Enns (river)

	Enns
	Data
location	Austria
River system	Danube
Drain over	Danube → Black Sea
source	Radstädter Tauern ; 47 ° 15 ′ 3 ″ N , 13 ° 22 ′ 10 ″ E
Source height	1750 m above sea level A.
muzzle	between Enns and Mauthausen from the right into the Danube Coordinates: 48 ° 14 ′ 13 ″ N , 14 ° 31 ′ 13 ″ E 48 ° 14 ′ 13 ″ N , 14 ° 31 ′ 13 ″ E;
Mouth height	245 m above sea level A.
Height difference	1505 m
Bottom slope	5.9 ‰
length	254 km
Catchment area	6,084.2 km²
Left tributaries	Steyr , Salzabach
Right tributaries	Palten , Salza
Medium-sized cities	Steyr
	The Enns in Styria with a view upstream, the mountain in the background is the Grimming

The Enns is a southern tributary of the Danube in Austria . At 254 km (320 km according to older sources) it is the longest inland river in Austria and in the lower reaches it forms the border between the federal states of Upper and Lower Austria . Their mean discharge there is over 200 m³ / s, so that some hydropower plants were built in the early 20th century .

In the upper reaches, the Enns flows in one of the great long valleys of the Eastern Alps , which at the same time forms the geological boundary between the Central Alps and the Northern Limestone Alps .

geography

Styrian Enns near Stainach and Liezen
Lower Enns, mouth of the Danube

The source of the Enns ("Enns origin") is located in the state of Salzburg in the Radstädter Tauern ( Niedere Tauern , part of the Central Alps ) at the foot of the Kraxenkogel at around 1750 m above sea level. A. The young Enns, which flows away to the northeast, joins the Pleissling coming from the southeast after about five kilometers and flows through the Flachau valley northwards, following the slope of the central Alps.

It reaches the northern edge of the Central Alps when it enters an open valley landscape around Altenmarkt im Pongau and Radstadt , the Altenmarkt-Radstädter Basin , where it turns east and flows towards Styria on the border between the northern Alps and the Lower Tauern . The region in the east of the federal state of Salzburg on the upper Enns and its tributaries is called the Ennspongau . From the Mandling Pass , the Styrian Ennstal begins with the larger towns (from west to east) Schladming , Stainach , Irdning , Liezen and Admont . Both the Altenmarkt-Radstädter basin and the wide Styrian Ennstal belong to the northern longitudinal division of the Eastern Alps, the so-called Salzach-Enns-Längstalfurche. This follows one of the most important geological faults in the Eastern Alps, the Salzach-Ennstal-Mariazell-Puchberg Lineament (SEMP).

While the landscape in Ennspongau is characteristic with the relatively high mountains of the Radstädter Tauern made of limestone and Verrucano south and the peaks of the Salzburg Slate Alps covered by forest and meadows north of the Enns, the geomorphological conditions are exactly the opposite on the following 100 kilometers through Styria: In the north rise the rugged mountains of the Northern Limestone Alps and more gently shaped terrain, next to slate underlain by quartz phyllites and phyllonites , lies south of the river. There the Enns passes the Dachstein massif , the Grimmingstock and the Dead Mountains on their south side, before finally entering the Limestone Alps at Admont. Between Admont and Hieflau , the Enns first breaks through the limestone of the Ennstal Alps ( Gesäuseberge ) in an approximately 15 km long gorge , the Gesäuse .

Then it turns north in the Landltal , absorbs the waters of one of its two main tributaries, the Salza , and forms a breakthrough valley through the limestone Alps, which is called the Upper Austrian Ennstal . It reaches the federal state of Upper Austria at the confluence of the Laussabach . Here are the Reichraminger Hintergebirge to the left of the river , to the right the Ybbstal Alps and the Eisenwurzen , mountain landscapes that are increasingly taking on a pre-Alpine character.

Around the old Eisenstadt Steyr , the Enns forms the border between Upper Austria and Lower Austria . The Steyr River , the second major tributary, flows into Steyr . There the Enns leaves the Alps and enters the Alpine foothills .

In front of the Alps, it forms the gentle and comparatively short Lower Ennstal in the Traun-Enns-Riedelland . A few kilometers north of the city of Enns , the now approx. 100 m wide river flows into the Danube at Mauthausen .

The Enns is a typical white water river over long stretches . With 6084 km² (5940 km² according to Sikora 1988) it has the fifth largest catchment area in Austria. The water flow in the middle course at Admont is an annual average of approx. 80 m³ per second, at the mouth more than 200 m³ / s.

Course of the Enns

Altenmarkt basin and Flachau valley

Styrian Enns at home

Aerial view of the Styrian Enns near Haus

At Liezen

To Admont

In the Gesäuse

The Landltal (1837)

Upper Austrian Enns near Kleinreifling

View from a gravel bank of the Steyr estuary (right)

Ennsknie with the conglomerate steep drop Münichholz

Enns reservoir Staning

Enns estuary into the Danube

history

Enns near Enns (Caspar Vischer, 1593)

The lower course of the Enns formed the eastern border of the original Duchy of Bavaria from the 6th century until the creation of the "Land ob der Enns" (Upper Austria) . The area of the lower Enns initially belonged to the Traungau , then the Steyrmark formed around the trading town of Steyr , where missionaries gradually went south into the Slavic area and , as the name suggests, land grabbing also took place, probably largely peacefully and side by side for a long time. First Admont Abbey , an important landowner to this day, was the center, later Graz , with which the name was transferred to Upper Inner Austria , the Duchy of Steyer , today's Styria in the course of the Middle Ages and early modern times . At the same time it was also the eastern border of Bavaria to the developing Duchy of Austria , to which Bavarian territories gradually came, and then for many centuries it was the border between the Austrian parts of Austria above the Enns and Austria below the Enns . With the growth of Styria and Carinthia, the archbishopric of Salzburg , a sovereign ecclesiastical imperial principality that did missionary work over the upper reaches of the Archduchy of Austria, gradually surrendered territories to Austria. The city of Radstadt , which calls itself the “always faithful”, has always remained Salzburg, so that the upper reaches of the state of Salzburg are still part of the Salzburg province .

The Enns Valley has always been one of the main routes of Alpine transit , making numerous places in and around the Enns area important trading and transport locations. The trade in the Salzkammergut salt southward has been important since the Bronze Age . The Enns has been one of the most important inner Austrian transit regions since the Middle Ages. In particular, the iron from the Erzberg was distributed over the Enns over the centuries , so that the small iron industry developed here and in neighboring Eisenwurzen , which was one of the central economic pillars of the Habsburg monarchy ("the emperor's armory"). From the High Middle Ages, the Enns and many Enns feeders were gradually developed for wood extraction for the iron industry ( Klaus weirs and wood rakes ).

In the middle of the 19th century, a start was made to preserve agricultural and forestry areas through canalization on the approximately 70 km long stretch between Weißenbach and the Gesäuse . Some wetland remnants have been preserved here as significant nature reserves.

A total of five power plants with a total output of 146 MW were built by STEWEAG on the Styrian Enns and ten power plants with a total output of 408 MW by Ennskraftwerke AG on the Upper Austrian Enns .

During the reconstruction period, the dreaded guest worker route ran through the middle of the Ennstal . With the construction of the Tauern motorway over the upper reaches and the Pyhrn motorway , which directs traffic across the Ennstal, it decreased somewhat through the valley. Since long-distance traffic in the Balkans has led over the plains of the Danube region after the EU enlargements, the valley has mainly served the smaller-scale areas in the Eastern Alps between Bavaria, Slovenia and Northern Italy.

This makes the Enns a central region of Upper Austrian, Styrian and Salzburg, as well as Lower Austrian regional history, as well as the history of Central Europe.

Larger towns on the river

In Salzburg

In Styria

In Upper Austria

Losenstein with the power station built in 1962 and the Losenstein castle ruins in the background

The Enns in Steyr

Hydropower plants

The Staning power plant is located just below Steyr between Dietach (Upper Austria) and Haidershofen (Lower Austria)

There are currently 15 hydropower plants on the Enns. Looking downstream, these are:

Surname	Power (MW)	Annual generation (million kWh)	local community
Gstatterboden	2	6.8	Admont
Hieflau	63	388	Rural
Rural	25th	135.5	Rural
Krippau	30th	173.5	Rural
Altenmarkt	26th	165.9	Altenmarkt near Sankt Gallen
Schönau	30th	122.8	Weyer
Weyer	37	159.6	Weyer
Large framing	72	270.7	Rich raming
Losenstein	39	170	Losenstein
Ternberg	40	169.7	Ternberg
Rosenau	34	145.5	Cooked
Garsten-St. Ulrich	38	162.5	Ortisei near Steyr
Staning	43	203.2	Haidershofen
Mill Rading	25th	111.8	Kronstorf
Thurnsdorf	3	15.3	Thurnsdorf
St. Pantaleon	52	261.6	St. Pantaleon-Erla
Enns	0.9	6.95	Enns

Tributaries

Large tributaries are the Palten , the Salza and the Steyr in the lower reaches .

shipping

Cranes in the Ennshafen

Only the last kilometers of the Enns are like the Danube federal waterway .

About 1 km before the confluence of the Enns into the Danube is the Ennshafen, built between 1979 and 1994, with the industrial area on the Upper and Lower Austrian side.

From July 2020, the Danubia storage facility will be supplied with the world's largest type of hydraulic excavator, which is used to transfer bulk goods between ship and rail or road. The Type 895E Hybrid is built by the manufacturer Sennebogen, Bavaria, is driven by an electric motor, weighs 410 t, travels four-legged on 2 rails, is 42 m high, lifts 50 t and costs € 3–4.5 million.

From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, rafting was carried out on the lower Enns to transport the iron ore and other goods obtained on the Erzberg with wooden rafts. In 1566 Enns had the largest port between Passau and Vienna. The port of Enghagen was closed in 1826.

Traffic in the Ennstal

An important transit road from Germany to Slovenia runs through the upper Ennstal . In the section between Hieflau and Enns passing iron road along which the transport of ore from Styrian ore in the steelworks the Voestalpine in Linz , via the railway.

literature

Matthias Jungwirth, Susanne Muhar, Gerald Zauner, Josef Kleeberger, Thomas Kucher: The Styrian Enns. Fish fauna and water morphology. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences - Department of Hydrobiology, Fisheries Management and Aquaculture - Institute for Water Management, Freshwater Ecology and Waste Management, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-9500562-0-3 .

Ernst Neweklowsky: The iron shipping on the Enns. In: Upper Austrian homeland sheets . Vol. 3, No. 3, 1949, pp. 217–224, online (PDF; 1.1 MB) in the OoeGeschichte.at forum.

Anton Sikora, Oskar Behr et al .: Hydrology of the river Danube. = Gidrologija reki Dunaj. = Hydrology du Danube. = Hydrology of the Danube. Príroda, Bratislava 1988, (research report of the Danube Commission ).

Ferdinand Tremel: On the history of rafting on the Enns in the 16th century. In: Upper Austrian homeland sheets. Vol. 11, No. 3/4, 1957, pp. 181–190, online (PDF; 906 kB) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at.

Web links

Commons : Enns - collection of images, videos and audio files

The Enns. Gesäuse National Park
Ennskraftwerke AG
Enns regulation in the Ennstalwiki
Evacuation plan Enns / Gesäuse. Rafting Camp Palfau (PDF file, 585 kB)

Individual evidence

↑ Flood protection - Enns. ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Technical report, Federal Hydraulic Engineering Administration Austria, 2009, on: salzburg.gv.at (pdf; 2.1 MB) @1@ 2

↑ Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (ed.): List of areas of the Austrian river basins. Enns area (= contributions to the hydrography of Austria. No. 61, ZDB -ID 539852-6 ). Hydrographisches Zentralbüro, Vienna 2011, ( PDF; 3.9 MB ( Memento of the original dated December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove them Note. ). @1@ 2

↑ ^a ^b Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (Ed.): Hydrographisches Jahrbuch von Österreich 2010. 118th volume. Vienna 2012, p. OG 193 and OG 207, PDF (12.6 MB) on bmlrt.gv.at (yearbook 2010)

↑ The cities of Steyr, Graz and the state of Styria all have the Styrian Panther in their coat of arms.

↑ In the Nazi era (1938–1945) it was the Gaue Oberdonau and Niederdonau of the Alpine and Danube Reichsgaue . During the occupation of Austria (1945–1955) the dreaded zone border between the Soviet-occupied eastern part and the western part of the four-part state was here in the middle of the Enns Bridge.

↑ The Enns. Verbund AG , accessed on September 14, 2016 .

↑ orf.at

↑ ennsmuseum.at: About the rafting ; accessed on March 22, 2016

↑ ennshafen.at> history