Stecknitz Canal
The Stecknitz Canal (old name: Stecknitzfahrt ) was built between Lübeck and Lauenburg between 1392 and 1398 . It was the first watershed canal in Europe.
history
In the Middle Ages, the exchange of goods between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea had its first heyday. But the journey through the Oresund , increasingly chosen by merchant shipping since the 13th century, was time-consuming and dangerous. Compared to the overland route, it meant an extremely dangerous 200 nautical mile detour. Therefore, the up-and-coming Hanseatic City of Lübeck and the Duke of Lauenburg, Erich IV, agreed in 1390 to build a canal between the Elbe and the Baltic Sea .
In 1391, construction work on the Stecknitz Canal began. An instruction from Duke Albrecht IV of September 7, 1343 to the lock master of the upper lock shows the importance of this shipping. From Easter to mid-August, this had to ensure by storing water that whenever around 24 to 30 promenades were loaded with salt in Mölln, enough water flowed off at the request of shipping so that these vehicles could safely reach Lübeck. The construction of canals was by no means met with approval everywhere. In 1396 , Heinrich von Lüneburg had stones poured in front of the mouth of the canal into the Elbe to prevent entry into the Elbe. One was forced to relocate the estuary.
In 1398, salt was first transported from Lüneburg to Lübeck in a five-week journey. The first 30 barges reached the Hanseatic city on July 22, 1398 . This replaced the old salt road as the main transport route for Lüneburg salt; In the 16th century, the annual traffic volume was 800 to 1500 Prahmen. The salt was stored in Lübeck's salt storage facilities on the Obertrave , some of which have been preserved next to the Holsten Gate , and transferred to sea-going ships for export to the entire Baltic region. The importance of the canal increased in the years in which, for example, due to disputes over Sundzoll and bypassers, the Oresund was closed to merchant ships. Nonetheless, competing canals such as the Wallensteingraben in the direction of Wismar could never hold their own against the connection between the Elbe and the Trave.
At its wedding in the 15th century, over 3,000 shiploads of more than 30,000 tons of salt per year were moved on the canal. In the 17th century this number was reduced to 160 ships with 400 to 600 cargoes (5,000 to 7,000 tons). The salting of herring with cheaper Baiensalz from the Atlantic coast took the Lüneburg salt considerable market share. In addition, the Lüneburg saltworks increasingly suffered from a shortage of fuel. In 1789 there were still 64 ships with around 680 tons of salt. In the opposite direction, the Stecknitz prehems transported grain, hides, herrings, ashes, wood and other goods from Lübeck, which were reloaded in Lauenburg and shipped on the Elbe to Hamburg. Coal, peat, bricks, limestone and gravel were added later.
The Luebian merchants mostly recruited their teams for the salt trips in Lauenburg. While the Lübeck "salt lords" were not bound by any restrictions, the Stecknitz drivers were only allowed to own one boat each, which meant that they could not acquire any great wealth, so that dependence on the salt lords was maintained in the long term.
In 1819, in order to distribute the decreasing demand fairly, the series journey was introduced. The members of the office of Stecknitz drivers had to number their 90 ships consecutively. Transport orders were assigned in the order of these numbers. In addition, no more than three ships could be loaded at the same time, and the number of ship owners was limited on the Lübeck side. However, the series drive did not prove itself, so it was canceled again in 1840. Instead, the Lübeck state awarded premiums for fast canal passages. If a skipper needed less than nine days to travel from Lauenburg to Lübeck, he received six marks for every day saved. This premium was later abolished.
The canal was used for five hundred years to transport the “white gold” until it was replaced at the end of the 19th century by the Elbe-Lübeck Canal , which partly used the old route of the Stecknitz Canal. The Palm lock in Lauenburg and the Dückerschleuse at Witzeeze from 1798 as part of the original Stecknitz Canal are still preserved today.
technology
The Stecknitz Canal stretched from Lauenburg to Lübeck over a length of 97 km. However, the distance as the crow flies is only 55 km - this difference is explained by the fact that the canal largely followed the winding natural watercourses. He overcame the watershed between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea , and thus a height difference of 18 m. He used the rivers of the Delvenau flowing south , which flows into the Elbe near Lauenburg , and the Stecknitz flowing north , which flows into the Trave . An 11.5 km long canal was dug between the two rivers, the nyge graven (later the Delvenaugraben ).
Apex
The biggest problem that had never been solved in Europe until then was the posture of the head , i.e. the supply of the uppermost section with water:
- At the north end, on the descent to the Möllner See (12 m above sea level), the Hahnenburg lock staircase (box locks) was constructed, which consisted of two locks ( chamber locks ) with two gates each close to one another . From there you reached the Stecknitz after the Trave through five locks (two at the Oberschleuse, two at the Donnerschleuse and one in Berkenthin).
- The southern end was closed by the Zienburger lock (near Güster ); here a simple lock was sufficient because of the slight incline .
- The top stretch (16.66 m above sea level) was 11.5 km long. She was u. a. supplied with water by the Hornbeker Mühlenbach (for this purpose the city of Lübeck acquired the village of Hornbek and its mill in 1391 ). Later it was shortened to 8 km with the construction of the Grambeker lock.
- The trench itself was about 3 feet (0.85 m) deep and 25 feet (7.5 m) wide. It was not until the years 1821 to 1823 that the trench was expanded to 1.44 m water depth and around 12 m width, with a bottom width of 5.75 m in the heights and 7.48 m in the other stretches.
Locks
Originally there were 13 locks along the canal, later 17 locks. Most were single-gate locks, mostly below the mouth of a stream. The water was dammed behind a weir; when this was opened, the boats swam downhill on the tidal wave. The damming lasted up to three days. In addition, there has been a chamber lock ( palm lock ) in Lauenburg since the beginning of the Stecknitz voyage , because the Bockhorster mill was operated there. A lock there would have made it impossible to continue operating the mill. The conversion of further locks to chamber locks only took place from the 17th century.
The southern watercourse towards the Elbe, the actual Delvenau, received seven lock locks and one box lock, namely the Zienburger, Seeburger, Siebeneichener, Büchener, Niebuhr, Dücker , Palm (box lock) and Frauweider or port lock. The crate locks are to be seen as the oldest known chamber locks. They formed so-called boiler locks and could accommodate ten ships at the same time. With the addition of the Hornbeker (Crambeker) lock in 1692 and a small flood lock in the inlet to the Möllner See, in the so-called Kehle, the number of locks on the southern staircase rose to nine, and on the northern staircase to eight, in total on 17 locks.
Salt barges
The salt barges, the so-called Stecknitzprahmen (approx. 12 × 2.5 m with a depth of about 40 cm, loading capacity 7.5 t salt), were initially only hauled uphill, after the construction of the chamber locks also downhill by people or animals, i.e. on long lines drawn. Since the canal was only 85 cm deep in places, the Prahmen were only allowed to have this very shallow draft.
The frames were only used on the canal. The salt that was transported by ship from Lüneburg via Ilmenau and Elbe was transferred to the Prahmen in Lauenburg. However, this had no technical reasons, but had to take place because of the shipping privileges of the Brunswick-Lüneburg dukes for Ilmenau and Upper Elbe.
Later ship forms such as the Budenkahn and the Stecknitzkahn of the 19th century had rigging so that they could be moved completely without towing and staking when there was enough wind, and also had higher side walls. The rigging might have been removable or retractable, as numerous bridges limited the height of the ship. These ships could hold up to 37 tons of cargo.
Lock master houses
Since most of the locks were far away from settlements, houses for the lock masters were built in the immediate vicinity. In addition to operating and supervising the locks, they also ran jug and inns for the Stecknitz drivers waiting for locks. Of the stately buildings built in a relatively similar style, those at the Palmschleuse, the Dückerschleuse, the Niebuhrschleuse, the Siebeneichener Schleuse and a ruin at the Great Donnerschleuse in the north are still preserved.
Stecknitz driver
The corporation ( guild ) of the Stecknitz drivers still exists in Lübeck today and meets every year at the Kringelhöge , where a specially brewed beer is drunk from pewter mugs and tobacco is smoked from clay pipes.
In January 1988 the Förderkreis Kulturdenkmal Stecknitzfahrt e.V. was founded in Ratzeburg. V. was founded, which has set itself the goal of bringing the forgotten “wet salt road” back to the general public's awareness. The annual open monument day in September attracts more and more interested visitors to the Palm, Dücker or Hahnenburger lock.
At the cemetery of Nusse (Klingenberg) and the Lübeck Burgtorfriedhof there are special grave fields marked by stones for the Stecknitz drivers. Also in the St. Nicholas Church in Mölln the pews is partially (two crossed with signs of Stecknitzfahrer Punting provided).
literature
- Heinrich Ludwig Behrens : Topography of the Stecknitz Canal, and presentation of a project for a better establishment of the same , Hamburg 1818
- William Boehart, Cordula Bornefeld, Christian Lopau: The history of the Stecknitz trip. 1398-1998. Viebranz, Schwarzenbek 1998, ISBN 3-921595-29-0 ( special publications of the Heimatbund and history association Herzogtum Lauenburg 29).
- Hermann Carl Dittmer : About Lübeck's participation in the Lüneburg salt works , Lübeck 1860.
- Bernhard Hagedorn: The development and organization of the salt traffic from Lüneburg to Lübeck in the 16th and 17th centuries , in: Journal of the Association for Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde , 17, 1915, pp. 7-26.
- Walter Müller: The Stecknitz trip. 3. Edition. Goedeke, Büchen 2002, ISBN 3-9802782-0-4 .
- Walter Müller, Christel Happach-Kazan : The Elbe-Lübeck Canal. The wet salt road. With photos by Hans-Jürgen Wohlfahrt. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1992, ISBN 3-529-05317-1 .
- Michael Packheiser (Ed.): The future lies on the water. 100 years of the Elbe-Lübeck Canal. Steintor-Verlag, Lübeck 2000, ISBN 3-9801506-6-6 ( catalogs of museums in Schleswig-Holstein 54).
- Gerd Stolz: A little canal history. From the Stecknitz Canal to the Kiel Canal . Published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Kiel Canal on June 21, 1895. Boyens, Heide 1995, ISBN 3-8042-0672-7 ( Kleine Schleswig-Holstein-Bücher 45).
- Kai Wellbrock: The Stecknitz-Delvenau Canal - Operation of Europe's first apex canal with the help of chamber locks? , from Korrespondenz Wasserwirtschaft , issue 8/12, pages 425–429.
- Heinz Röhl, Wolfgang Bentin: Boundaries and boundary stones of the (free and) Hanseatic city of Lübeck . Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2003, ISBN 3-7950-0788-7 , pp. 229-231
Web links
- The International Canal Monuments List, ICOMOS (PDF) (272 kB)
- Information from the municipality of Rondeshagen on the Stecknitz Canal
Individual evidence
- ^ Document book of the city of Lübeck IV, Nos. 519 and 520 (1390 June 24).
- ↑ Philippe Dollinger : Die Hanse , p. 199 ff., Refers to the fact that the income from canal fees in 1428/29 doubled after a defeat in Lübeck in the Öresund.
- ↑ Peter Jürs in: The history of the Stecknitz trip , p. 87 ff.
- ↑ Götz Goldammer in: The history of the Stecknitz trip , p. 145 ff.
- ↑ Presentation in the Möllner Museum