Salmon fishing dispute
The salmon fishing dispute of 1736/37 was a political conflict between the federal Basel and the Kingdom of France . Fishing rights and the drawing of borders in the Rhine were controversial .
prehistory
Before the Rhine was straightened in the 19th century, the estuary of the Wiese River was a structure of slowly flowing, shallow watercourses, sandbanks and islands. It was known for its abundance of fish and was well suited for fishing . The settlement of Kleinhüningen , adjoining the mouth to the north, was a fishing village. The earliest documented dispute over fishing rights at this location dates back to 1413, when the fishermen in Kleinbasel and the then margravial Kleinhüningen were settled. In 1459 there was a ruling between Kleinhüningen on the right bank of the Rhine and the neighboring Hüningen on the left bank of the Rhine . Fishing on the Rhine was free, with the exception of the salmon pasture (salmon fishing season) in the four weeks from November 11th. During this time the fishermen had to stay within their parish ban.
A new situation arose with the area changes in the 17th century. In 1640 Basel bought the margrave Kleinhüningen from Baden, and in 1648 the Peace of Westphalia initiated the incorporation of Alsace into the Kingdom of France as part of the reunification policy . So Hüningen, which was in Basler and then in Austrian possession from 1521 to 1623, came under French sovereignty. Between 1680 and 1691, King Ludwig XIV had the Hüningen fortress built in place of the village . Vorwerke on the northern part of the «Schusterinsel», which does not belong to Basel, and on the right bank of the Rhine formed a bridgehead, which already in 1702 before the battle of Friedlingen proved to be advantageous for the deployment of French troops. This actually margravial ground was repeatedly occupied and cleared by French troops during the Cabinet Wars. The outworks were accordingly built several times (1693, 1702, 1714) and removed (1697, 1713, 1751). Due to the construction of the fortress, the people of Hüningen had to leave their houses and settle in the new foundations of Saint-Louis and Village-Neuf (also called "Neudorf", around two kilometers north of Hüningen).
The fortificatory bank straightening and land washings led to a loss of fishing grounds on the left bank of the Rhine. The importance of the imprecisely marked border grew, and the informal arrangements for observing it were no longer sufficient. The Hüninger and Kleinhüninger fishermen repeatedly and physically clashed because of mutually exclusive territorial claims, for example in 1682, 1725, 1726 and 1727.
Arguments
In the years 1735 and 1736, again at the beginning of the salmon pasture, there were insults and mass brawls between the Neudorf or Hüningers and Kleinhüningers. On the Hüninger side, around two dozen men are said to have been involved; on the Kleinhüninger side, the numbers vary between forty and two hundred. Fishermen from Basel also interfered on the grounds that the old ban regulations no longer apply.
The conflict turned into a state affair after the announcement that the Obervogt von Kleinhüningen Jakob Christoph Frey, a civil servant from the Basel estate, was involved in the violence of 1736 and organized it out of self-interest. He received a third of the fish caught as part of his income. In addition, the village guard had beaten the drum, giving the crowd the character of a military contingent.
The accusations were denied by Basel, but the French officials insisted on their information and put massive pressure on before the end of the year. From November 16, they cut the existential connections for Basel (especially food deliveries and gradients ) with Alsace, imposed an exit ban for Basel citizens and imprisoned three of them in Strasbourg . In addition, they called for criminal prosecution of those involved in Kleinhüningen and the Obervogt. Last but not least, they officially questioned the existing border markings.
Basel's request for support from the federal estates failed due to religious and political differences and the influence of the French ambassador in Solothurn . The extraordinary meeting demanded by Basel for the beginning of January 1737 did not pass any resolutions. Rather, Basel was advised to give in. The French officials harshly rejected Basel delegations in Strasbourg and Solothurn and letters of justification to Paris. A few arrests in Kleinhüningen and contacts with the Dutch ambassador in Paris also did nothing to ease the situation. There were even rumors that France was planning a military punitive action.
agreement
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To end the crisis, the professional diplomat Lukas Schaub and Obervogt Frey, who was in British service but from Basel, traveled to France in January 1737. They succeeded Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury , de facto Prime Minister Louis XV. , to speak. Schaub, who played a role in the creation of the Quadruple Alliance and was ambassador to Paris from 1721 to 1724, had good connections with Fleury. In a letter dated February 9, 1737, the cardinal declared the matter settled on behalf of the king. He noted:
«... que vous avez permis au sieur Frey, votre conseiller et baillif, de venir se jeter entre les mains du Roi par mon entremise, et de ne mettre aucune borne à sa soumission. Sa Majesté toujours porté à la douceur et à la clémence après avoir reçu par mon canal les assurances les plus formalelles de sa soumission à tout ce qu'elle voudroit lui prescrire, a bien voulu, par un effet de sa générosité naturelle, oublier tout ce qui s'est passé, et vous le renvoyer dans votre ville sans exiger de lui une plus ample satisfaction. »
“... that you allowed Mr. Frey, your alderman and bailiff, to come and, through my mediation, to place yourself in complete submission into the hands of the king. Through my most formal assurances that he wanted to submit to everything that she prescribed, His Majesty was carried by gentleness and mildness and, in a movement of her natural generosity, decided to forget everything that had happened and to bring you to your city without any further satisfaction to send back. "
The appeasements and apologies worked. Obervogt Frey was able to return home unmolested, and the retaliatory measures against Basel were ended. However, the completely tax-free border traffic was no longer established. Basel, for its part, only punished the Kleinhüninger fishermen who were arrested with minor fines. By the end of 1738, a commission and an exchange of correspondence laid down the border and fishing rights in the Rhine that were binding for both sides. The Basel authorities did not want to endanger the delicate negotiations. They banned the carnival parades at the turn of the year, so that there could be no expressions of displeasure towards France. Schaub received honorary degrees and state property as thanks for his efforts, the city of Basel bought his portrait of Hyacinthe Rigaud in 1771 and exhibited it in the public art collection in the Haus zur Mücke . For his part, Frey was appointed to the Privy Council and Deputates (supervision of the church, poor and school system).
Meaning of the Schusterinsel
The reason for the salmon fishing dispute was a palpable dispute over fishing rights in the Rhine. The focus, however, was on the associated municipal level and the Basel border on the Schusterinsel and its military use. In 1733 the War of the Polish Succession began, which lasted until 1738 and in which France carried out campaigns across the Rhine border into southern Germany. The Hüningen fortress was an important base, and the French military intended to use the Basel half of the Schusterinsel for the Vorwerk. In the negotiations of the commission, however, the French view was refuted that the Hüninger ban originally extended over the entire Schusterinsel to the mouth of the meadow. In addition, the end of the war was looming. The international legal demarcation was not touched for more than seven decades. However, in 1749 France unsuccessfully demanded that the arm of the Rhine be excavated at Schusterinsel in order to relieve the Hüningen bank fortifications from the water pressure of the main stream. The Vorwerk on the Schusterinsel was built, contested and destroyed for the last time in 1796/97 during the First Coalition War.
In 1810 Napoleon Bonaparte demanded that the Schusterinsel be ceded to France. However, the fall of the First Empire prevented the permanent shift of the border. The Hüningen fortress was razed in 1815/16. The Schusterinsel, to which irregulars and sympathizers of the Hecker uprising were able to retreat in April 1848 , silted up. Your Basel part now belongs to the urban port area . The location of the three-country bridge between Hüningen and Weil am Rhein , which was inaugurated in 2007, corresponds to that of the various ship bridges that, with interruptions, connected the fortress and the Schusterinsel from 1688 onwards.
literature
- Carl Wieland: The Kleinhüninger salmon fishing dispute 1736. In: Basler Jahrbuch . 1889, pp. 37-85.
- Peter Ochs : History of the city and landscape of Basel. Volume 7. Schweighauser, Basel 1821, Vol. 7, pp. 567-579 .
- Markus Lutz : Baslerisches Bürger-Buch. Schweighauser, Basel 1819, p. 124.
- Markus Lutz: Chronicle of Basel or the main moments in Basel's history. Samuel Flick, Basel 1809, pp. 292–294 .