Hohensaaten-Friedrichsthaler waterway
The Hohensaaten-Friedrichsthaler Wasserstraße (HFW and HoFriWa) is a section of the federal waterway Havel-Oder-Wasserstraße (HOW). The shipping canal runs along the western edge of the lower Oder valley, which is up to three kilometers wide, parallel to the Oder from the end of the Oder hold of the HOW at Hohensaaten to the confluence with the Westoder at Friedrichsthal and is 42 kilometers long. It belongs to waterway class IV with restrictions. The Eberswalde Waterways and Shipping Office is responsible for the administration .
The forerunner of the canal was the Hohensaatener Kanal (also Hohensaatener Vorflutkanal ), which was built between 1848 and 1859 to improve the drainage of the Oderbruch using side arms of the Oder. The 17 kilometer long canal with a bottom width of 30 meters connected the Alte Oder at Hohensaaten with the main stream at Stützkow . The construction of the canal and a dike between the Oder and the canal increased the gradient by 1.7 meters for draining the Oderbruch. The canal construction was carried out by the Deichbaugesellschaft für Melioration des Niederbruch , which raised 42 percent of the construction costs; the remainder was financed by the Prussian state. With the construction of the large shipping route Berlin - Stettin, the Hohensaaten Canal became part of the new waterway; at present it is the southern section of the Hohensaaten-Friedrichsthaler waterway. The northern part arose from the arms of the Oder, which were connected by two openings .
At Friedrichsthal (district of Gartz ) the waterway flows into the Westoder, which flows through Stettin to the Stettiner Haff . The Westoder branches off from the "Stromoder" (also "Ostoder" or "Oder") just above Friedrichsthal at the Marienhof weir near Oder-km 704.16. Even today, the canal is used to drain the Oderbruch and the lower Oder valley. With a relatively constant water level, it offers better conditions for shipping than the Oder, which often has low water in hot summers . The Hohensaaten-Friedrichsthaler Wasserstraße was completed in 1926 after a long construction period of 20 years due to the First World War .
Almost its entire length of the waterway is somewhat lower than the Oder, at the southern end point at Hohensaaten 0.38 meters above sea level compared to a mean Oder water level at Hohensaaten of 3.24 meters above sea level . This means that ships entering the canal here from the Oder have to "descend" almost three meters, in two steps: two meters in the east lock from the Oder to maintain the HOW (1.2 meters above sea level) and almost one Meters in the west lock. At the northern end point, the canal is directly connected to today's Westoder without a lock.
In order to enable faster shipping traffic between the villages in the middle of the canal and the "Stromoder", a connecting canal , the Schwedter Querfahrt , with a lock was built between Schwedt / Oder and Nipperwiese in 1925 .
The Hohensaaten-Friedrichsthaler Wasserstraße is completely diked to the east, to the Oder, and to a large extent to the west. Between the channel and the Oder there are polders , a unique landscape in Central Europe based on the Dutch model, which is flooded in late autumn and winter. 90 percent of this area belongs to the Lower Oder Valley National Park .
The port of Schwedt is the most important on the canal. In addition to building materials, industrial goods are handled here. Schwedt is the location of two paper mills and an oil refinery.
The only major tributary of the canal is the catfish which flows northeast of Schwedt .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Directory E, Ser. No. 21 of the chronicle on the legal status of the Reich waterways / inland waterways of the federal government. Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration, 1998.
- ↑ Lengths of the main shipping lanes of the federal inland waterways, List 1 (PDF, Version 3.2, 2019). Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration.
- ↑ Heino Kalweit: Creation from forest and water. History of water management in Brandenburg and Berlin. Konrad Wittwer, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-87919-256-1 , pp. 98, 132, 160.
- ↑ M. Eckoldt (Ed.): Rivers and canals. The history of the German waterways. DSV-Verlag, Hamburg 1998, page 286.