Source of the Danube
According to general opinion, the Danube arises a little east of the center of Donaueschingen through the confluence of the two source rivers Brigach and Breg . A well-known mnemonic for this is: "Brigach and Breg bring the Danube feeder path." As Donauquelle but also at least two real are sources referred; symbolically that of the Danube brook in Donaueschingen and hydrologically that of the larger source river Breg at the Martinskapelle near Furtwangen .
Importance of the source of the Danube
The water of rivers collects from a barely manageable number of spring channels, which gradually merge. The main line of such a river system arises at the many junction points through the larger river, followed upstream, and thus also the source of the entire river. A main line is sometimes also defined by further characteristics such as length, catchment area or, taking up the naming of no fewer rivers, a constant flow direction.
Special springs have always had a mythological significance , for example due to their size or their location at the beginning of an important main river strand, which is shown in spring sanctuaries or in the worship of spring nymphs . This was also the case with the source of the mightiest river in the Roman Empire ; the Danube flowing out of the soft, gently elevated ridges of the Abnoba Mountains (according to Tacitus ) seems to have been seen under the care of the goddess of the mountain forest Abnoba , here as a source and river deity.
In contrast to the mythological role, the hydrological importance of the Danube springs is unusually small, as the Danube above and below Tuttlingen loses such a significant part of its water to the Rhine system that it dries out there for most of the year ( Danube sinking ), in this respect near Ulm - from a hydrological point of view - to the tributary of the Iller, which is much richer in water, and finally in Passau also by the Inn .
The sources of the Danube
Source of the Danube stream
The Donaubach rises in the Fürstlich Fürstenbergischer Schlossgarten in Donaueschingen at a corner of the castle in an artfully formed karst upward spring with a discharge of 15 to 70 l / s and flows after 100 meters underground into the Brigach, which stretches 1.4 km further united with the Breg to the Danube. The source of the Danube brook is one of 22 springs in the vicinity of the confluence, which are fed by the seeping water of the Danube spring rivers and seeping precipitation from the karstified Muschelkalk hill country of the Baar and which together pour between 400 and 1000 l / s.
The Donaubachquelle has been considered a source of the Danube since at least the 15th century ( Hartmann Schedel in his Weltchronik from 1493); but there are also indications that this was already the case in Roman times ( Pliny the Elder in Naturalis Historia ), where it was on the edge of the permanently populated area. In the oldest cartographic representation from 1538 by Sebastian Münster , the Donaubach spring with its then rectangular spring basin measuring around 8 × 6 m is recorded in the signature style .
Before 1828, after the castle had been rebuilt as a result of a fire in 1821, there was a square setting around the spring. Now a simple round edging was erected and the brook was led underground on a direct route into the Brigach, while it had previously flowed openly over the castle courtyard. In 1875 the source of the Danube brook was designed as a circular spring basin according to plans by Adolf Weinbrenner and decorated with ornaments by Franz Xaver Reich . The sculpture The young Danube as a child in the lap of the Baar , which was installed there, also came from Reich . In 1895 the artist Adolf Heer created a group of figures above the border, depicting "Mother Baar" as she shows her "daughter", the young Danube, the way. The Monument Foundation Baden-Württemberg named the complex Monument of the Month June 2016 . The Reich sculpture was given to the city of Donaueschingen in 1939 as a gift from Irma and Egon von Fürstenberg on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversary. It was erected at the confluence of the Danube.
The "Danube Spring" is still one of the tourist attractions in Donaueschingen. Similar symbolic sources of tributary watercourses are the Neckar spring in the city park of Schwenningen , the Enzbrunnen in Gompelscheuer , the Pegnitz spring or the Berkel spring .
Sources of the Breg
The source of the Breg is located 6 km northwest of Furtwangen by the Martinskapelle at Kolmenhof. The Breg is richer in water (and longer) than the Brigach, which is why the main strand of the upper Danube system begins at the Breg spring according to geographical and hydrological criteria. The dominance of the Breg results from the following characteristics:
| Water supply |
Catchment area |
(Length) | (Source height) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brigach | 3.37 m³ / s | 195 km² | 40.2 km | 940 m |
| Breg | 5.95 m³ / s | 291.2 km² | 45.9 km | 1078 m |
As early as 1847 the following definition can be found in the universal dictionary of the Grand Duchy of Baden :
"The Danube, the largest river in Germany, rises near the Martinskapelle in a wild and lonely area of the Black Forest, is called Brege at the beginning ... and only forms the Danube in Donaueschingen, where it joins the Brigach."
The identification of the main source on the top Bregtal, here Katzensteig called, depends on definitional convention: Instead of the earlier localization in Won Briglirain even Brücklerain is today, mainly due to length and discharge measurements in the 1950s, the source Won Martinskapelle regarded as the main source of the Danube. This source branch is richer in water and has the larger catchment area, but in parts seeps into the coarse gravel of the valley floor in dry weather, which does not affect the choice of this source branch, but the altitude of the source as the beginning of the perennial runoff .
Further sources of the Danube
- The Juniperus spring in the Donaueschingen district of Allmendshofen has also been referred to as the Danube spring.
- Occasionally the source of the Brigach , into which the Donaubach flows, was declared a source of the Danube (for example in 1719 by Vicar Breuninger at the St. Georgen monastery ). During renovation work in the Hirzbauernhof at the Brigach spring, a sandstone relief, presumably of Celtic origin from around 100 AD with depictions of animals and heads (interpreted as symbols of gods), was found in 1888/89, which is often interpreted as evidence of a spring sanctuary at the beginning of the Danube . However, it is also considered that this stone could only have been brought from the Westbaar to the Hirz ("deer") courtyard because of its deer depiction. The original of the stone is - in poor condition - in the St. Georgen monastery ; a copy is placed at the Brigach spring.
- The Swiss naturalist Scheuchzer explained the origin of the Inn as the highest source of the Danube source. In terms of water science, the Inn with the Flaz can actually be regarded as part of the main Danube strand , albeit more because of the slightly higher mean water flow.
Union of Brigach and Breg
Today the confluence of the Breg and Brigach rivers in the Donaueschingen district is considered to be the beginning of the Danube by name. From there to the mouth of the Black Sea it is 2811 km, from the source of the main hydrological river Breg 2857 km (not 2888 km, as indicated on the plate on the Breg source).
Research subject and political issue
In 1949 Franz Burgert from Furtwangen pleaded for the spring in Gewann Martinskapelle as the origin of the Breg instead of the spring on Briglirain . This was underpinned in the 1950s by the geologist Irma Öhrlein in particular with her investigations, which Ludwig Öhrlein later meticulously continued. The sources of the Danube also employed the marine researcher Jacques-Yves Cousteau , who in 1987 also made a documentary about the Danube at the Martinskapelle. Claudio Magris took up the old dispute about the “true” origin of the Danube in his work Danube - Biography of a River .
Between the cities of Furtwangen on the uppermost Breg and Donaueschingen on the symbolic source of the Danube, the struggle for the official status of their own source of the Danube has been struggled for decades, which occasionally includes the state government . For example, after an intervention by the city of Donaueschingen in 1981 , the Ministry of the Interior in Stuttgart announced: “The Bregquelle is no longer entered as a source of the Danube in the official travel maps. The Land Surveying Office was instructed accordingly. ”On the other hand, the then Minister for Agriculture and Forests confirmed in a letter to Prof. Öhrlein in 1982:“ Coming back to the questions about the source of the Danube, I can confirm again that the so-called Danube spring in Donaueschingen from a hydrological and geographical point of view is certainly not the actual source of the Danube. ... The Breg can be described as the main source river of the Danube. "
Geospatial data
Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap
- Donaubach spring: 47 ° 57 ′ 6.58 ″ N , 8 ° 30 ′ 8.94 ″ E
- Bregquelle: 48 ° 5 '43.2 " N , 8 ° 9' 17.7" E
- Brigach spring: 48 ° 6 ′ 25.3 ″ N , 8 ° 16 ′ 53.1 ″ E
- Confluence of Brigach and Breg: 47 ° 57 ′ 3.6 ″ N , 8 ° 31 ′ 13.7 ″ E
Web links
- Website of the Kolmenhof at the Bregquelle with detailed information
- Website of the Fürstenberg-Gymnasium Donaueschingen with historical picture documents of the Danube stream
Individual evidence
- ↑ Note: With an average volume of almost 7000 m³ / s, the Danube is much richer in water than the Nile, for example, which in Upper Egypt has an average of 2800 m³ / s.
- ↑ Cornelius Tacitus, Germ. 1,2: Danuvius molli et clementer edito montis Abnobae iugo effusus ...
- ↑ Heinz Hötzl : The hydrogeology and hydrochemistry of the catchment area of the uppermost Danube (excerpt from the Internet) ( Memento from February 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), in: Steirische Contributions zur Hydrogeologie, 25, pp. 5–102, Graz 1973
- ↑ Günther Reichelt : Investigations into the history of the development of the Riedbaar (excerpt from the Internet) ( Memento from February 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) in: Ber. Naturf. Ges. Freiburg 82/83, 1994, pp. 117-168
- ^ Günther Reichelt: The Baar - Where the Danube and Neckar arise , Donaueschingen 1990
- ^ O. Berndt: The gardens to Donaueschingen, Wartenberg and Neidingen. Their origin and development in: Writings of the Association for History and Natural History of the Baar and the adjacent parts of the country in Donaueschingen , 12th issue, Laupp, Tübingen 1909, p. 27
- ↑ Finding aid - FINDBUCH.pdf. (PDF) baarverein.de, accessed on November 10, 2015 .
- ↑ Heribert Saldik: The history of the Upper Bregtal. An introduction to the historical development of the cities of Furtwangen, Vöhrenbach and their districts as well as the community of Gütenbach. Revised version 2011 (PDF; 1.6 MB) , Freiburg 2011
- ^ Source collection of the Fürstenberg-Gymnasium Donaueschingen: On the Danube source ( memento from March 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) , speech of the Donaueschinger OB on the Danube source, 1995.