Rheinau (municipality-free area)

coat of arms	Germany map
	Coordinates: 48 ° 17 '  N , 7 ° 42'  E
Basic data
State :	Baden-Württemberg
Administrative region :	Freiburg
County :	Ortenau district
Height :	154 m above sea level NHN
Area :	9.95 km 2
Residents:	0 (Dec 31, 2018)
Population density :	0 inhabitants per km 2
Postcodes :	77966 (belongs to the Kappel-Grafenhausen delivery area)
Primaries :	07822 (belongs to the area code Ettenheim)
License plate :	OG, BH , KEL, LR, WOL
Community key :	08 3 17 971
Location of the community-free area Rheinau in the Ortenau district

The community-free area Rheinau is the right bank of the Rhine , lying on German territory of the French city ​​of Rhinau (German Rheinau ) and covers 9.98 km². In terms of extension, it corresponds to the part of the Rhinau district on the right bank of the Rhine . The designation for the area also varies from official bodies. Common names are Rheinau, community-free area Rheinau, community-free property or Rheinau forest and combinations derived from them. In the municipal register of the Federal Statistical Office , the area was only listed under the designation of parish-free land . Since December 31, 2010 the name is officially known as Rheinau, a community-free area .

Along with the Münsingen manor district, Rheinau is one of two uninhabited, parish-free areas in Baden-Württemberg.

geography

The on the Upper Rhine region located approximately between the Rhine kilometers 256 and 263. It is mostly forested and groundwater-fed Altwasserarmen so-called casting traversed. In addition to the Old Rhine , these include Stückergraben (partly in the municipality of Rheinhausen ), Entenhott, Fischpaß Kehle, Alter Kehle, Taubergießen (partly in the municipality of Kappel-Grafenhausen ), Herrenkopf Kehle and Elz (partly in the municipality of Kappel-Grafenhausen). In the north of the area, above the Rhine ferry and below the Herrenkopf Bannwald, lies the Rhinau quarry pond.

On the German side, the area borders on the municipalities of Rheinhausen (with a border section that is only around 100 meters long and runs across the direction of flow in the Rhine), Rust (southeast) and Kappel-Grafenhausen (northeast). The border with France runs along the valley path of the Rhine. On the French side, on the left bank of the Rhine, it only borders the municipality of Rhinau .

In the northern section of the area, at Rhine kilometer 261.07, there is a ferry connection between the district of Kappel am Rhein in the municipality of Kappel-Grafenhausen (Rheinstrasse or state road L 103) and the French municipality of Rhinau on the opposite side of the Rhine ( department road D 5 of the Bas-Rhin department ) by the ferry Rhenanus , which runs every quarter of an hour. The ferry has space for 27 vehicles and carries an average of over 4,000 people per day (1.5 million annually). The “Zollhaus Taubergießen” information point is located at the ferry terminal.

The approximately 1000 meters of the extension of the Rheinstrasse “Kappel-Rheinfähre” (Landesstrasse 103) running in the area is the only street in the community-free area. It was built in 1847 and 1848 by the municipalities of Kappel and Rhinau. When Rhinau belonged to the realm of Alsace-Lorraine and thus to the German Empire, there was a ship bridge in place of today's ferry , which was opened on May 25, 1873. In 1874 an average of 242 pedestrians and 73 wagons used the bridge; In 1876 there were 329 pedestrians and 75 carts. From December 1893, the terminus of the Rhein-Ettenheimmünster local railway was at the bridgehead in the community-free area. The local railway was shut down in October 1921, as traffic in Alsace had practically come to a standstill after the Rhine had become the state border again.

Sign at the Herrenkopfbrücke

There are three hiking trails in the area:

• Butterfly Trail (2 km, near the "Zollhaus Taubergießen" information point)
• Kormoranweg (6 km, Bannwald Herrenkopf to the banks of the Rhine), not accessible since 2018
• Orchideenweg (6.5 km, along the Tullaschen flood dam)

The area is designated as a nature reserve and specifically as a bird sanctuary .

The community-free area is part of the Taubergießen nature reserve (which is named after one of the Giessen ) and makes up 59.3% of its area. In the north of the area lies the Herrenkopf forest . In the south are Bannwald Dornskopf, Bannwald Streitkopf and Schonwald Schaftheugrund.

According to the land use statistics as of December 31, 2004, it was predominantly used by forest (95.4% deciduous forest), grassland and water surface:

Land use December 31, 2004	Hectares	percent
Forest	523	52.4
Grassland	204	20.4
Farmland	10	1.0
Water surface	240	24.0
other use	21st	2.1
total	998	100.0

The agricultural area (grassland and arable land) is cultivated by farmers from the neighboring French municipality of Rhinau. Agricultural tractors have the right of way on the Rhine ferry from April to October.

history

Creation of the community-free area

Area of ​​today's municipality-free Rheinau area before (1828) and after (1882) the correction of the Rhine:

State border and Talweg 1827

Ban and ownership limit

Rhinau is the last of what were once many regional authorities on the Upper Rhine whose territory included both German and French territory. The reason for this was the constant changes in the course of the Rhine, which before its correction in the 19th century ran in numerous arms between islands and gravel banks . As a result, many riverside communities had ban and property rights on both sides of the river. Before 1398, Rhinau was on the right side of the Rhine, then changed to the left side of the river and from 1502 was again on the right side of the Rhine for several years. On September 23, 1542, the Strasbourg bishop Erasmus decided a dispute between Rhinau and Kappel over today's Taubergießen in favor of Rhinau.

Today's border between the unincorporated area Rheinau and the neighboring German towns goes back to provisions of the First and Second Peace of Paris of 1814 and 1815. At that time the line connecting the lowest points in the longitudinal direction of the Rhine - the valley path - as a German-French border set . Since the valley path changed its position continuously, a fixed ban and property border was to be created, which separated the area of ​​French and German communities. The regulations made in 1814 and 1815 repealed the provisions of the Peace of Lunéville of 1801, which defined the valley path as the state and property border. As early as the 18th century, ongoing disputes between the riverside communities were to be ended by a ban and property border that was independent of the valley path; the project could not be completed because of the French Revolution .

In 1817 the Baden- French Rhine Boundary Correction Commission began its work. The work of the commission was extremely difficult, as the Paris Treaties were ambiguous and the required reconstruction of the conditions of 1801 due to the topographical changes that had occurred in the meantime was just as time-consuming as the verification of legal titles by the municipalities. As a ban and property border, a polygon with 120 points was created along the entire Baden-French border , which crossed the Rhine several times. In the Rhinau area, work was essentially finished in 1823; here the ban and property border ran east of the Rhine. A border treaty between Baden and France of April 5, 1840 confirmed the state as well as the ban and property border and at the same time contained provisions on the corrective work that was initiated in 1840 according to the plans of Tulla . Through the correction of the Rhine, a uniform river bed was created by 1879, in which the valley path ran from then on.

Map of the Baden part of the Rhinau district and the Kappel district from 1866

In another Baden-French treaty from 1857, both sides declared it desirable that their communities should not own any land on the opposite bank in the future. In the following years - especially when Alsace was part of the German Empire between 1871 and 1918 - many municipalities exchanged or sold their property. In 1918, 44 municipalities in Baden owned 4482 hectares on the left bank of the Rhine and 23 Alsatian municipalities in 1940 hectares on the right bank of the Rhine. Whether the Baden municipalities lost their property on the left bank of the Rhine in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 remained legally controversial. According to the files of the former Lahr District Office , after 1920 the French authorities repeatedly requested the Rhinau community to sell their property on the right bank of the Rhine in order to avoid border conflicts. The municipality had refused this, as the place lived exclusively from agriculture and therefore the loss of land would lead to the "economic collapse" of Rhinau.

Today's legal basis for the community-free area is the Franco-German border treaty of August 14, 1925, in which the German government undertook to

"That the property on the right bank of the Rhine of the Rhinau community, insofar as it is owned by this community, will never be incorporated into the district of a Baden community in any form."

At the same time, the border treaty was the de facto recognition that the holdings of communities on the left bank of the Rhine had fallen to France in 1919. France accepted that in the meantime the property of the Alsatian communities Mothern and Munchhausen on the right bank of the Rhine had been included in the districts of Illingen and Steinmauern .

According to the 1925 treaty, Rhinau has hunting rights in the area on the right bank of the Rhine. The municipality can appoint French nationals to be forest guards, hunting guards and fisheries supervisors; they operate in accordance with Baden legislation. Rhinau is responsible for the maintenance of roads, dams and ditches. The municipality is obliged to pay imperial and state taxes and is on an equal footing with landowners living outside Germany. Rhinau is exempt from local taxes. Kappel takes on sovereign tasks such as the land register and local police . The birth of a child on a barge in the community-free area was officially recorded in Kappel.

During the time of National Socialism , the community-free area was withdrawn from the community of Rhinau during the construction of the western wall in 1938 and added to the districts of Rust (402 hectares) and Kappel (592 hectares). An expropriation procedure was initiated, but closed in 1944, so that the municipality of Rhinau remained the owner under private law . By order of the French military administration , the parish-free area was restored in March 1946.

Conflicts over nature conservation

The Taubergießen near the community-free area Rheinau

On July 18, 1955 large parts of the unincorporated area were as conservation area designated "Taubergießen". Corresponding initiatives by nature conservationists went back to the 1930s; the poor traffic connection to Rhinau had contributed to the preservation of a natural state of this part of the Rheinaue. According to information from 1968, the municipality of Rhinau had objections to the designation of the landscape protection area in 1954, which the German authorities are said not to have known. Investigations carried out between 1966 and 1970 by the Federal Institute for Vegetation Science , Nature Conservation and Landscape Management came to the conclusion that the Taubergießen area is of great scientific importance. In the spring of 1977, the landscape protection area was provisionally and finally in early 1979 designated as a nature reserve. The restrictions on use associated with nature conservation led to several conflicts between the municipality of Rhinau and German authorities from the mid-1960s, which were regulated in 1982 by an agreement between the state of Baden-Württemberg and the municipality.

In February 1967 the municipality of Rhinau applied to the Lahr district to operate a gravel pit in the municipality-free area. The application was approved, with gravel extraction only allowed from ships. When the leaseholder of the gravel pit wanted to build additional facilities on land, this was refused, as the facilities would represent considerable damage to nature and a disfigurement of the landscape. The Mayor of Rhinau urged the facilities to be approved and argued that the community was dependent on the income from gravel mining to build a school, among other things. After the previous tenant of the gravel pit had terminated his contract, a new operator was found who wanted to mine the gravel in the originally permitted manner. In August 1970, the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior approved gravel mining until 2000.

In May 1967, the Rhinau community leased new meadows in the community-free area. The lease agreements did not contain any provisions on the restrictions on use in the landscape protection area. Some of the meadows at that time are shown on maps from the 19th century, initially as fields and later as meadows. After decades of extensive use, a semi-arid lawn with numerous orchids had developed. One of the new tenants, a farmer from Rhinau, wanted to grow corn together with German sub-tenants and plowed several meadows between 1967 and 1969. In December 1969, the Lahr District Office prohibited plowing and threatened a fine . A complaint directed against this by the farmer before the Freiburg Administrative Court was unsuccessful. In January 1970, the Rhinau community terminated the farmer's lease without notice. A maximum amount of fertilizer proposed by the German authorities to protect the orchids was considered by the Rhinau municipal council to be too low. At the end of the 1970s, meadows in the community-free area were turned into fields.

Together with the German neighboring communities of Taubergießen and several nature conservation organizations, the community of Rhinau turned against the construction of a canal in February 1973, which was to be used to divert partly untreated wastewater from the Breisgau Bay to the Rhine. Rhinau feared the loss of 50 hectares of alluvial forest and pointed out that the community had already made great sacrifices for the preservation of the landscape protection area. The planning of the sewer was given up in 1977, which made it possible to secure the Taubergießen as a nature reserve.

On December 22, 1982, the state of Baden-Württemberg and the municipality of Rhinau concluded an agreement on the management of the meadows, the practice of hunting and fishing and compensation for the restrictions on use in the nature reserve. Rhinau agreed that no further meadows would be turned into fields. Existing meadows were designated as reserve areas that may no longer be fertilized in the future. For the usage restrictions, Rhinau receives monetary compensation or hay free ferry Rhinau from the state . In the event of differences of opinion, an arbitration commission with equal representation was agreed, the chairman of which is appointed by the Rübel Geobotanical Institute at ETH Zurich .

In 2007 the municipality of Rhinau participated in the financing of a nature conservation project to improve the flow through the waters of the Taubergießen area and to prevent the deposition of sediments . Areas in the north of the community-free area are part of the flood retention area under construction at the Elz estuary . A controlled polder is intended to restore flood protection in areas downstream as part of the Integrated Rhine Program.

Further data

• Regional key until December 31, 2008: 08 3 17 0000 971
• Regional key from January 1, 2009: 08 3 17 9971 971
• District code: 5020

literature

• Trudpert Müller : Unregulated area of ​​the Alsatian community Rhinau (Rheinau) in Baden-Württemberg. In: Baden-Württembergisches Verwaltungsblatt. ISSN  0005-3724 6 (1961), issue 1, p. 910.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ State Statistical Office Baden-Württemberg - Population by nationality and gender on December 31, 2018 (CSV file) ( help on this ).
2. ^ [1] All politically independent municipalities in Germany from the municipal directory as of December 31, 2008 with area and population as of December 31, 2008. Retrieved on August 13, 2010
3. ↑ StBA: Area changes from January 01 to December 31, 2010
4. ↑ rhein.lex-ikon.eu ( Memento from February 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
5. ^ Franz Josef Baer: Chronicle of road construction and road traffic in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Edited using official sources. Julius Springer, Berlin 1878, p. 393.
6. ^ Peter-Michael Mihailescu, Matthias Michalke: Forgotten paths in Baden-Württemberg. Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0413-6 , pp. 89-92.
7. ↑ hotel-andante-rust.de ( Memento of the original from December 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ^ Badische Zeitung: Primeval Forests of Tomorrow: Hike Taubergießen - Badische Zeitung TICKET. Retrieved November 8, 2019 . 
9. ↑ rips-uis.lubw.baden-wuerttemberg.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ waldwissen.net
11. ↑ rhinau.com
12. ^ Daniel-Erasmus Khan : The German state borders. Legal history basics and open legal questions. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-16-148403-7 , pp. 548, 559 f.
13. ↑ Christoph Bernhardt: In the mirror of the water. A transnational environmental history of the Upper Rhine (1800–2000). (= Environmental historical research , Volume 5) Böhlau, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-412-22155-3 , pp. 52, 67.
14. ^ Khan, Staatsgrenzen , pp. 549 f, 553–555.
15. ^ Khan, Staatsgrenzen , pp. 554–557;
    Johannes Gut: The Baden-French and the Baden-Bavarian state borders and the correction of the Rhine. In: Journal for the History of the Upper Rhine , ISSN  0044-2607 , 142 (1994), pp. 215-232, here pp. 227, 229 f.
16. ^ Khan, Staatsgrenzen , p. 558;
    Alois Klein: The geodetic determination of the boundaries on the Upper Rhine 1750–1850. University publication, Karlsruhe 1976, p. 94.
17. ^ Müller, municipality-free area , p. 9.
18. ^ Treaty between the German Empire and France on the establishment of the border. Reichsgesetzblatt Part II, 1927, pp. 960-1086, here p. 968 ( digitized version ).
19. ^ Khan, Staatsgrenzen , pp. 558 f;
    Gut, State Border , p. 231 f.
20. ↑ Müller, municipality-free area , p. 9 f.
21. ^ Müller, municipality-free area , p. 10.
22. ↑ Helmut Schönnamsgruber , Martin Kunze: The protection of the Taubergießen area and its further endangerment. In: State Office for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management Baden-Württemberg (Ed.): The Taubergiessen area. A Rhine meadow landscape. (= The nature and landscape protection areas of Baden-Württemberg , Volume 7) State Office for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management Baden-Württemberg, Ludwigsburg 1975, pp. 3–135, here pp. 19, 27, 40, 60;
    Erwin Rennwald: On the distribution and endangerment of orchids in the Ortenau. With special consideration of the NSG Taubergießen. (= Publications for nature conservation and landscape management in Baden-Württemberg, supplement 42). Institute for Ecology and Nature Conservation, Karlsruhe 1985, ISBN 3-88251-090-0 , p. 94.
23. ↑ Schönnamsgruber, Untererschutzstellung , pp. 43–53;
    Rennwald, Orchideen , p. 96.
24. ↑ Schönnamsgruber, Untererschutzstellung , pp. 53–68;
    Rennwald, Orchideen , pp. 94-96.
25. ↑ Schönnamsgruber, Untererschutzstellung , pp. 43–53.
26. ^ Ulrich Beyerlin : Legal Problems of Local Cross-Border Cooperation. (= Contributions to foreign public law and international law , volume 96) Springer, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-540-18652-2 , pp. 83 f;
    Rennwald, Orchideen , pp. 94-96.
27. ^ Regional Council Freiburg (ed.): Revitalization Taubergießen. (pdf, 12.4 MB, accessed December 28, 2014).
28. ↑ Water Directorate   South Upper Rhine / Upper Rhine (Ed.): Flood retention area Elzmuende.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (pdf, 5.0 MB. accessed on December 28, 2014).