: Some Aspects of the Interrelationship Between Humans and
the River Drava in the Pre-Industrial Times with an Emphasis on the
Late 18th and Early 19th Century������������������������������������������������������������� 260
Christian Rohr: Coping with Natural Hazards in the Southeast Alpine
Region in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern Times������������������������ 290
Žiga Zwitter: Water and Forest in 17th-Century Jauntal/Podjuna (Carinthia):
The Analysis of Patrimonial Court Records and a Description of
Tenants’ Holdings from the Seigneury of Eberndorf/Dobrla vas����������� 314
Michael Grabner, Elisabeth Wächter, and Markus Jeitler: Historic Transport
of Logs and Timber in Austria–and How to Trace Back Their Origin��� 352
Gernot Gallor: Das rechtliche Spannungsfeld zwischen Nutzung und Schutz
des Waldes in der Neuzeit���������������������������������������������������������������������� 362
Robert Brus and Domen Gajšek: The Introduction of Non-Native Tree
Species to Present-Day Slovenia������������������������������������������������������������ 380
Miha Seručnik: Countryside on the Brink of Modernity: Josephinian and
Franciscan Cadastres as Sources for the Eco-History of Carniola��������� 394
Index of Geographical Names�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 413
228 M. SCHMID: Dealing with dynamics: the preindustrial Danube as an interdisciplinary challenge
Martin Schmid
Dealing with Dynamics: The Preindustrial
Danube as an Interdisciplinary Challenge
SCHMID, Martin, PhD, Assoc. Prof., AlpenAdria-Universität Klagenfurt, Graz, Wien, Center for Environmental History (ZUG) at Institute
of Social Ecology (SEC), AT–1070 Vienna,
Schottenfeldgasse 29/3, [email protected]
SCHMID, Martin, dr., izr. prof., Alpen-AdriaUniversität Klagenfurt, Graz, Wien, Center
for Environmental History (ZUG) at Institute
of Social Ecology (SEC), AT–1070 Vienna,
Schottenfeldgasse 29/3, [email protected]
Dealing with Dynamics: The Preindustrial
Danube as an Interdisciplinary Challenge
Obravnavanje dinamike: Predindustrijska
Donava – izziv za interdisciplinarno raziskovanje
Most environmental histories (of rivers) begin
roughly around 1800. This contribution on the
Danube takes a long-term perspective, starting
basically in the 16th century. It focuses first and
foremost on the river itself, on the changing
waters and lands that once together constituted
highly dynamic riverine landscapes. Such an
interdisciplinary environmental history draws
from various historical research strands, as much
as it depends on the research of natural scientists. The basic argument of this contribution
is that we cannot understand the history of the
Danube if we do not approach it as the common,
intertwined history of nature and society. The
Danube turns out to be an interdisciplinary
challenge for historians.
Obravnavane vsebine večine okoljskih zgodovin (rek) se začnejo okvirno okrog leta 1800.
Prispevek obravnava Donavo iz dolgoročne
perspektive in se v osnovi začenja v 16. stoletju. Osredotoča se predvsem na reko samo,
na spreminjajoče se vode in kopno, ki so nekoč
skupaj tvorili zelo razgibane rečne pokrajine.
Tovrstna interdisciplinarna okoljska zgodovina
se naslanja na raznovrstne zgodovinske raziskave v enaki meri kot na raziskave naravoslovcev.
Temeljna teza prispevka je, da zgodovine Donave ni mogoče razumeti, če je ne obravnavamo
kot skupno, prepleteno zgodovino narave in
družbe. Donava se je zgodovinarjem izkazala
kot interdisciplinaren izziv.
Keywords: Danube, preindustrial environmental history, river history, periodization, socionatural sites
Ključne besede: Donava, predindustrijska
okoljska zgodovina, zgodovina rek, periodizacija, družbeno-naravna prizorišča
Author’s Abstract
Avtorski izvleček
Man, Nature and Environment Between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times 229
Introduction: Narratives of river histories
“Today the Danube is the sick river of Europe, its once wandering channel straitjacketed
into narrow navigational routes, its floods captured by dozen of dams, and its waters
heavily polluted with sewage, metals, hydrocarbons, and synthetic chemicals. Some
[…] are working hard to be the physicians who will bring the river back to health […].
If the would-be healers can bring back this river of many nations and cultures and a
long history of human alteration, then there remains hope for any river on Earth.”1
The geomorphologist Ellen Wohl delivered that judgement on the current state
of the Danube in a book published in 2011 in which she discusses the environmental
change of selected great rivers of the world. Ellen Wohl is essentially right, but
her story of the Danube as the ‘sick river’ is only one side of this great European
river’s history. Natural scientists like Ellen Wohl made significant contributions
to the field of river history by discussing how technical interventions (mainly in
the 19th and 20th century) into riverine systems have changed river ecology and
altered their morphology and hydrology. Most contributions to river history with
a background in the natural sciences are clearly still based on a nature-culture
dichotomy.2 In most cases the resulting narrative is one of ‘decline and disaster in
which rivers are killed, raped and denatured’.3 Narratives of environmental histories
with a background in the humanities have included (hi)stories of societal power
and subjugation,4 of taming and conquest, but also (hi)stories of threat and human
ingenuity in coping with it. Histories of modern river engineering and technical
mastery have also been important in the historiographic tradition.5
Since the 1990s, environmental historians have turned to narratives taking
the hybrid (i.e. social and natural at the same time) character of humanly altered
rivers into account, by speaking of them as ‘Organic Machines’6 or making them
the subject of ‘eco-biographies’.7 We cannot understand the history of great rivers
like the Danube if we do not approach it as the common, intertwined history of
nature and society. The Danube’s history is that of a ‘socio-natural site’ – the history
Wohl, World of Rivers, p. 104.
Jakobsson, Narratives, p. 54.
3
Blackbourn, Conquest, pp. 24-25.
4
Worster, Rivers of Empire.
5
Mauch, Zeller, Rivers in History.
6
White, Organic Machine.
7
Cioc, Rhine.
1
2
230 M. SCHMID: Dealing with dynamics: the preindustrial Danube as an interdisciplinary challenge
of a hybrid.8 Almost all influential environmental histories of rivers start roughly
speaking around 1800. How industrialization processes since then have impacted
and changed rivers has been the main theme of these histories. For the preindustrial
period there are comparably few and mainly regional studies.9 This dominance on
the modern period has implicitly given the false impression that the medieval and
the early modern period was a time of widely undisturbed natural rivers.
Humans have altered and influenced the Danube for millennia, and the river
itself has changed the course of human history – with its waters high and low, with
its ice and sediments, with the species living in the riverine landscape, fostered,
hunted, harvested and eaten by men and women, with floods and other threats,
with the opportunities a river like the Danube has offered, and with the surprises
the Danube has had ready for those striving for control over its power.
A view from the river10
How shall we reconstruct such a history? First and foremost we must focus
on the river itself, on the changing waters and lands that once together constituted
these highly dynamic riverine landscapes. To focus on the river might sound selfevident, but for most historians it is not. Economic historians may be interested in
the Danube as a route of trade and transport, archaeologists and anthropologists in
the diversity of (material) cultures and civilizations that emerged along this river’s
banks, political historians may focus on the diversity of nations, their fights and
forms of cooperation, on the rise and fall of ideologies, political systems and empires.
Scholars of the Ottoman Empire may be interested in many of these aspects from
their perspective. An interdisciplinary environmental history draws from many of
these works – as much as it depends on the research of ecologists, limnologists,
hydrologists or geomorphologists.
In such an interdisciplinary environmental history, the past dynamics of fish
populations11 is just as important as the fishermen who caught the fish. The unseen
microbes controlling the biological productivity of the riverine ecosystem are just
as important as the early modern landowner whose hunting in the floodplains in
the end depends on nothing else than these very microbes’ biological productivity.
It is the history of flood regimes and sediments12 as much as it is the history of engineers, their success and failure. The reconstruction of the riverine landscape as
a past physical reality and its dynamics over time (driven by both geomorphology
and societal activities) is essential.
8
For a more detailed discussion of this concept see Schmid, Towards an Environmental
History, pp. 60-69; Winiwarter et al., Danube River Basin, pp. 105-108; Winiwarter et al., Looking, pp. 107-110.
9
For a recent review see Schmid, Environmental History of Rivers.
10
This phrase is taken from Coates, Six Rivers.
11
Haidvogl et al., Typology.
12
Lóczy, Danube.
Man, Nature and Environment Between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times 231
A recently finished research project on the Viennese Danube demonstrates
that it is possible to reconstruct early modern riverine landscapes based on a wide
range of historical sources: reports and plans by engineers, maps made for very
different purposes, topographical material, archival evidence for land use and land
cover changes, and many more; information drawn from the critical interpretation of
these historical materials has to be combined with knowledge about morphological
and hydrological processes typical for the respective river type.13
The merits of a long-term perspective
Along Danube of the 21st century, we find national parks and nature reserves for
recreation and education; in 2007 ‘Danube Parks’, a network of nature reserves along
the river, was founded to strengthen transnational cooperation for nature conservation
and protection. In this great river we find fish that bear traces from human cancer
therapies;14 we find local inhabitants who fear the next flood, sheltering behind their
ever higher flood protection walls; we find fish that are hybrids of different parent
species that have been isolated from each other because humans have impounded
the river with dams;15 we find ‘restored’ stretches, where the river has been released
from the concrete banks of the 19th century and is again allowed to erode and build
up new land, where a flood is not a catastrophe because there is still a floodplain;
in the sediments of the old Bega Canal from the early 18th century in the Vojvodina
we find radioactive isotopes of Uranium and Caesium – yet we do not really know
where these come from.16 What is the Danube today, this river full of contradictions?
It is a socio-natural site, something that is only partially under human control,
despite – and because of – all the human interventions into the river in the past. Humans
have changed the Danube in order to use it more efficiently and to gain control over
its power. They have turned it into what has been characterised as an ‘industrialized
river’.17 Humans have substantially changed the Danube during only two centuries.
After World War II, they did so on a larger scale, faster and more profoundly than
ever before.18 And in doing so, they have created a socio-natural site of breath-taking
complexity. In some stretches, they have fabricated astonishing riverine landscapes.
Just one example is the former large island of Csallóköz/Žitný ostrov downstream
of Bratislava along the Slovakian-Hungarian border. Here, most of the river’s water
flows on a length of c. 30 kilometres, meters high above the surrounding ground
through a concrete canal, to drive the turbines of the Gabčikovo hydropower plant.
Hohensinner et al, Two steps back.
Wohl, World of Rivers, p. 124.
15
Balon, Dams.
16
Bikit et al., Radioactivity.
17
Jakobsson, Industrialisering av älvar.
18
For a more detailed discussion of that great acceleration of landscape change along the
Danube after World War II. see Schmid, Towards an Environmental History, pp. 46-59.
13
14
232 M. SCHMID: Dealing with dynamics: the preindustrial Danube as an interdisciplinary challenge
But it should be borne in mind that even such heavily modified landscapes
are still also ‘natural’; they have never been and never will be under full human
control. In many stretches of the coeval Danube, that ‘nature’ of the river has been
obscured through technical arrangements like dams, tunnels, canals and power
plants. In early modern times, humans living with the Danube could see, feel and
experience this ‘nature’ and its forces each and every day. By reconstructing the
preindustrial Danube, environmental history rediscovers this ‘nature’ of the Danube
and makes it visible again.
There is no pristine river
Environmental historians of rivers – regardless of their temporal focus – should
not search for ‘pristine’ nature. Any idea of undisturbed ‘naturalness’ or of ecological integrity in the sense of complete absence of human influence is misleading.
The Danube of classical antiquity was intensively used by the Roman fleet,19 it was
not less or more pristine than the medieval river. The medieval Danube was by no
means ‘closer to nature’ than the early modern Danube. Medievalists have shown
that human activities have altered rivers and brooks and have changed habitats and
species distributions all over medieval Europe. To give but one example from the
Danube: Around the year 1100, the carp, a fish of high economic importance in
preindustrial Europe, was brought from the lower to the upper basin with human
help, from where it started its westward spread.20
Earth scientists have demonstrated that long before industrialization, intensification of land use in the Danube River Basin over the last two millennia
significantly increased sediment loads delivered by the Danube to the Black Sea.
The same study also argued that increased deforestation in the lower basin over the
last five or six centuries resulted in a pulse of river-borne nutrients that radically
transformed the food web structure in the Black Sea.21 In other words: The shape,
extent and species composition of today’s Danube Delta is the unintended consequence of human activities that started two thousand years ago and far away from
the site itself. The Danube Delta – one of Europe’s hotspots of biodiversity and
today a popular ‘projection screen’ for all those who like to dream of last remaining
areas of untouched nature and wilderness in Europe – is in fact a socio-natural site.
Using a hybrid and thus interdisciplinary approach helps to identify human
influence where it is usually ignored (mostly in earlier periods), and to see the forces
of nature still at work where they have been rendered almost invisible (mostly in
more recent periods).
Himmler et al., Exploratio.
Hoffmann, Economic Development, pp. 662-664.
21
Giosan et al., Early Anthropogenic Transformation.
19
20
Man, Nature and Environment Between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times 233
Contours of the preindustrial Danube
The preindustrial Danube, roughly speaking, the river of the 18th and earlier
centuries, was neither a pristine river, nor was it a paradise. This major river offered
a wide range of opportunities for preindustrial societies; first and foremost these
‘roads that move’22 were attractive for transportation. The kinetic energy of flowing
water allowed transporting goods much farther than over land, even against the
flow. In an agrarian socio-ecological regime with an energy system fuelled almost
solely by the sun,23 the power of flowing water could really make a difference. But
this same source of usable energy was also a source of threats. One of these threats
was flooding.
Floods are an essential driver and element of the geomorphology of riverine
systems. Nevertheless, floods are not pure ‘natural’ events; they are a feature of
the socio-natural arrangements of rivers. We know that early modern flood regimes
were influenced by human activities, in particular through large-scale changes in
land use such as deforestation.24 There is surprisingly little evidence of religious
explanations for extraordinary floods by contemporaries, but they became more
frequent during the early modern period. From the early 16th century, in particular
after the extreme flood of 1501, flood marks became quite common in the Upper
Danube River Basin. Situated in prominent places of a city, and often lavishly
designed, these marks commemorate extreme flood events.25
Warfare clearly had a significant impact on the early modern environment
of European rivers like the Danube, as it was shown for example for the Hungarian Danube and its tributaries under Ottoman rule,26 but the Danube itself also had
an impact on the course of war. Flooded rivers could cut off an army’s planned
route. A low water table could deprive a fortress of its defences. A frozen Danube
could become a convenient passage – unless the ice broke, as happened again and
again.27 Thousands of soldiers drowned in the early modern Danube. After the battle
of Blenheim (in German-speaking countries remembered as the second battle of
Höchstädt) in August 1704, the Danube’s banks and waters are reported as being
coloured red from the blood of more than 20,000 French and Bavarian soldiers
who were killed; thousands had drowned in the river during this battle alone.28
Mills were essential and a very common arrangement on the early modern
Danube. Water-driven mills must have been of enormous importance for the preindustrial energy system. Ship mills could be found not only along the swift flowing,
alpine upper part of the river, they were widespread also along the middle Danube.
By preindustrial standards, a mill was a profound intervention into the river. In parQuotation ascribed to Blaise Pascal; cited after Blackbourn, Conquest, p. 23.
Fischer-Kowalski, Haberl, Socioecological Transitions; Sieferle et al., Ende der Fläche, pp. 7-50.
24
Giosan et al., Early Anthropogenic Transformation.
25
Rohr, Extreme Naturereignisse, pp. 386-398.
26
Ágoston, Where Environmental and Frontier Studies Meet.
27
Winiwarter, Danube as a Theatre.
28
Breuninger, Ur-Quelle, pp. 173-174.
22
23
234 M. SCHMID: Dealing with dynamics: the preindustrial Danube as an interdisciplinary challenge
ticular during the 18th century, mills on the Danube and its tributaries became more
and more a cause for complaint and dispute. Ever since they first appeared, mills
had been obstacles for shipping, and they took water from the river and influenced
its current. In early 17th century Vienna, authorities ordered the relocation of ship
mills from the left to the right bank; they thought these mills would attract too much
water and therefore contribute to the silting up of the navigable side arm that was
so important for supplying the city.29 In the middle Danube river basin, watermills
were used from as early as the 11th century onwards. In these flat terrains, the water
wheel was not driven by the flowing river but by the power of water flowing out of
a dammed reservoir. Watermills in Hungary often worked with an undershot wheel
and thus needed additional interventions into the local hydrological system such as
river diversions, mill creeks and ponds. These laborious arrangements were also a
risk; in late medieval Hungary mills frequently caused local floods.30
Fish from the Danube provided protein for humans over a very long time.
Many early modern writers referred to the extraordinarily rich fishing grounds in
the Tisza, this major tributary to the middle Danube.31 Among other species, the
Swabian priest Breuninger in 1719, mentions the delicious Beluga or European
sturgeons (Huso Huso) caught at Komárom/Komárno, where they reached a
length of roughly six metres (‘20 Schuh lang’). This fish was already depleted
from overfishing by the 16th century,32 yet Breuninger makes no mention of this. In
his lifetime, this impressive species most probably had already disappeared from
the German and Austrian Danube.33 In general, the early modern Danube and its
tributaries were certainly rivers rich in fish. Nevertheless, at a local and regional
level overexploitation of particular species is very likely to have occurred. Fishing
laws and ordinances, issued for the upper Danube river basin regularly from the
late middle ages onwards, might have been necessary, and maybe even effective
to avert major damage in stocks.34 Breuninger mentions specific arrangements to
breed and harvest fish: ponds’ (‘Weyher’) and ‘reservoirs’ (‘Behalter’) were placed
along the Danube, the biggest on the vast island of Csallóköz/Schütt/Žitný ostrov,
upstream of Komárom/Komárno. According to the above mentioned Swabian priest,
the biggest Danube fisheries were in Kiliya, an important Ottoman port city in the
Delta; fish came from the Black Sea through the northern arm of the Delta, were
caught and salted and sent to other places.
Using the Danube for transport and navigation was the most important opportunity the river offered to early modern societies. Literary sources frequently
describe the dangers and threats that early modern travellers faced on the Danube,
especially in narrow gorges like the Iron Gates or at the ‘Struden’ at the border
Sonnlechner, Floods, Fights.
Kiss, Floods, pp. 56, 108.
31
Breuninger, Ur-Quelle, pp. 94-97; von Birken, Donaustrand, p. 78.
32
Balon, Einfluß; Bartosiewicz et al., Sturgeon fishing.
33
Haidvogl et al., Typology, p. 509.
34
Hoffmann, Sonnlechner, Patent.
29
30
Man, Nature and Environment Between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times 235
between Upper and Lower Austria.35 But these spectacular static dangers, with
their rapids and whirlpools, were by no means the only obstacles for navigation.
Another – less known – type of danger was to be found in those stretches
where the Danube moves through a wide alluvial valley or basin. Such landscapes
allowed for rapid shifts of river channels, making navigation dangerous to those
lacking the necessary experience,36 or – like in the case of early modern Vienna –
they allowed the river to move away from a settlement and thus to cut an economic
centre off from its lifeline.37 Both types of dangers for ships and navigation, those
in rocky but stable and those in morphologically dynamic stretches, challenged
early modern societies. Literary sources make no mention of the long, costly and
laborious efforts these and even medieval societies undertook to mitigate these
different dangers along the Danube. They are silent about human alterations to the
river. However, at least from some places and from archival material documenting
hydro-engineering and water works, we know that alterations were undertaken.
Already in the second half of the 15th century, the city of Straubing in Bavaria had
blocked the Danube with a massive barrage called ‘Bschlacht’, a wooden structure
filled with stone and rocks to divert the Danube’s main current towards the city.
With this massive intervention, the city could control navigation and secure its
tariff revenues from Danube trade.38
250 kilometres further downstream, the ‘Struden’ between Upper and Lower
Austria, a spectacular gorge well known for its narrow course with cataracts and a
vortex, presented a major obstacle for navigation. This section of the Upper Danube, in some respect comparable to the gorges more than 1,200 kilometres further
downstream at the Iron Gates, became a myth over the centuries, a symbol for the
life-threatening Danube that was portrayed over and over again by writers and artists over the centuries.39 Early modern travellers told of their fears going through
the gorge, they took note of the boatmen’s physical strain in the effort to stay on
course, and they described the river’s noise flushing over the rocks and between the
cliffs. But they were silent about their ancestors’ and coevals’ attempts to mitigate
these obstacles – attempts that date back at least to the 16th century, when in 1574
Habsburg emperor Maximilian II sent miners from Tyrol to Upper Austria to blast
these rocks in the ‘Struden’.40 Keeping the Danube free from tree trunks and other
obstacles dangerous for ships, as is documented for example for the stretch between Krems and Vienna in the 1550s,41 was most likely done continuously on the
entire early modern Danube. This practice was part of the maintenance necessary
to keep the socio-natural arrangements usable for navigation. With sunken boats
and destroyed cannonry, war brought ever-new obstacles into the river; and these
Andraschek-Holzer, Schmid, Topographische Ansichten.
Hohensinner, Wie viele Fahrzeuge.
37
Winiwarter et al., Looking, pp. 111-112.
38
Kolb, Historische Nachrichten; Leidel, Franz, Altbayerische Flusslandschaften, pp.
125-133; Knoll, Natur, pp. 167-177.
39
Andraschek-Holzer, Schmid, Topographische Ansichten.
40
Slezak, Frühe Regulierungsversuche.
41
Thiel, Donauregulierungsarbeiten I, p. 132.
35
36
236 M. SCHMID: Dealing with dynamics: the preindustrial Danube as an interdisciplinary challenge
could become the triggers of new sandbanks or islands.
Other examples of early river regulation include Vienna, where we find the
Viennese from at least the 14th century onwards dredging side arms of the great
river, stabilizing banks, constructing underwater wooden structures filled with
stones, and building groynes and spurs to gain control over their river stretch. In
2009, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) granted a project ‘Environmental history
of the Viennese Danube, 1500-1890’ (ENVIEDAN); within two and a half years,
an interdisciplinary team was able to produce the first integrated, interdisciplinary
environmental history of the Viennese Danube from early modern times to the end
of the 19th century. The project broke new ground as it broadened our knowledge
of the role of rivers for an urban society in the time before and during industrialisation. It produced a series of detailed reconstructions of past states of the Viennese
riverine landscape from 1529 onwards.42 Due to this project, the Viennese stretch
became the place where one can see in detail how the Danube changed in an urban
context, how an urban centre’s transformation was driven by fluvial processes,
over several centuries.
From this history of constant technical interventions over half a millennium
and of their effects and unintended consequences, we now know that Viennese
authorities manipulated the main arm and not just a side arm of that powerful
alpine river in the 16th century. Vienna, as a major political centre and with a river
stretch that was particularly challenging for early modern river engineering, might
be an outstanding case. But it would not be surprising if future, similar research of
other places along the early modern Danube would tell similar (hi)stories of early
massive technical interventions.
Smoothing out the river from the late 18th century onwards
In 1773, Nikolaus Ernst Kleemann, a German merchant who knew the Danube
quite well from an adventurous sales journey undertaken down to the Delta a few
years earlier,43 wrote a small book entitled ‘Letters about Shipping and Commerce in
Hungary, Slavonia and Croatia’.44 In this pamphlet, he called for locks to control the
water level in the middle Danube and its tributaries Sava, Drava, Kupa/Kolpa and
Una; he argues that the position of ship mills should be changed, the rivers’ banks
and beds should be cleaned up systematically, bridges should be rebuilt according
to the demands of navigation, and rocks and rapids under water should be blown
up. During the late 1700s, the Danube became an environment that could and had
to be changed for human purposes on a large scale.
Improving the navigability of the Danube became the dominant motive for
changes to the river, and navigability became the main aim of many project-makers
and engineers throughout the entire Danube basin. Canals were built from the
Hohensinner et al., Changes.
Kleemann, Reisen.
44
Anonymus [Kleemann], Briefe.
42
43
Man, Nature and Environment Between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times 237
1700s onwards on a large scale; step by step from the late 1700s, the entire river
was systematically trained from Germany to the Delta.45 Gigantic projects such as
the regulation of the Sulina Channel in the Delta after 1856, the ‘Great Regulation’
of the Viennese Danube between 1869 and 1875, or that of the Iron Gates finished
in 1896, were all completed within a few decades in the second half of the 19th
century.46 New political circumstances after the Napoleonic wars supported that
process, expert commissions debated and worked on the ‘improvement’ of the river. New technologies such as the steamboat and the railway boosted that process,
too. The long-term effects, intended or not, of these interventions would keep later
generations of engineers busy. In the ‘long 19th century’, the socio-natural site underwent the first phase of a fundamental transformation; around 1900 the riverine
environments in general were significantly different to those of around a century
earlier. The Danube we know and deal with today – in large parts uniform and
apparently stabilized landscapes – is mainly a legacy of that period of promoterism.
Conclusions
Environmental History takes a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to reconstruct the history of great European rivers like the Danube as the common history
of nature and society, as truly hybrid history. Such an approach has its pitfalls
– particularly in terms of epistemology and methodology; thus a firm theoretical
ground is required to conceptualize the Danube as a subject of research and to organize the interdisciplinary cooperation. The concept we have chosen and further
develop for our research in Vienna is that of ‘socio-natural sites’.
Most environmental histories – not only of rivers – start around the turn of the
19th century. But at that time, a long and fascinating history of humans living and
dealing with rivers came to an end, a long history that is worth being told today –
because it is so different in many respects. Both the symbolic and the biophysical
relationship of societies to rivers were fundamentally different from those dominant
today. The distant mirror of early modern and earlier times can help to better understand the intensity and velocity of the transformation changing the face of so many
rivers in our times and all over the world. The period after World War II brought
changes to the Danube – faster and on a larger spatial scale then ever before – with
power plants, the draining of large wetlands, gigantic canal projects and so forth.
What is still rather unexplored, are the deep roots in time of this transformation.
The path in this direction had already been taken around 1750, when engineers
started to develop projects to ‘improve’ and ‘civilize’ the river using a systematic
approach and working on a large spatial scale.
The early modern Danube was a socio-natural site that changed slowly
compared to later periods. This river was a theatre of war, and to understand why
For a compilation of regulation on the Danube between the early 18th and 20th centuries,
see Schmid, Towards, p. 34.
46
Schmid, Towards an Environmental History, pp. 37-43.
45
238 M. SCHMID: Dealing with dynamics: the preindustrial Danube as an interdisciplinary challenge
humans have used and changed this river in the ways they did, we should keep in
mind that all societies along the Danube were permanently either at war or were
preparing for the next military conflict. Navigability was an important motive for
manipulating the river in early modern times. Sometimes, and in some places such
as the imperial capital of Vienna, early modern river engineering was ambitious
and regulation efforts intended to manipulate the main arm of this mighty, alpine
river substantially. Not only navigation, but also other ways to use the riverine
landscape, including fishing, floating timber, pasture, milling, firewood collection
and many others were important. Many of these practices were in conflict with
one another, but none of them became so dominant that others were eliminated
completely; again and again different user groups had to find a balance of interests.
This might be one of the basic lessons to be learned from the preindustrial Danube.
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Pantone 342
Pantone 285
ISBN 978-961-237-723-6
789612 377236
Tracing flood histories is one example for the challenges of writing
environmental histories in Central Europe. Two quite different sets of skills are
needed. One set is the historian’s craft. The historian works at making sense of
sources, constructing a compelling narrative from chaotic facts, tracing human
appreciation of the Danube, human uses of the Danube, human interventions
into the Danube … . The skills of the landscape ecologist, the hydrologist, the
historical geographer, the geomorphologist and many other natural scientists
are needed for the second building block. We need reconstructions of past
riverine landscapes, ecosystems, of paleo-meanders and we need a chronology
to answer questions of cause and effect – what was first, the intervention or
the problem? Without knowing about the substrate of perceptions of historical
actors, we cannot evaluate their perceptions for our narrative. How does the river
the newspapers are talking about actually look like? Very different from how we
perceive it today. Both are necessary, none is more important, both skills are of
equal importance for an environmental history of the Danube River Basin.
(Verena Winiwarter)
Zbirka_ZC_Man_Nature_Environ.indd 1
zbirka48
(Miha Kosi)
Man, Nature and Environment
between the Northern Adriatic and
the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times
=Ā
In the immediate vicinity of the medieval Ljubljana
there were extensive woodlands, stretching far
into the hills in the southeast and northwest. …
The greater part of Ljubljana’s supply with wood,
however, came from areas further away, 15–20
kilometres from the city. … In the time of need, as
during the threat from Ottoman incursions in 1478,
when Ljubljana was strenghtening its fortifications,
the king allowed the citizens unlimited use of wood
from any forests in the immediate vicinity. … [A]
unique source … dates back to 1510, the time of war
between Austria and the Republic of Venice. Therein
Emperor Maximilian … ordered his captain in
Ljubljana that he should, together with the citizens,
enclose or fence … forests and prohibit the cutting,
so that the young trees could grow and the forests
could flourish again, to provide for the needs of his
city and castle in the future.
Man, Nature and Environment
9
between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times
9 771408 353005
36,00 €
48
zbirka48
=Ā
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