Rafting on the Isar

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Bronze sculpture " Der Isarflößer " by Fritz Koelle in Munich

The rafting on the Isar or Isarflößerei was from the 13th to the 19th centuries a means of freight and passenger transport on the Isar and its tributary Loisach . The Isar could be rafted from Mittenwald , the Loisach from Garmisch .

Rafters from Mittenwald, Bader family

Mainly the rafting served the transport of goods, the passenger traffic and the wood drift. Important starting points for rafting were Mittenwald , Krün , Wallgau , Lenggries and Tölz on the Isar as well as Oberau , Eschenlohe , Kochel , Beuerberg and Wolfratshausen on the Loisach. The most important destinations were the Bavarian royal cities of Munich and Landshut and the episcopal city of Freising , but the journey also went further down the Isar to the mouth of the Isar at Deggendorf and even further down the Danube to Vienna or Budapest.

With the expansion of the railway, the transport of goods by raft lost its importance at the beginning of the 20th century and was finally discontinued. The tradition of passenger raft rides is continued to this day in the form of pleasure raft rides and was put on the state list of intangible cultural heritage by Bavaria in 2020.

Transport of goods

The urban Baustadl on the Untere Lände in Munich

In 1280, during the reign of the last Andechs , the Wolfratshausen market was built on the left bank of the Loisach. A planned settlement developed. The oldest documentary evidence of rafting on the Isar comes from 1310/12. As the city of Munich grew, there was a lot of traffic on the river. The most important task of rafting at that time was the transport of goods . On the one hand, building materials played a major role. Lumber, stones, lime and other materials that were abundant in the wooded, mountainous uplands, but were scarce or of poor quality in the gravel plains downstream , were transported on the Isar to Munich, Freising and Landshut. The trunks, which were intended as construction timber, were tied together into rafts and driven down the Isar. More wood and other materials could then be transported on these rafts.

In addition, agricultural products such as B. grain and cheese, but also animals, are transported down the Isar by rafts. Also charcoal , which was recovered from the woods near Bad Toelz, has been associated with rafts to Munich. Goods that were otherwise transported over land on long-distance trade routes were also in parts loaded onto such rafts. So was z. B. Mittenwald on an old long-distance trade route from Venice to Augsburg. From 1407 goods, e.g. B. Wine from Northern Italy and glass from Venice, also transported from Mittenwald on rafts via Loisach and Isar. The Nuremberg merchants, among others, were very interested in this because they could avoid Swabian territory.

At the destinations, the rafts docked at raft lands and were unloaded. Then the rafts were taken apart and stored as timber. So there was For example, on the Unteren Lände in Munich, there was an urban building site where the wood and other building materials were stored. The Holzstraße is still reminiscent of the wood storage area on the Oberen Lände in Munich.

Isar rafting reached its heyday between 1860 and 1870. B. in the accounting year 1864/65 over 10,000 rafts Munich. The increasing competition from the railroad caused the importance of the raft trip to decline steadily. The construction of the new central area in Munich in 1899 as a replacement for the upper and lower areas was therefore already an anachronism and was no longer economically viable.

The last long-distance transport on the Isar took place in 1904, when the lid of a large-format brewing kettle made in Munich with a diameter of 6 m was rafted to Vienna by Wolfratshauser rafters over the Isar and Danube.

passenger traffic

Raft for passenger transport on the Isar near Freising

Compared to the transport of goods, passenger traffic on the Isar only played a subordinate role. There is historical evidence that Elector Max Emanuel used a passenger raft when he helped the Habsburgs against the Turks in 1683 . Otherwise, passenger journeys remained rather the exception. In the middle of the 19th century a raft went to Freising , Landshut , Landau and Plattling once a week . Another raft, called the Ordinari raft, went to Vienna via Passau and Linz every week . For the year 1838, a departure every Monday, a journey time of five days to Vienna and an operating time from mid-March to mid-November are stated for this raft. The freight price to Vienna was 3 guilders per hundredweight, the fare for people was 30 kreuzers to Landshut, 1 guilder to 30 kreuzers to Passau, 2 guilders to Linz and 3 guilders to Vienna. In contrast, the express carriages to the respective locations cost seven to ten times the price.

The railroad also put an end to rafting for passenger traffic; the last raft from Munich to Vienna left in 1904.

Tourist rafting

After the opening of the Isar Valley Railway between Munich and Wolfratshausen , rafts were rented by clubs for pleasure rides at the beginning of the 20th century. Although this type of use declined between the two world wars, it has flourished again since the 1960s.

One of the greatest attractions of the raft rides is sliding down the raft slides. The video shows the longest raft slide in Europe at the Mühltal hydropower station near Straßlach .

Today there are regular raft trips from Wolfratshausen-Weidach to the central area in Munich during the season from the beginning of May to mid-September . For a large part of the approximately 24 km long route, however, these excursion rafts operate on the power plant canals that run parallel to the Isar ( Mühltalkanal , Isar-Werkkanal ). The first 3 km are driven on the Loisach and Isar to the Ickinger weir. Between the two canals near Baierbrunn are the most beautiful 2.5 km on the still largely free-flowing Isar, on which the Georgenstein , which is still not easy to pass, is located. In order to be able to pass the Mühltal , Höllriegelskreuth and Pullach power plants , they are equipped with raft slides . This includes the longest raft slide in Europe at the Mühltal power plant with a length of 345 m and a gradient of 17 m. Here the rafts reach 42 km / h. On the raft slide in the Höllriegelskreuth power plant, 20 km / h can be achieved and on the one at the Pullach power plant 28 km / h. Particular bottlenecks are also the passages through the weirs Icking, Baierbrunn and Großhesselohe as well as the entrance to the raft canal at the Flößer monument in Hinterbrühl.

Isar raft below the Höllriegelskreuth power station

The rafts are usually 18 m long, 6.80 m wide and weigh around 20 tons. They are steered by three raftsmen with the help of two long oars in front and one in the back. Up to 60 people can be taken along on a platform built across the spruce trunks. A tent roof can be put up when it rains.

Groups usually book an entire raft, which then decides on drinks to take with them (usually in beer kegs), food and musical accompaniment, as well as the number and length of the snack, meal and coffee breaks at one of the inns along the way. The musical direction of the music groups is very similar to the festival tent music of Oktoberfest bands. The trip takes about six to seven hours, depending on the water conditions and the length of the breaks.

At the central site, the groups are often picked up by their buses. The rafts are dismantled and loaded onto log trucks, which take the logs back to Wolfratshausen, where they are reassembled into rafts.

The number of raft trips depends on the weather-influenced bookings. In 2010 over 600 raft trips were carried out.

Every spring, raft slides and lanes are repaired by E.ON Wasserkraft , which operates the power plants and is also responsible for the overall maintenance of the power plant sewers. After the work is completed, a traditional raft lane inspection takes place in April by representatives of the rafting companies, E.ON Wasserkraft and the water management and district authorities, with which the opening of the raft season is prepared.

Wood drift

The wooden garden on the Trift Canal in Munich

While construction timber was transported in the form of rafts, the trift was used to transport firewood . Trunk sections with a length of up to 2 m that were cut in the Isarwinkel were thrown individually into the river. They drifted downstream and were caught in Munich by the break-off that was built between the left bank of the Isar and the Praterinsel . There they were pulled ashore or forwarded to the Trift Canal , which was put into operation in 1606 , via which they were then taken to the ducal wooden garden, where they were dried and stored.

The drift usually took place 4–6 weeks after the spring flood, during which time rafts were not allowed.

After the Isar was increasingly fortified in the 19th century, the bank fortifications were repeatedly damaged by drift wood. For this reason and because the railroad was a cheaper and safer means of transport for the firewood, the Holztrift on the Isar was discontinued in 1867.

Culture and customs

The raftsmen on the Isar and the Loisach tributary developed special traditions early on. 1159 awarded Berthold III. , Count von Andechs, the raftsmen of Wolfratshausen the guild law and donated a guild flag. The flag showed the image of Saint Nepomuk , the bridge patron who was also responsible for the raftsmen. The other saint associated with rafting is Nicholas of Myra . St. Nepomuk was decisive for the traditional Midsummer trips around May 15th, which coincided with the start of the rafting season. A large number of chapels were built for Nikolaus and Nepomuk along the rivers, such as the Church of St. Nikolaus in Mittenwald , the Nikolauskapelle von Geretsried or the Nepomukkapelle in Mamming . A figure of Nepomuk stands on the Grünwalder Isar bridge .

Other religious customs were the raftsmen pilgrimages. Traditionally, there was an annual St. John's pilgrimage from Wolfratshausen to St. Maria Thalkirchen . After the Second World War it was replaced by an annual mass in the Ortisei chapel at the Mühltal hydroelectric power station. Raft pilgrimage was not revived until 1990; it has taken place every five years as Thalkirchner Flößerwallfahrt since 1993 , but now at the end of the season at the beginning of September. At the mouth of the Isar in Plattling there is a water procession every 3 years, during which a statue of St. Nepomuk drives down the Isar on a raft at dusk.

Official regulations were also issued early on. The oldest known raft order comes from Munich in 1310.

There are traditional rafters' associations on the Isar in Lenggries and in Munich- Thalkirchen , and exhibitions on the history of rafting are held in the local museums in Bad Tölz and Wolfratshausen .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Isar rafting  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Passenger raft trips on the Isar and Loisach from the Oberland to Munich are an intangible cultural heritage! Flößer-Kulturverein München-Thalkirchen eV, March 31, 2020, accessed on June 8, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Raft trips are a cultural asset , April 26, 2020
  3. ↑ History of the Isar raft trip and the city of Wolfratshausen , Isar-Floss-Event.de, accessed on December 22, 2018.
  4. ↑ Helga Lauterbach: From raft masters and rafting customs - history and religious customs of the Isar and Loisach rafters . Erich Wewel Verlag 1992, ISBN 3-87904-181-4 , p. 64
  5. ↑ The myth of the Isar: Where the power of water is great , Abendzeitung , August 25, 2018, accessed on December 22, 2018.
  6. ↑  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Report on a raft trip@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / home.bnv.miesbach.org
  7. ↑ Oktoberfest bands influence the repertoire of raft musicians , Welt.de , August 19, 2018, accessed on December 22, 2018.
  8. ↑ Press release 2010 by E.ON Wasserkraft ( Memento from July 29, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  9. ↑ The raft season on the Isar can now begin! ( Memento from January 22, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Press release 2011 from E.ON Wasserkraft
  10. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Gaudi with tradition , May 19, 2010
  11. ↑ Helga Lauterbach: The Flößerwallfahrt to Maria Thalkirchen - A piece of old Bavarian piety . In: Bernhard M. Hoppe (Ed.): Maria Thalkirchen - history of a Munich parish and pilgrimage site. Erich Wewel Verlag Munich, 1991, ISBN 3-87904-174-1 , pp. 125-133, 130
  12. ↑ Helga Lauterbach: From raft masters and rafting customs - history and religious customs of the Isar and Loisach rafters . Erich Wewel Verlag 1992, ISBN 3-87904-181-4 , p. 128 ff.
  13. ^ Nepomuk Association Plattling: The association
  14. ↑ Birgit Jauernig: Rafting. In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria, October 14, 2009