Charnadura

Entrance to Charnadüra from St. Moritz. In the foreground the Bernina Railway, in the valley floor a gallery of Hauptstrasse 27, on the opposite slope the entrance of the Charnadüra I tunnel of the Albula Railway and in the distance Celerina.

The Charnadüra on the Siegfried Map , 1875.

Fall of the Inn around 1890. Lake St. Moritz, still without a train station.

Entrance of the Charnadüra with the fall of the Inn, approx. 1905. On the right the train station and the embankment of the Albula Railway with overgrown debris. The viaduct of the Bernina Railway over the Inn is still missing.

The Charnadüra (also Charnadüra gorge , pronunciation in the local Puter : [ ˌt͡ɕarnɐ'dyːrɐ ] with emphasis on the ü) is a gorge of the Inn at the outflow of Lake St. Moritz in the Swiss Engadine .

location

The Charnadüra is a 1200 meter long gorge of the Inn. It begins at the Punt da Piz headland at the exit of Lake St. Moritz (municipality of St. Moritz ) at 1768  m above sea level. M. and ends in the plain of the municipality of Celerina at 1720  m above sea level. M.

Until around 1970 the gorge began with a several meter high Inn fall at the exit of the lake. Today the Inn has little water and is led over half of the route through a 480 meter long gallery-like tunnel. Today, along with the Inn, the cantonal road and two railway lines run through the narrow gorge.

Surname

The name is derived from the Latin CRENA (Puter crenna , German nick , notch , slot ). This reached the current Romanesque form Charnadüra via the presumed intermediate form CARONATURA . Occasionally, the nickname Drachenschlucht is found , which is possibly connected with the nickname of St. Moritz as dragons (Romansh: draguns).

The field name Charnadüra also refers to an alp above Lavin in the Lower Engadine.

Formation of the gorge

The Charnadüra emerged as a breakthrough gorge by the post-glacial erosion of the Inn in the Talriegel from biotite - schist . The depth of the river is 20 to 25 meters.

The Charnadüra was created in the late worm about 10,000 years ago at the latest, but it may already have existed as a subglacial meltwater channel .

history

The Charnadüra was already committed in the Neolithic Age , as evidenced by a lance tip made of flint found in the gorge in 1921 .

In pre-tourist times, the area to the right of the Inn was uninhabited. After all, the Dufour map from 1855 shows a bridge crossing the river at the entrance to the gorge.

In 1885 the Waldschlössli vom Rocca was built on the Punt da Piz , today known as the Hotel Waldhaus am See .

In 1887, the entrepreneur and hotel owner Johannes Badrutt built Switzerland's first power station in Charnadüra.

Since 1896, the Siegfried map has shown a path through the gorge, which, starting on the right, crosses the river in the middle and then leads to Celerina on the left.

Simple apartment buildings and a commercial zone at the right entrance to the gorge have been built since 1900.

From around 1901 the Albula Railway was built on the left side through the gorge. This last section of the Albula Railway was opened on July 10, 1904.

A little later, in the spring of 1908, the Bernina Railway was also led to the St. Moritz station on the right. This section was opened on July 1, 1909.

Since 1931, a large part of the water at the weir at the end of Lake St. Moritz has been collected and led through the gorge on the right side with a few meters of gradient in a tunnel. To generate electricity, the Islas power station was built at the exit of the gorge.

In 1970 the old, winding cantonal road from Celerina to St. Moritz was supplemented by a direct connection through the Charnadüra. At the same time as the road was built, the left side of the Inn was relocated into the interior of the mountain.

Power generation

Emergence

The slope of the Inn in the Charnadüra has been used to generate electricity since 1878, which is a pioneering Swiss achievement.

After this first use by the private entrepreneur Johannes Badrutt, the municipality of St. Moritz began producing electricity in Charnadüra in 1891. This system had 800 hp and initially only supplied hotels, as a general electricity network for private individuals did not yet exist at that time. From 1896 the power station also supplied the St. Moritz tram.

The current system dates from 1931/1932: The water is carried away from Lake St. Moritz with the help of a weir in an approximately 1000 meter long tunnel and falls at the exit of the gorge in a 50 meter high pressure pipe into the Islas plant .

power

The performance of the installed drive power plant from Islas is 4.3 MW, the annual production amounts to approximately 16.5 GWh per year. The plant thus covers around 20% of the needs of the communities of Celerina and St. Moritz. The power station is part of the local energy company St. Moritz Energie (SME).

Environmental aspect

St. Moritz Energie is obliged to guarantee a minimum water flow of 75 liters per second in summer. A fish pass was built at the weir at the beginning of the 1930s when the facility was built, but it was never tested for suitability. A second fish passage existed in the lower part of the Charnadüra, but this was often blocked by debris. In 1999 he was walled up. The exchange of fish between Lake St. Moritz and the further course of the Inn is now guaranteed by the fishery supervisor through transports.

This artificial exchange of fish is important because the Maloja - Samedan waterway is assessed by the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) as a core zone for grayling and the Charnadüra represents a gap in this core zone. The grayling spawn both in Silvaplana above the Charnadüra and in Celerina below the Charnadüra.

train

Albula Railway
Legend from Chur and Scuol 100.32 Celerina 1730  m above sea level M. Charnadüra I (449 m) Lehnen Viaduct (37 m) Argentieri (114 m) Via Serlas Bridge (22 m) Bernina Railway from Tirano 102.93 St. Moritz 1775  m above sea level M.

Bernina Railway
Legend 0.000 St. Moritz 1775  m above sea level M. Albula Railway to Thusis Inn viaduct (64 m) Charnadüra II (689 m) 2.028 Celerina Staz 1716  m above sea level M. to Pontresina or Tirano

Albula Railway

The Albula Railway leads from St. Moritz on the left into the Charnadüra, first over the 22 m long Via Serlas bridge, the short Argentieri tunnel (114 m), then over a 37 m long Lehnen viaduct, and finally it leaves the gorge the 449 m long Charnadüra I tunnel towards Lower Engadine and Chur .

Bernina Railway

The Bernina Railway leads over the four arches of the Inn Viaduct into the gorge and leaves it through the 689 m long Charnadüra II tunnel in the direction of Pontresina or Bernina Pass .

Charnadüra II is the longest tunnel on the entire Bernina Railway and resulted in high additional costs for the construction of the railway. Originally, the Bernina Railway should have run through the Stazerwald to Pontresina, but at that time resistance arose against this cheaper route.

In the first years of operation, the Bernina Railway only ran in summer. In the winter of 1913/1914, however, the labor-intensive and cost-intensive winter operation began.

Road traffic

Since 1970 the main traffic between Celerina and St. Moritz has been routed as Via Grevas or Hauptstrasse 27 through the Charnadüra. The road runs in the bottom of the gorge and is covered in two places.

On average, around 4 million vehicles drive through Charnadüra, which corresponds to around 11,000 vehicles per day or 460 vehicles per hour.

slaughterhouse

At the beginning of the 20th century, a slaughterhouse was built in the new industrial zone at the upper entrance of the gorge. This had a siding to the Bernina Railway.

Today the work yard of the municipality of St. Moritz is located here.

Others

On October 28, 1901, the Berlin doctor and philosopher Paul Rée died in the Charnadüra. It is not clear whether it was a hiking accident or a suicide. A memorial plaque in Charnadüra has been commemorating this friend of Friedrich Nietzsche since 1958 .

The Austrian storyteller and playwright Arthur Schnitzler noted in his diary in September 1925 : 1923–1926 a hike through the Charnadüra.

The well-known photographer Albert Steiner used the former Innfall restaurant as a studio from 1924 to 1950 . Today the location is a restaurant again.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Topographical landscape memory of Switzerland. In: map.geo.admin. Retrieved February 27, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Photo of the Inn Falls from 1944.
3. ↑ GoogleEarth.
4. ^ Ernst Lechner: Graubünden. Illustrated travel companion through all regions . 1903.
5. ↑ Carl Täuber: New mountain name research: stone, rubble and scree. Art Institute O. Füssli, 1907.
6. ↑ Example: Gustav Hegi: Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa . JF Lehmann, 1906.
7. ↑ Petermann's geogr. Communications. Justus Perthes, 1935.
8. ↑ Matériaux pour la carte geologique de la Suisse. Parts 2-3. Kümmerley & Frey, 1950.
9. ↑ René Hantke: Ice Age . Ott, Thun. 1983.
10. ↑ Dal temp because Culan since Crestaulta. In: Southeastern Switzerland / La Quotidiana . April 14, 2011, accessed on July 17, 2019 (Romansh). 
11. ^ Yearbook of the Swiss Society for Prehistory and Protohistory 13. 1921.
12. ↑ ^{a b} Details on the history of energy supply on the St. Moritz Energie website, accessed on March 24, 2015.
13. ^ Website "" Historische Berninabahn "", accessed on February 8, 2014.
14. ↑ Details on the Charnadüra Tunnel on the Historical Bernina Railway website, accessed on February 12, 2016.
15. ↑ Andrea Tognina and others: Gli operai del Bernina: storia sociale di un cantiere ferroviario . Desertina, 2010, ISBN 978-3-85637-393-1 .
16. ↑ Bulletin of the Swiss Electrotechnical Association , Volume 24. Swiss Electrotechnical Association, 1933.
17. ↑ Romedi Reinalter: On the flora of the sediment areas in the vicinity of the South Rat Alps, Livignasco, Bormiese and Engiadin'Ota (Switzerland-Italy) . Birkhäuser, Basel, 2004, ISBN 3-7643-2191-1 .
18. ^ Heinrich Boner: The hydropower of the canton of Graubünden . Friedrich-Alexanders-Universitat Erlangen, 1926.
19. ↑ Georg Casal: The use of hydropower in Grisons: its basis, development and economic significance. Dr. Speaker u. Eggerling, 1950.
20. ↑ Webcam of the weir of the SME. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014 ; accessed on February 12, 2016 . 
21. ↑ Final report on the conversion of KW Islas. (PDF; 2.5 MB) 2008, archived from the original on February 22, 2014 ; accessed on February 12, 2016 . 
22. ↑ Study on grayling in the Inn, 2000, accessed on February 7, 2014.
23. ↑ SwissTopo, as of August 29, 2011, accessed on February 8, 2014.
24. ↑ Study of St. Moritz changing from a farming village to a cult site for alpine tourism , ETHZ, 2004.
25. ↑ picture slaughterhouse siding to the Bernina Railway, accessed on February 7, 2014.
26. ↑ Building inventory of Dr. I. Rucki: Architecture and Settlement Development . In: St. Moritz parish. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014 ; Retrieved February 7, 2014 . 
27. ^ Report in Fögl Ladin of November 2, 1901: Disgrazia in Charnadüra
28. ↑ Pilar Baumeister: We write suicide ... writer's suicides in four centuries . Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-60458-8 .
29. ↑ Gisep Buchli: A friend of Nietzsche , Engadine post from November 1 2011th
30. ^ Nietzsche and Switzerland. Offizin Zürich Verlag, 1994.
31. ↑ Arthur Schnitzler: Diary: 1923–1926 . Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Coordinates: 46 ° 30 '15.8 "  N , 9 ° 51' 20.3"  E ; CH1903:  seven hundred eighty-five thousand four hundred and ninety-eight  /  153199