Shop Karl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Table sign of the shopkeeper (Museum of the City of Steyr, 1875)

Ladenenkarl are one-man rafts assembled from boards . They were used on the Upper Austrian River Steyr until 1890 .

General

A shop karl is a raft assembled from boards (shops) that can be steered by a single man. The name Karl (with a light a) means that the rafts consisted of a single small kar , a raft board. They were in use on the Upper Austrian Steyr River until 1890. Since the Steyr is a mountain river with numerous weirs , it could not be navigated with rafts of conventional size. A shop charl was about 5 meters long, 4 meters wide and 50 centimeters high. It consisted of an average of 450 shutters (boards) tied together with ropes, 15 to 18 feet long, 10 inches wide, and 1/2 to 1 inch thick (see Old Weights and Measures ). Steering was not done with oars, as on the Iller , where similar small rafts were in use, but with the crutch , a 3 to 4 meter long pole with a curved 30 x 50 cm board attached to the end. The shop karls were not assembled in the water, but on the river bank. After arriving in Steyr , they were usually taken apart and worked into empty raft bottoms for onward transport on the Enns . Sometimes, however, several shop-carriages tied together formed a long raft of the Enns. After the opening of the Steyrtalbahn in 1890, the wood was delivered by rail and the Steyr rafting company was closed. Only the Holztrift continued to exist until the end of the Second World War.

Table sign

The shopping car ride was associated with great dangers. This is also reflected in the preserved table mark of the Ladenkarlfahrer (Lahnführer) from 1875 in the Museum of the City of Steyr . The inscription of the Ein'gricht with a raft model reads, among other things: Everyone knows that / that we are in great danger. / That is why we trust in God / Because nobody knows when the time for death will come.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Neweklowsky: Download Karl and Schiftfuhren. In: Oberösterreichische Heimatblätter April - June 1957, online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at
  2. ↑ Ernst Neweklowsky: Schiffahrtskundliche collection in: Yearbook of the Upper Austrian Museal Association, Linz 1957