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Meandering Circumstances, Fluid Associations: Shaping Riverine Transformations in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2018

Robert Shields Mevissen
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Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 49 , April 2018 , pp. 23 - 40
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Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2018 

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References

1 “Die Studienfahrt des Donauvereines,” Tages-Post, 18 June 1884, 1.

2 K.k. Statistische Central-Commission, ed., “Statistik des Verkehrs in den im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreichen und Länderns vornehmlich für die Jahre 1881 bis 1891,” Oesterreichische Statistik 37, no. 4/1 (Vienna, 1893): 23–51.

3 “Regulation” was a general term for several types of hydraulic engineering projects—dredging sandbanks and blasting rocky rapids, deepening the river bed to guarantee a consistent water depth, securing banks to avoid erosion, and erecting embankments and reclaiming floodplains to mitigate flood damage.

4 Technical, commercial, and governmental actors founded the Donauverein in June 1879. The group advocated for the Danube's regulation along the monarchy's entire stretch, lecturing in front of clubs and associations, petitioning governmental authorities, and generally raising awareness of regulation's benefits for riparian communities. In 1878 the Congress of Berlin had charged the Habsburg monarchy with completing the regulation of the Iron Gate cataracts on the monarchy's southeastern border with newly independent states, Serbia and Romania. After its formation the following year, the Donauverein organized its first study trip, sending interested parties from Vienna to the Iron Gates to observe the local conditions for themselves.

5 “Die Studienfahrt des Donauvereines,” Tages-Post, 18 June 1884, 1.

6 Stenographisches Protokoll der Versammlung des Donau-Vereines zur gemeinschaftlichen Berathung mit dem Gemeinderathe der Stadt Linz am 15. Juni 1884 (Linz, 1884), 8–10.

7 Judson, Pieter M., The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA, 2016), 312Google Scholar.

8 King, Jeremy, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002), 7Google Scholar.

9 David Blackbourn's environmental history of Germany reveals similar processes taking place in several of the Habsburg monarchy's German neighbors in the nineteenth century, which emphasized the physical-technical efforts and challenges to “state-building” on both local and imperial levels, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany (New York, 2006).

10 James Shedel has argued that, starting under Maria Theresa, the Habsburg monarchy began to function as a “eudaemonic state,” whereby its raison d’être was to reform society and pursue the well-being of its citizens, “The Mother of It All: Maria Theresia and the Creation of Hybrid Monarchy,” paper presented at the conference Maria Theresa—An Enlightened Reformer and Grandmother of Central Europe, Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 2017.

11 In 1830, Linz was a town with more than 24,000 inhabitants, which grew to almost 70,000 by 1910. Győr was more modest—it had just more than 16,000 inhabitants in 1850 which rose to 45,000 by 1910.

12 A classic work delineating environmental vulnerabilities that offer risks and opportunities is by Burton, Ian, Kates, Robert W., and White, Gilbert F., The Environment as Hazard (New York, 1978)Google Scholar.

13 In 1910, census numbers indicate that the monarchy's two largest cities—Vienna and Budapest—had a combined four million people living in them, and there were hundreds of thousands living in cities and communities on the Danube, not to mention the cities and communities connected to the Danube via its tributary system.

14 In 1590, the arm became the site for the Linz Municipal Brewery, and several mills on the side arm processed wood sent downstream from lumberjacks throughout the province, Otruba, Gustav, “Linz, seine neue Strafanstalt, die Messingfabrik im Schloß Lichtenegg bei Wels und die Wollenzeugfabrik in Linz,” Öberösterreichische Heimatsblätter, vol. 4 (Linz, 1989): 303Google Scholar.

15 Mayrhofer, Fritz and Katzinger, Willibad, Geschichte der Stadt Linz: Band II: Von der Aufklärung zur Gegenwart (Linz, 1990), 81Google Scholar.

16 Neweklowsky, Ernst, “Die Schiffmeister von Linz,” Jahrbuch der Stadt Linz 1950 (Linz, 1951): 227–53Google Scholar.

17 The channel near Győr formed in 1653, when the silted-up Mosoni Danube forced a new branch to flow to the city. It was previously located on the Rába River, a large Danube tributary flowing from Styria to the Danube at Gönyű.

18 Gonda, Béla, Die ungarische Schiffahrt (Budapest, 1899), 6–8Google Scholar.

19 Two earlier steamboats had initiated steam navigation on the Danube in 1817, but their inventors did not have the resources to capitalize on their ships’ early success to establish permanent commercial enterprises.

20 K.k. Direction der administrativen Statistik, ed., Tafeln zur Statistik der österreichischen Monarchie für das Jahr 1841, accessed 30 Mar. 2017, http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ15083730X.

21 Hajnal, Henry, The Danube: Its Historical, Political and Economic Importance (The Hague, 1920), 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Tschischka, Franz, ed., Der Gefahrte auf Reisen in dem österreichischen Kaiserstaate. Für Reisende jeden Standes und Zweckes nach den neusten und bewährtesten Quellen (Vienna, 1834)Google Scholar, LIII; Jobst, Clemens and Stix, Helmut, “Florin, Crown, Schilling and Euro: An Overview of 200 Years of Cash in Austria,” Monetary Policy & the Economy (2016): 1051Google Scholar.

23 In Upper and Lower Austria, provincial hydraulic engineering offices (Wasserbau-Direktion) funded themselves and their projects on the Danube by raising direct taxes on the local inhabitants. In Hungary, it generally fell incumbent on the local communities and landowners to establish private companies, which then raised funds to regulate the river for flood protection—these arose in the 1830s and were literally called “flood elimination companies” (árvízmentesítő társulatok). The Hungarian National Diet occasionally contributed funds to ensure navigation.

24 Bélá Gonda, “A magyar duna” [The Hungarian Danube], Az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia írásban és képben: Magyarország 4 [The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Word and Image: Hungary 4] 16, no. 2 (Budapest, 1896), 27–28.

25 Tafeln zur Statistik der österreichischen Monarchie 1831 (Vienna, 1831), accessed 19 Dec. 2016, http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ150836306; Jobst and Stix, “Florin, Crown, Schilling and Euro,” 117.

26 Gönyű was on the main Danube bed near Védek, the city to which regulation plans extended.

27 Széchenyi had worked assiduously since the early 1830s to both regulate the Danube and spread steam navigation, and in the early 1840s was serving as the co-president for the Commission for Communication in Hungary. Joseph Voigt to István Széchenyi, 24 Mar. 1846, Széchenyi iratok 28-17.117, Magyar Környezetvédelmi és Vízügyi Múzeum [Hungarian Environmental Protection and Hydrological Museum], Esztergom, Hungary.

28 István Széchenyi to the Győr Free Royal City Council, 14 Mar. 1846, Széchenyi iratok 28-17.117, Magyar Környezetvédelmi és Vízügyi Múzeum [Hungarian Environmental Protection and Hydrological Museum], Esztergom, Hungary.

29 Die Donau beschrieben von Oscar Ludwig Bernhard Wolff (Leipzig, 1843), 164; Der wohlunterrichtete Begleiter auf der malerischen Donaureise mit dem Dampfschiffe von Ulm bis Regensburg, Passau, Linz, Wien, Preßburg, Ofen, Pesth, Semlin, Orsova, Galatz und Konstantinopel (Vienna, 1846), 26.

30 The Hungarian language has two words, which English would translate as “national,” but have distinct meanings in Hungarian. “Országos” refers to the entire territorial unit of Hungary, a nonethnic term, whereas “nemzeti” refers to the ethnic nation. The article expressed the need for a Hungary-wide, not nationalistic company, Dezsényi, Miklós and Hernády, Ferenc, A Magyar Hajózás Története [The History of Hungarian Navigation] (Budapest, 1967), 39–40Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.

32 Gráfik, Imre, Hajózás és Gabonakereskedelem: “Gabonakonjunktúra vízen” [Navigation and Grain Commerce: “Grain Competition on the Water”] (Budapest, 2004), 72Google Scholar.

33 Rohl, J. G., Die Donau von ihrem Ursprunge bis Pesth (Trieste, 1851), 310–11Google Scholar.

34 Trautsamweiser, Herbert, Weisse Schiffe am blauen Strom (Krems, 1996), 15–19Google Scholar.

35 K.k. Direction der administrativen Statistik, ed., Tafeln zur Statistik der österreichischen Monarchie für das Jahr 1841 (Vienna, 1844)Google Scholar, accessed 30 Mar. 2017, http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ15083730X.

36 Meissinger, Otto, Historische Donauschiffahrt: Holzschiffe u. Flösse (Melk, 1975), 39Google Scholar.

37 Mayer had seen the construction of iron barges in England and wanted to replicate the success in Linz, Katzinger, Willibald, Kleine Linzer Stadtgeschichte (Regensburg, 2008), 91Google Scholar.

38 Lackner, Helmut and Stadler, Gerhard A., Fabriken in der Stadt: Eine Industriegeschichte der Stadt Linz (Linz, 1990), 181–82Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., 183.

40 The DDSG not only inspired technical authorities to regulate the Danube, but it frequently supplemented the work of both public and private enterprises. Although it was a private company, its state-sponsored monopoly on the Danube led government authorities in the empire to rely on it to fulfill public functions of river regulation and maintenance. Since the 1840s, the company had been spending large annual sums to clear navigational obstacles on the Danube.

41 Károly Vörös, “Győr és Pest Harca a Dunai Gabonakereskedelemért, 1850–1881” [Győr and Pest's Battle for Danube Wheat Trade, 1850–1881], Arrabona 7 (Győr, 1965): 471–72.

42 “Napló” [Daily Affairs], Győri Közlöny [Győr Gazette], 16 Dec. 1858, 400.

43 “Napló,” Győri Közlöny, 10 Apr. 1859, 116.

44 Bay, Ferenc, A Győri Llyod Városáért és Kereskedeleméért, 1856–1936 [The Győr Llyod, For Its City and Commerce, 1856–1936] (Győr, 1942), 19Google Scholar.

45 K.k. Direction der administrativen Statistik, ed., Tafeln zur Statistik der österreichischen Monarchie für das Jahr 1842 (Vienna, 1846)Google Scholar, accessed 10 Feb. 2017, http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ150837402; “Napló,” Győri Közlöny, 18 Oct. 1860, 335.

46 Bay, A Győri Llyod Városáért, 43, 57.

47 “Napló,” Győri Közlöny, 15 Sept. 1861, 296.

48 Jankó, Béla, A Magyar dunai gőzhajózás története [History of the Hungarian Danube Steam Navigation] (Budapest, 1968), 89–90Google Scholar.

49 This fleet paled in comparison to the DDSG, which in 1860, had 95 paddle steamers, 24 screw propellers, 381 iron goods transports (Waarentransporte), 26 iron livestock transports, 42 iron coal ships, 17 iron boarding ships (like floating docks), and 15 miscellaneous other ships. However, it was one of the first non-DDSG Danube steam navigation companies in the empire to exist.

50 The DDSG held a state monopoly to ply the monarchy's Danube from 1830 to 1856. After the Crimean War ended in 1856, the Treaty of Paris included Article 15 opening customs-free navigation on the Danube to all states. After the Danube Navigation Act came into effect in November 1857, the imperial authorities in Vienna confirmed that companies other than the DDSG could form in the monarchy. Nevertheless, the neoabsolutist government continued to generously subsidize the DDSG, essentially exchanging a monopoly for patronage. Therefore, few companies emerged in the early 1860s. After the 1867 Compromise, dozens of mostly local companies emerged in Hungary to operate on the Danube, Tisza, Sava, and Drava rivers, though the Hungarian government continued to subsidize the DDSG as well.

51 Manlik, Karlheinz, Donauübergänge in Österreich: Geschichte und Technik der Fähren und Brücken über die österreichische Donau (Linz, 1994), 38–44Google Scholar.

52 Rechenschaftsbericht des Gemeinderathes der Landeshauptstadt Linz über seine Thätigkeit im Jahre 1882 (nebst anderen statistischen Daten) (Linz, 1883), 120.

53 Fortsetzung der Actenstücke und Verhandlungen seit dem Jahre 1882 bezugnehmend auf die Versandung des Donau-Landungsplatzes und des sogenannten Fabriksarmes in Linz (Linz, 1883), 24.

Rechenschaftsbericht … im Jahre 1882, 2.

54 Die Regulirung der Donau nächst Linz und die Anlage eines Hafens daselbst (Linz, 1882), 1–10.

55 Marton Simonkay, “‘Vagy ilyen szabályozás lesz, vagy semmilyen’ A Rábaszabályozó Társulat első évtizede (1873–1883)” [“The Regulation will be thusly or not at all”: The First Decade of the Rába Regulation Company] (unpublished manuscript, 2013), 8.

56 The following years’ national budgets allocated more than 1 million florins annually for the work, overshadowing the approximately 4.5 million florins Hungary had spent on Danube regulation between 1850 and 1888, Arthur Oelwein, Die Binnen-Wasserstrassen im Transportgeschäfte der Gegenwart, Vortag gehalten im Niederösterreichischen Gewerbeverein am 6. November 1891 (Vienna, 1891), 8.

57 Rechenschaftsbericht des Gemeinderathes der Landeshauptstadt Linz über seine Thätigkeit im Jahre 1885 nebst anderen statistischen Daten (Linz, 1886), 71–72.

58 The Győri Lloyd was merely a refashioned Commercial Guild, which had renamed itself in 1872, though its goals and agendas remained the same.

59 “A főispán eszméjéhez a közraktárokról” [The lord lieutenant's thoughts on public warehouses], Győri Közlöny, 17 Feb. 1884, 1.

60 “The Disastrous Floods in Austria-Hungary,” The Graphic, 20 Jan. 1883, 60.

61 “Miért öntötte el a Duna Győrt” [Why the Danube flooded Győr], Győri Közlöny, 21 Jan. 1883, 1.

62 “Győrváros kereskedelme” [Győr's Commerce], Győri Közlöny, 16 Feb. 1888, 2.

63 Jankó, A Magyar dunai gőzhajózás, 91.

64 In 1874–89, the Győr Steam Navigation Company's average annual shipment was 88,880 tons. In 1890, it reached almost 300,000 tons. Data aggregated from the Budapest Statistical Office's “Statistical Almanacs” (Magyar statistikai évkönyvek).

65 Imre Göcsei, “Győr földrajza” [Geography of Győr], Győr Megyei Jogú Város Levéltára [Győr City Archives], accessed 22 Mar. 2017, http://vleveltar.gyor.hu/post/65/.

66 Rechenschaftsbericht des Gemeinderathes der Landeshauptstadt Linz über seine Thätigkeit im Jahre 1884 nebst anderen statistischen Daten (Linz, 1885), 69–70.

67 Rechenschaftsbericht des Gemeinderathes der Landeshauptstadt Linz über seine Thätigkeit im Jahre 1886 nebst anderen statistischen Daten (Linz, 1887), 71–72.

68 Rechenschaftsbericht im Jahre 1886, 86–89; Oberösterreichischer Landesausschuss, ed., Bericht über die Thätigkeit des oberösterreichischen Landtages und des von diesem gewählten Landesausschusses in der VII. Wahlperiode vom 15. September 1884 bis Sommer 1890 (Linz, 1890), 175.

69 Materienbestand 33, 1889–1925, Donauregulierung I (Umschlagplatz) 310 (alt 188), Archiv der Stadt Linz, Linz, Austria.

70 “Baross ízenete,” Győri Közlöny, 21 June 1891, 4.

71 Landesausschuss, Oberösterreichischer, ed., Bericht über die Thätigkeit des oberösterreichischen Landtages und des von diesem gewählten Landesausschusses in der VIII. Wahlperiode vom 14. Oktober 1890 bis Sommer 1896 (Linz, 1896), 141–43Google Scholar; Rechenschaftsbericht des Gemeinderathes der Landeshauptstadt Linz über seine Thätigkeit im Jahre 1901 nebst anderen statistischen Daten (Linz, 1902), 138, 484.