Saar-Palatinate Canal

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The Saar-Pfalz Canal was a major shipping route planned as early as the 1930s to connect the Saar near Saarbrücken with the Rhine . After the Second World War , planning was resumed, recorded in the Saarland land-use planning in 1966 and finally dropped in 1973 in favor of the Saar expansion in Saarbrücken-Konz.

First plans

As early as 1582 Tilemann Stella (1525–1589) had created a hydraulic engineering report for Count Palatine Georg Hans for the construction of a canal that, similar to the current course of the Rhine-Marne Canal , connects the Rhine via the Zorn and the southern Zinsel with the upper Saar should.

At the end of the 18th century, the French government began planning a shipping route that would connect to the Rhine at Landau and then lead through the Queichtal and the Palatinate Forest to the Blies . Friedrich Gerhard Wahl (1747–1826), Zweibrücker Hofbaumeister and construction director, was entrusted with the planning and initial preparatory work, the French Revolution and the collapse of the dynasty Duke Christian IV thwarted the project.

Planning in the industrial age

Planning of the South German Mittelland Canal by the South West German Canal Association in 1936

In the 19th century, the waterway connection was again called for, for example in 1887 by the Stumm brothers , who wanted more advantageous transport routes for their mining industry. After the First World War , the demands became clearer: In October 1926, the first "Canal Assembly " took place in Saarbrücken, which in February 1927 resulted in a memorandum that was presented to the Reich Ministry of Transport . For this purpose the Saarpfalz-Rheinkanal-Verein was founded in Mannheim in 1936 . The idea was a South German Mittelland Canal , of which the Saar-Palatinate Canal was to become the westernmost tip:

“The plan of a canal connection from the Saar through the Palatinate to the Rhine, which has occupied the border region on the Saar for 50 years, has come to the fore with the re-organization of the Saarland. The industrial area on the Saar, the third largest industrial area in Germany after hard coal production and the second largest industrial area after steel production, needs a connection to the Rhine and the German inland waterway network in order not to be worse off than the competitive areas in terms of traffic and freight. "

- Walter Cartellieri

The course of the canal was planned from Saarbrücker Osthafen south of St. Ingbert over Landstuhl and north of Kaiserslautern , south of the Donnersberg and through the middle ice valley to Ludwigshafen . In the synopsis reads: "In determining the lines of the kingdom waterway Office attaches particular importance to insert the channel route of the landscape harmoniously and nowhere organic destroy Grown and belong together." The plan from 1936 foresaw the apex to overcome the Haardt near Enkenbach on 270 m above sea level . From the Saar this would be 90 meters in altitude, down to the Rhine around 180 meters in altitude. The effort of the work was wanted to manage with job creation measures. They calculated 25,000 workers over five years or 40 million man- days . A construction project of this size had not yet been carried out.

In 1948, the building block in the route area of ​​the Saar area was initially lifted again in order to do justice to the enormous pressure for building land after the war.

According to studies by the Saar-Palatinate Canal Study Group in the Association of German Graduate Engineers , Saarbrücken, in 1963/64, both the Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland state authorities preferred the north to the south route. After climbing out of the Saar valley, it should rise to 256 m above sea level and reach a total length of 127 km. The route roughly corresponds to the current course of the BAB 6 (Mannheim – Saarbrücken) , but has been slightly modified in some places compared to the planning of 1939, mainly due to development in the meantime. After Kaiserslautern, the canal was supposed to move back down to the Rhine level via several locks .

The financial feasibility and also the profitability were emphasized by the proponents. It is said, for example, "that the financing of the Saar-Palatinate Canal and the resulting burdens can be borne by both the federal budget and the state budgets of Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate , especially if one considers the location and structural effects of a Saar- Palatinate Canal for both Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate, which - if you cannot calculate them to the nearest mark and penny - can bring a multiple of macroeconomic benefits in the long term. "

Since June 1, 1964, the Deutsche Bundesbahn granted interested companies as if tariffs , i.e. H. Freight tariffs as if there were a waterway to prevent the canal from being built.

In 1973 the plan to build the Saar-Palatinate Canal was given up in favor of the Saar expansion Saarbrücken- Konz , especially since the largely parallel BAB 6 had meanwhile been completed.

literature

  • Friedrich Müller: A major shipping route in Rohrbach? in: Rohrbacher Heimatbuch, Part II, pp. 161–170
  • Society for Economic Development Saar mbH (ed.): Why Saar-Pfalz Canal ; Saarbrücken, n.d. [before 1968]
  • South German waterways , 2nd quarter, April – June 1937, year 13, issue 2: South German Mittelland Canal Saar – Rhine – Neckar – Danube

swell

  1. Ruthardt Oehme, Lothar Zögner: Tilemann Stella (1525–1589) , Koblenz 1989, ISBN 3-922296-52-1 , p. 15
  2. ^ Karl Fischer: ways, roads, rails, water ; in: Homburg - 650 years of the city ; P. 99 ff.
  3. ^ Saarpfalz-Rhein-Kanalverein eV, report on the 1st conference in Mannheim on April 4, 1936
  4. a b Walter Cartellieri, Saarbrücken: Special print from the magazine for inland navigation , No. 10/12, 1936
  5. Stadtarchiv St. Ingbert, files Saar-Pfalz-Kanal, St. Ingbert-Rohrbach
  6. ^ First activity report of the state planning authority, Ministry of the Interior, Saarbrücken, 1968, p. 11
  7. ^ Hubert Dohmen: Financing problems of the Saar-Palatinate Canal . In: World on the Upper Rhine: The Saarland . tape 8 , no. 5 , 1968, p. 266-268 .
  8. Minutes of the cabinet meeting of the Federal Government on March 17, 1965, agenda item 6
  9. Waterways and Shipping Directorate Southwest: Plant inventory of the WSD Southwest - historical development , page 5 (PDF; 704 kB)