Rafting in East Central Europe

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For the economy in East Germany , rafting in East Central Europe was of paramount importance. Wood came in large quantities from Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Galicia to Tilsit, Memel, Koenigsberg and Danzig via the Memel, Pregel and Vistula.

Rivers

Memel

Rafts in front of the pulp mill in Tilsit

Many boatmen lived in the Memel towns of Schmalleningken , Sokaiten, Ruß , Minge and others. They sailed downstream and upstream on the Memel with their boydaks and Oder boats . Until the First World War, the Memel was of European importance in rafting. From Russia and Lithuania it brought up to 4,000 drifts with around 2 million solid cubic meters of wood to Tilsit, where the mayor Eldor Pohl made a contribution to promoting rafting by building a wooden port. In no small part, the raft wood was processed into cellulose in Tilsit and Memel. The Klaipėdos kartonas emerged from the factory in Memel .

Pregel

Königsberg had two pulp mills. One was in the east between Tapiauer Strasse and the new Pregel, the other in Rathshof on the lower reaches of the Pregel.

Vistula

Raft on the Vistula before Thorn

In Galicia and on the upper Bug , pines and firs , sometimes oak , beech and other deciduous trees, were felled in winter . Some of them were made into railway sleepers or beams , some were taken to the next river without being hewn. The woods were put together for rafting in winter. 10-20 logs were connected to panels with crossbars by driving 30 cm long iron nails through the crossbars into the logs. After the frost period, the tablets in the small tributaries of the Vistula were carried downwards one by one until a few tables could be combined in the larger tributaries. It was only a few miles before the confluence of the tributary into the Vistula that they could be connected to form a large wooden bridge. A raft trip to Gdansk lasted one to three months, so that if the weather conditions were good, 4–5 trips a year were possible.

A Weichselholztraft consisted of 30–50 panels, which were arranged in 4–7 rows next to one another and in 8–10 rows one behind the other. The panels were held together by strong ropes or iron wire. The average traft length was 100 m, the width 20–30 m. Several units - usually six, sometimes more - made up one transport. Were mooring the Traften by Schricken , vertically through the raft into the ground bumped beams. Each table had a long oar, a pot .

The commercial management of such transports lay with so-called cashiers. They sold the wood and paid the crew. The technical management was with Retmann (captain). As a particularly experienced raftsman, he drove ahead of the traft in a small boat to observe the depth and current and to make stops. A traft was driven by 8-10 men. In its heyday, more than 500 barges ("szkuta", "dubas"), almost 1000 "komięga" and around 300 rafts came to Gdansk annually on the Vistula.

See also

memory

Evening on the bank of the Vistula (Stryowski, 1881)

The life and customs of the Polish raftsmen who lived in the suburbs of Gdańsk at the end of the 19th century were captured in the pictures by Wilhelm August Stryowski , a professor at the Gdańsk Art Academy. Today they are in the collections of local museums. Among the musical works, the opera The Raft by Stanisław Moniuszko , which premiered in Warsaw in 1858, remains the most important.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Pölking: East Prussia - Biography of a Province (2011)
  2. ↑ a b c H. Chill: The wood rafting and the Flissaken on the Vistula (1918)
  3. ↑ Flis (Polish WP)
  4. ↑ Szkuta : Bark without mast. Dubas : barge with eight oars. Komięga : flat ship for single use, dismantled in Gdansk and sold as firewood.
  5. ↑ Gdansk and the Vistula (bpb)