Danube Limes

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The Danube Limes is the name given to the part of the Roman military border along the Danube in today's Bavaria , Austria , Slovakia , Hungary , Serbia , Romania and Bulgaria .

The border fortifications consisted of numerous watchtowers, legion camps and forts . Because of its boggy and ramified bank, the Danube was difficult to negotiate. Therefore, unlike along the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes in Germany , no border wall was built. The camps were established in the middle of the 1st century. Later, under Trajan, the camps, which were originally only surrounded by earth walls, were also surrounded by stone walls.

A road was laid along the Limes , which connected the stations, forts and fortresses to the Danube Delta , the Danube Path (Latin Via Istrum ).

separations

Due to the length of this border, the Danube Limes is often divided into the following areas:

  • The Rhaetian Danube Limes between Regensburg and Passau

  • The Norisch-Pannonian Limes in today's Austria

  • The Pannonian Limes in today's Hungary

  • The Mösian Limes in today's Bulgaria and Romania

Germany and Austria

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Austria . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Salt tower in Tulln / Lower Austria, the former western horseshoe tower of Fort Comagena

The oldest fort in Austria was Carnuntum . Auxiliary fort in a distance of 14 km towards the west as far as Schlögen (municipality of Haibach ob der Donau ) in Upper Austria . The course at that time corresponded roughly to today's Wiener Straße ( B 1 ) from Vienna to Linz .

Since the Danube did not always offer the necessary protection, bridgeheads were also built on the north bank, such as in Stillfried or on Oberleiser Berg , against the Marcomanni . These were cleared again under Marcus Aurelius's son Commodus and a seven-kilometer-wide dead strip was laid out along the Danube .

The increasingly decaying fortifications were only renovated again under Emperor Valentinian I (364–375) and adapted to the current fighting methods. Walls were strengthened and ditches were renewed. In addition, towers were added to the walls. In 1960, the remains of a watchtower were found near Oberranna . But this fortification only lasted another hundred years. In 488 what is now Austrian territory was evacuated. The Roman fortifications along the lower reaches of the Danube were also repeated thereafter repaired, especially among I. Anastasios and Justinian I. They served for the last time during Maurice's Balkan campaigns and also under his successor Phocas as a basis for major military operations and were partially until invasion of the Bulgars 679 on the territory of the province of Moesia secunda held.

Individual defense towers are still preserved in Bacharnsdorf in Lower Austria, in Mautern (Favianis) and in Traismauer (Augustiana). There are also preserved remains in Tulln and Zeiselmauer . In the Kürnberger Wald near Linz there are remains of a ruin of a watchtower from Roman times.

Legion camps were in:

Fortresses and small forts in Austria were from west to east:

Lower Danube

The Roman provinces along the Danube
The lower Danube Limes and the northern Balkans in the 6th century. The provinces, main settlements and military roads are shown

On the lower Danube, between today's Bulgaria and Romania, the Lower Danube Road (English Low Danubian Road ), a Roman road, was built on the right (Bulgarian) side during the reign of Emperor Tiberius in the 1st century AD .

Roman military camps (forts), smaller garrisons and watchtowers were built on both sides of the Danube. Civilian settlements, mostly for veterans and former legionaries , were also built. The following Roman garrisons were the first to be established on the lower Danube in the 1st century:

See also: List of Limes forts in Hungary

UNESCO world heritage

On February 1, 2018, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary submitted a joint application to include the Danube Limes on the World Heritage List. A decision should be made in July 2019 whether the Danube Limes will be recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The World Heritage Council, which advises the World Heritage Committee, recommended this site for inclusion on the list. But the Hungarian government left the recognition process at short notice, as it now wanted the remains of the Roman city of Aquincum in the north of Budapest to be excluded from the world heritage. This meant that the application became obsolete for all participants. After the treaty was revised, the process should be repeated in 2021, but again the Orban government in Hungary blocked the inclusion of the Danube Limes in the World Heritage Sites shortly before the end of the recognition process.

On 30 July 2021 the strongest World Heritage Committee of UNESCO , one located in what is now Bavaria, Austria and Slovakia part of the Danube Limes under the name Donaulimes (western segment) - Frontiers of the Roman Empire in the list of World Heritage sites take. The Hungarian section of the Danube Limes is excluded for the time being because Hungary withdrew from the application initially submitted together with Germany, Austria and Slovakia. As a result, the World Heritage Site contains only 77 elements instead of 175. For the sections located in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, these countries have submitted national applications on which the World Heritage Committee has not yet decided.

See also

literature

  • Ralph F. Hoddinott: Bulgaria in Antiquity. An archeological introduction. Ernest Benn Ltd., London 1975, ISBN 0-510-03281-8 , pp. 111-142.
  • Kurt Genser: The Danube Limes in Austria (= writings of the Limes Museum Aalen. Volume 44). Württembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart 1990.
  • Gerda von Bülow et al. (Ed.): The Limes on the lower Danube from Diocletian to Heraclios. Lectures at the International Conference Svištov, Bulgaria (September 1-5, 1998). NOUS Verlag, Sofia 1999, ISBN 954-90387-2-6 .
  • Susanne Biegert (Ed.): From Augustus to Attila. Life on the Hungarian Danube Limes (= writings of the Limes Museum Aalen. Volume 53). Theiss, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-8062-1541-3 .
  • Herwig Friesinger et al. (Ed.): The Roman Limes in Austria. Guide to the archaeological monuments. 2nd corrected edition. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-7001-2618-2 .
  • Sonja Jilek: Borders of the Roman Empire: The Danube Limes, a Roman river border. Uniwersytet Warszawski, Warsaw 2009, ISBN 978-83-928330-7-9 .
  • Andreas Schwarcz , Peter Soustal, Antoaneta Tcholakova (eds.): The Danube Limes in Late Antiquity and in the Early Middle Ages . Lit, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-643-5068-94 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ After Ister , the name common in antiquity for the lower course of the Danube.
  2. ↑ a b The Roman Limes in Austria , accessed on May 25, 2009.
  3. ↑ State Secretary for Science Bernd Sibler on the submitted application for the expansion of the World Heritage Site “Borders of the Roman Empire” to include the Danube Limes. Press release from the Bavarian Ministry of Culture . February 2, 2018, accessed February 12, 2018 .
  4. ^ Item 8B of the Provisional Agenda: Nominations to the World Heritage List. (PDF) May 20, 2019, accessed on June 16, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Unprecedented case: Danube Limes not World Heritage for the time being. br.de, on July 26, 2021; accessed on July 27, 2021.
  6. ↑ www.br.de
  7. ↑ www.worldheritagesite.org (English)
  8. ↑ whc.unesco.org (English)
  9. ↑ whc.unesco.org (English)
  10. ↑ whc.unesco.org (English)