Fog boy prank

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Border of the Duchy of Nassau (above) with the Grand Duchy of Hesse (below) between Mainz and Biebrich. The dam (red line) blocked the Biebrich fairway up the Rhine and forced sailing on the southern bank of the Rhine.

The Mainz Nebeljungenstreich is an act of sabotage with which the government of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and Mainz merchants blocked the Biebrich free port in the Duchy of Nassau in 1841 in order to defend themselves against the shifting traffic flows that had caused the opening of the Taunus Railway .

Legal position

The two neighboring states affected, the Duchy of Nassau and the Grand Duchy of Hesse , were co-signers of the Rhine Navigation Act of 1831 (Mainz Act). In it, the states on the banks of the Rhine agreed to the free movement of people and goods on the Rhine. Each neighboring country was given the right to set up a free port where traders could temporarily store their goods duty-free . In the same year the Duchy of Nassau declared Biebrich on the right bank of the Rhine a free port.

traffic

The quay wall of the Biebrich free port around 1850, seen from the Biebrich Wörth

Starting position

Regular steamboat traffic had existed between Cologne and Mainz since 1827 . Goods destined for Frankfurt am Main , however, had to be transshipped in Mainz on the left bank of the Rhine, since Rhine ships were unsuitable for the Main, which was not yet canalized at the time because of their too great draft . The goods were therefore unloaded in Mainz , brought with horse-drawn vehicles over the ship's bridge to Kastel - which also belonged to the Grand Duchy of Hesse - and there loaded onto horse-drawn vehicles or ships on the Main and transported on to Frankfurt. Mainz entrepreneurs earned money from this situation.

railroad

In 1840 the Taunus Railway from Frankfurt to Wiesbaden was completed. At Curve station it had a branch to Biebrich, the Curve – Biebrich railway line . This branch line to the Rhine station Biebrich and the construction of a quay wall at Biebrich River Rhine made the turnover in Biebrich for traders interesting because it saved going through Mainz, a charging process and therefore costs. The transport of goods increasingly shifted to the rail. A direct rail link from Mainz over the Rhine did not yet exist. It was not until 1858 that the Hessian Ludwigsbahn built a trajectory across the Rhine for the Rhein-Main-Bahn between Mainz and Gustavsburg , which was replaced in 1862 by the Mainz Südbrücke .

The fog boy prank

View of the crime scene between Petersaue (middle) and Rettbergsaue, on the left the Mainz harbor, on the right the Biebricher Ufer. In the foreground the mouth of the
Main and the Theodor Heuss Bridge

Mainz merchants did not want to let their traditional source of income be taken away from them. The government of the Grand Duchy of Hesse was unsuccessful in its diplomatic intervention with the Duchy of Nassau, as the new traffic situation was completely legal due to the Rhine Shipping Act. The Mainz entrepreneurs and the grand ducal government therefore decided to block access to the port of Biebrich.

In Mannheim , upstream of the Rhine, they rented 103 barges and had them loaded with 50,000 hundredweight (approx. 2,500 tons) of broken sandstone. In the night from February 28 to March 1, 1841, the fleet reached Mainz. In order to be able to pass the Mainz ship bridge unhindered, the boatmen told the military guarding the bridge at the Mainz fortress that the stones were intended for the construction of the cathedral in Cologne . Allegedly the boatmen sang during the action that they shouldn't have it / the free German Rhine , which was actually directed against the French - but in the specific situation it was directed against the Nassauer. Arrived in front of the Biebrich harbor, some boats were drilled and sunk, the remaining ships tipped their cargo as a dam between the island of Petersaue and the Biebrich shore. All of this happened under the protection of 20 Hessian police officers and their officer. This made the northern fairway of the Rhine between the groyne of the Nassau "Biebricher Wörths" (now part of the Rettbergsaue ) and the Hessian Petersaue impassable and the dammed water now largely flowed off over the arm of the Rhine on the Mombach side of the Rhine. As a result, the level sank in the northern Biebrich fairway. Steamships would have run aground there and from now on could only navigate the southern branch of the Rhine and had to unload their cargo as before in Mainz.

consequences

This illegal action, which hindered free navigation on the Rhine, immediately led to a protest by the Nassau State Ministry at the Grand Ducal government in Darmstadt, demanding that the obstacle be removed immediately. The Prime Minister of Darmstadt, Karl du Thil , explained that the embankment of the dam was only an appropriate response to a change in the fairway by the Nassau government a few years earlier. At that time, Nassau had built a 300-meter-long fishing platform at the head of the Biebricher Wörth in the direction of the Ingelheimer Aue and thus moved the fairway from the Mainz to the Biebrich side. Furthermore, the minister did not evaluate the behavior of the people of Mainz as an “ unfederative and non-neighborly measure”.

The ducal state ministry then officially protested at the federal assembly in Frankfurt am Main. It was not until August 1843 that a settlement was reached through the mediation of the German Confederation, which essentially corresponded to the wishes of the Hessians.

Literary precipitation

Heinrich Heine leaves "Father Rhine" in Germany. A winter fairy tale commenting on the process yourself:

At Biberich I swallowed stones
Indeed, they didn't taste delicious!
but it is heavier in my stomach
the verses by Niklas Becker (Chapter V, Paragraph 5)

literature

  • Heinrich von Treitschke : German history in the nineteenth century 5 = Until the March Revolution . Leipzig, 1894.
  • Rolf Faber: The Mainz fog boy prank of 1841 . In: Wiesbadener Leben , Verlag Chmielorz GmbH, Wiesbaden, May 1991, pp. 25-26.

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 1 ′ 47 "  N , 8 ° 14 ′ 39"  E

Remarks

  1. ^ So the report in Treitschke, p. 106ff, which refers to "Sydow's report, March 4, 1841". According to Brockhaus' Konversationslexikon, 1902-1910, page 52.981 , the dam is said to have been built between two Rhine islands in front of Biebrich.
  2. A catching groyne is a dam-like structure that lies slightly curved in the stream at an angle to the river axis. It guides (catches) the water in a certain direction.

Individual evidence

  1. Nikolaus Becker : Rheinlied ( text ).
  2. Treitschke, p. 108.
  3. Allgemeine Zeitung Munich No. 76 of March 17, 1841, pages 605-607
  4. Treitschke, p. 108f.
  5. Allusion to his nationalist poem You shouldn't have him / the free German Rhine ( text ).