Silver fir

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Detail from the Cologne cityscape from 1531 by Anton Woensam : in front left a leucocyte

The laurel fir is considered to be the oldest type of ship on the Upper Rhine . The mostly 12 to 15 meter long, almost box-shaped ships were of the simplest design and could only be used for a descent ( Basel - Mainz - Cologne , occasionally as far as the Netherlands); At the destination, these early one-way ships were dismantled and sold as timber .

ship

The Lauertanne comes from the Basel area and was also mentioned as Lordanne , Luyrdanne , Lyrdanne and Lawtahne . It mainly transported wine from Alsace , which was known in the Rhineland as Luyr or Lauer .

It was a flat-bottomed barge , jumbled together from planks of raw fir , which were only connected with wooden nails and wooden pegs . On the pontoon-shaped or raft-shaped hull with beveled bow and stern stood a mast with a rectangular sail in the middle , which, when the wind was favorable, also propelled the ship, which otherwise drifted with the current. It was steered with a long, movable lowering rudder at the stern. The flat bottom of the ship was well suited for sailing on the then unregulated, very slowly flowing Rhine with its many sand and gravel banks . The carrying capacity of the ships was 25 to 40 tons, in some cases even up to 60 tons in the early 19th century.

A Lauer fir was only allowed to plummeting be used; As early as 1350, there was evidence of a ban on mountain travel in Strasbourg for reasons of operational safety. During the descent, Lauertannen were released from the stacking requirement. There were no fixed freight tariffs for them, and the transport of goods in them had always been freely negotiated.

At the last destination - mostly Cologne, but also other places on the Lower Rhine and in the Netherlands - the ship was dismantled after unloading and the wood was sold as timber.

In the Rheinmuseum Koblenz there is a model of a 13th century laurel fir.

curiosity

In July 1774 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe traveled with Johann Caspar Lavater and Johann Bernhard Basedow on a Lauertanne from Koblenz to Bonn , Cologne and Düsseldorf . In the Museum of German Inland Shipping in Duisburg - Ruhrort , a listening station reminds of Goethe's description of this journey.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ From the landing stage at the mouth of the Birsig, the few boatmen (exp. 1209, Zunft zu Schiffleuten 1354) carried out cruises down the valley on very simple boats, the so-called Lauertannen or Lordannen, which they rafts and boatmen from upstream and at the destination resold as timber. Quote from: Bernard Degen : From the Upper Rhine to the Upper Rhine. In: Markus Kaiser: Rhine. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ↑ Bruno Kuske (ed.): Sources on the history of Cologne trade and traffic in the Middle Ages . Second volume: 1450-1500. Publications of the Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde XXXIII, Hansteins Verlag, Bonn, 1917 (527: Protocol on the measures Cologne against the Geldrischen subjects, July 1470 - January 1471, pp. 235–246: No. 30, 70, 114, 130, 140 , 142, 145, 160, 196, 207, 213, 217, 243)
  3. ^ Richard Knipping (ed.): The Cologne city accounts of the Middle Ages, second volume. Publications of the Society for Rhenish History XV, Herm. Behrendt, Bonn, 1898, p. 407
  4. ↑ G. Blumschein: Altkölnisches . In: Journal for German Word Research , Volume Three, Fourth Book, Trübner, Strasbourg, 1902, pp. 357–358
  5. ↑ Adolf Bach (ed.): Goethe's trip to the Rhine with Lavater and Basedow in the summer of 1774: Documents. Seldwyla publishing house, Zurich, 1923 ; between p. 120 and 121 an engraving of a laucuse on the Rhine.
  6. ^ Markus Blatt: The Museum of the German Inland Shipping Duisburg-Ruhrort. P. 6. (PDF file)

literature

  • Werner Böcking: Ships on the Rhine in three millennia. The history of navigation on the Rhine. 2 volumes. August Steiger Verlag, Moers, 1979/1980, ISBN 978-3-92156-414-1 .
  • Annette Fimpeler-Philippen: Shipping and its vehicles on the Lower Rhine from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century. (Studies on Düsseldorf Economic History, edited by the Düsseldorfer Geschichtsverein, Vol. 5, also: Publications from the Düsseldorf City Archives, Vol. 19), Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2008, ISBN 978-3-7700-3057-6 .

Web links

See also