Transport history of the Mark Brandenburg
The history of transport in the Mark Brandenburg includes the development of the technical structures that were used to guide traffic on the territory of the Mark Brandenburg from the Middle Ages to the end of the early modern period. Additional considerations are the developments in traffic flows and modes of transport. As actors, the cities as responsible for most quantitative transport projects (bridge building and road repair) as well as the sovereign actors (post office, artificial waterways, pathways, avenues) are also examined.
Road network
Dense forests, extensive chains of lakes, larger swamp landscapes and humid lowlands severely limited human space. Even for the then low usual standards, the Brandenburg road conditions still undercut them. The paths were sandy slopes or stick embankments that were difficult for carters to drive on. Even around 1800 the roads that led to Berlin were simple and unpaved dirt roads. In summer the teams sank in the sand and in autumn and winter the traffic was possibly prevented for weeks due to unfavorable weather conditions and mud formation. Land transport was an obstacle to development in the metropolis of Berlin.
The conditions for transporting goods were primitive. Most residents only had carts and pack animals as a means of transport , while riding horses and carriages were reserved for the small upper class and the aristocracy. Due to these adversities, the personal scope of action of the majority of the population at that time was limited to a radius of 90 kilometers in the 16th century. The room was perceived by contemporary people as an unsafe and hostile environment, overcoming which was associated with effort and privation.
.jpg&filetimestamp=20190629181616&)
In the 18th century there was still no systematic network of paths. The focus of state infrastructure measures was on expanding the canals and navigable rivers. The construction of highways was postponed because it was more cost-intensive and, for strategic military reasons, it was not desired to have a well-developed road network, as this would have favored an enemy advance of troops. So there were only tentative beginnings to expand the road network.
New supra-local paths were created, especially in the residential landscape of Berlin-Potsdam to connect the lonely pleasure and hunting palaces. The court culture of absolutism promoted the return of court society to the surrounding area, for example for hunting occasions or other activities outside the strictly regulated court etiquette of the Berlin city palace. The area around Berlin was also rich in forests and lakes, largely undeveloped and had a sandy surface. The need of the members of the court to move around safely and to orientate themselves in the room and to reach the newly created locks easily and quickly acted as a stimulus for the establishment of a symmetrical path system. Often lime avenues were planted along these aisles, at least near the residences, in order to provide shade for the royal entourage in summer. The English free thinker John Toland noted the progress in the infrastructural development of the Berlin area in 1702:
"The high country roads are better maintained here than in any other place / in the same place the posts are more correct and the regular country carriages are also better ordered / and where the paths divide and divide / there are big columns erected / at which so there are a lot of poor people / as going off / and in which either engraved or painted letters are written the next city and how many miles are left / and this counts from the last place / where one leaves. "
The estate subjects were obliged to repair the path as part of their manual and clamping services . The compulsory work carried out free of charge by insufficiently trained, poorly motivated and poorly equipped workers did not lead to any improvements in the road network. Instead, work was done superficially and only provisionally and technically inadequately, which worsened the basic condition of the roads. There was a lack of efficiency, usable tools, building materials, money and willingness to invest. It was not worked systematically, but measures were taken at short notice and based on specific events, for example when the sovereign announced himself.
At least in urban areas, paving had been made before the highways were chaused. At most, however, the representative roads were paved (e.g. Steinstrasse in Brandenburg an der Havel). In most cases the paving consisted of field stones, which were set in a pile of sand.
Due to the poor quality of the roads, accidents with injuries were frequent. Electoral Saxony, Württemberg, Hesse, Bavaria and other German states began as pioneers in the production of good stone country roads in the 18th century. But construction was slow. Even under Frederick the Great, little was done to upgrade the roads in Brandenburg. Ordered construction projects were not implemented due to the war. In the first years of the 18th century, more and more complete pathways appeared in the German states. Frederick the Great issued one such on June 24, 1764 with the "Route Regulations". In this it was ordered that moats were to be dug on both sides of the land and postal routes. In addition, a reporting system for postal workers should immediately report any damage to the paths. The planting of all was also ordered.
In 1770 the Upper Building Department was founded. That was responsible for the areas of mechanical engineering, domain construction, hydraulic engineering and road construction. Due to disputes over competence within the bureaucracy, the successor King Friedrich Wilhelm II formed the General-Chausseebau-Department in 1792 and appointed Hanns Moritz von Brühl general manager. Since there was no experience or personnel for the construction project in the state of Prussia as a whole, building director Mathias Stegemann had to investigate the state of road construction technology in other countries and presented a report on it in 1787. The road construction was carried out by commissioning private companies. In 1789 a short model road was laid out in the New Garden in Potsdam. The road between Berlin and Potsdam , laid out in 1791 and completed in 1795, became the model for the entire road construction in Prussia . Use was charged and was Chaussee houses controlled-called tollbooths. In 1798 a gravel road was built between Berlin and Charlottenburg, which led through the zoo . Overall, this phase was still a trial phase and a major expansion of the road construction only followed after the wars of liberation .
Although there were enough points of contact with foreign centers, the important long-distance trade flows bypassed the Brandenburg area. The Via Regia , which runs further south over Wettin territory, achieved a significantly higher supra-regional importance than the more northern trade routes in the same direction. Since the early Middle Ages, three supraregional long-distance trade routes led from west to east through the Mark Brandenburg and further into the north-east of Europe.
- the first ran from the northwest over the Hamburg area (Lübeck, Schwerin) through the Prignitz over the Fehrbelliner Damm , Linum , Paaren , Spandau and Berlin
- the second ran from the Altmark (Stendal) over the passes near Rathenow , Nauen and Spandau to Berlin
- The third most important of the Brandenburg long-distance trade routes was the Heerstraße, which had existed since the Bronze Age and came from Magdeburg from a south-westerly direction, crossed the crossings from Plaue via Brandenburg an der Havel to Spandau, where it crossed the Havel and continued on to Berlin and Küstrin goes, then to Poznan and from there to Königsberg . Another military road led from Spandau to Bernau via Oderberg to Stettin. Another branch near Berlin led via Müncheberg to Frankfurt / O.
Several other streets next to the Szczecin connection led from the Baltic Sea into the Mark. One from Stralsund and Greifswald through Mecklenburg to Berlin and from there further south through the Lausitz to Saxony and in a south-westerly direction through the Jüterboger Lande and the Zauche to Wittenberg -Leipzig ( Via Imperii ). The next large north-south land connection started at Perleberg as a branch of the north-west connection mentioned here and led via Wittstock , Parchim to Rostock.
- The most important Brandenburg connection points to the Altreich in the west in the Middle Ages
.jpg)
The west-east connections were far more important than the waterways, especially for the Mittelmark. In the west of the Elbe, land connections also dominated long-distance trade, for which Salzwedel and Stendal in particular, as well as Gardelegen and Tangermünde, formed important junctions. Above all Hamburg, Lübeck and Lüneburg, Braunschweig and Magdeburg were connected by roads that touched the towns of the Altmark. The Altmark towns were thus an important intermediary to the areas of the Old Reich and in the Middle Ages gained important commercial and economic positions for the Margraviate of Brandenburg, whose territory extended over 400 kilometers to the east. As a result, the cities of the Altmark were the first to gain access to the Hanseatic League and developed into a trading hub between the eastern part of the Brandenburg inland and the German coast.
Waterways
Brandenburg had no access to the sea and therefore no seaport and was therefore dependent on the seaport of Hamburg . At first there were no waterways between the Elbe and Oder , which flowed in the direction of the North and Baltic Seas , so that the royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam were not connected to the important transport routes. At that time, however, land transport was more expensive than water, and therefore the lack of suitable navigable waterways in the west-east direction was a significant structural deficit. Consequently facilitated Elector Joachim II. , The inland navigation on Havel and Elbe by the construction of chamber locks in Brandenburg and Rathenow 1548. In the same year, he agreed with the King of Bohemia, Emperor Ferdinand I contracted the construction of a channel that the Spree , which flowed through Berlin and its sister city Cölln, should connect with the Oder. But the project was too expensive and was abandoned. The Finow Canal, begun in 1605 in northern Brandenburg, from Liebenwalde on the Havel to Oderberg , was also destroyed by the Thirty Years' War. Both important projects could only be realized in the 17th and 18th centuries. The waterway, named after its builder Friedrich Wilhelm Canal , was built between 1662 and 1668 and connected the Spree and Oder, which it came across shortly before Frankfurt an der Oder. In addition, the state built the necessary transport facilities ( packing yard , crane) in Berlin, which is now gaining importance as an important transshipment point . From then on, the Berlin freight forwarding system received a customs administrator . In the absence of a private initiative, the elector had a state freight shipping service from Fürstenwalde to Hamburg set up in 1656 . A large part of the Silesian-Hamburg through traffic has now been pulled onto the new waterway. This was made possible by special customs treatment and tariffs with the Breslau trade.
The cheapest route to the north-west over the Oder-Spree Canal was for coal from the Upper Silesian mining areas . The Elbe-Havel Canal was the most suitable transport route for the grain of Saxony. The Finow Canal was completed as a connection between the Havel and Oder in 1746. The Plauer Canal was built a year earlier, creating a new connection between the Havel and Elbe and shortening the route to Magdeburg.
Postal and communications
From 1616 there was a riding post from Berlin to Königsberg , later also called Dragonerpost . The development of the postal service was triggered by the widely separated Brandenburg territories of Jülich-Kleve (1609) and the Duchy of Prussia (1618), which were gained around 1600. Officially, the messengers were only supposed to carry mail from the court and official mail, but they also carried private mail. With the electoral edict of April 21, 1646, the Brandenburg State Post was founded. With this, Brandenburg broke the monopoly of the Reichspost . Regular riding post lines followed between Berlin, Kleve and Königsberg. Lines to Leipzig, Dresden, Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfurt / Oder and many other cities were added later. With a few exceptions, the postal routes in Brandenburg were all oriented towards Berlin. The first Brandenburg post director was Michael Matthias , a councilor for the Chamber of Commerce , followed in 1652 by Otto Reichsfreiherr von Schwerin . The postal system was expanded under Frederick I. The number of post offices in the entire Hohenzollern State grew from 79 in 1698 to 90 in 1710, the number of post office attendants from 11 to 51 and the number of postillions from 271 to 358. In 1708 there were 63 outgoing and incoming riding in Berlin during the week. and travel mail connections. The highest office was the General Post Office in Berlin.
There were post milestones in Brandenburg since 1730. Friedrich Wilhelm I had dealt with the Electoral Saxon post mile column system during his state visit in Saxony in 1728 and decided to introduce this innovation in Prussia as well. The appearance also corresponded to the Saxon model. The distances from Prussian milestones always referred to the zero milestone that was on the former Dönhoffplatz in Berlin .
With the development of the Post, a newspaper system came into being in Berlin-Brandenburg. The first Brandenburger Zeitung was published in Berlin in 1617. The Spenersche Zeitung appeared in Berlin from 1740 . During the reign of Frederick II, two more newspapers were approved in 1750 and 1783, including the Gazette littéraire de Berlin . In the middle of the 18th century, the Berliner Blätter had more freedom than the newspapers in other German countries and were able to disseminate the ideas of the Enlightenment, to which Friedrich II also felt obliged, almost unhindered.
Cartography and land survey
.jpg)
The Schmettausche map series was the first large-scale mapping of Brandenburg areas and was created under the direction of the Prussian officer and cartographer Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Graf von Schmettau between 1767 and 1787. Brandenburg was thus well behind the Saxon efforts. The first Saxon land survey took place between 1586 and 1633. In addition, Frederick II opposed the cards being passed on to the general public because he feared improper military use by his opponents. As a result, the cards were only available to a small elite.
Carriages and avenues
_by_shakko.jpg)
The most significant vehicle technology achievement of the late Middle Ages was the construction of wagons, known as the carriage, which was invented in Hungary. The carriage had been known in Germany since the 15th century and received its early modern character with the Berline carriage type, which appeared in Berlin in the 17th century . The special design features of the Berline type, with its box shape rounded at the bottom, enabled a lightweight construction and high maneuverability. This ushered in the age of the carriage in town and country and the type spread throughout Europe. At first there were only a few carriages, even the largest capitals in Europe only had a few hundred carriages. Due to the aforementioned advances in carriage building, however, their number increased noticeably. The Post took over the transport of goods and people by stagecoach and, like everywhere in western Europe, cushioned the increased travel traffic since the 17th century. Overall, the Berliner Wagenbau has stood out as an innovative and solid wheelwright market . The Berlin line is said to have been designed in 1663 by Philip de Chiese , who had been responsible for building matters at the Brandenburg Elector since 1660.
State-run avenue planting in the Mark Brandenburg originated in 1713, when Frederick William I planted over a hundred thousand fruit trees, willows and mulberries along the paths. The trees served as a wayfinding system to make the roads visible even when there was snow, and their fruits were used for economic purposes. In contrast to the southern German states, the trees were not planted on the side of the ditch facing away from the road, but directly on the edge of the road. This should prevent the carts from leaving the road.
Public transport
In 1739, Friedrich Wilhelm I ordered 15 rental cabs to be installed in the capital Berlin. By 1769 the number of cabs rose to 36. In 1794 the rental cabs disappeared from Berlin again.
A sedan chair service was set up in Berlin in 1688. It was the first public transport system in Berlin and thus also in Brandenburg. There were 18 of them initially. Other German cities also gradually followed suit. The developments in the transport sector were initiated primarily from France.
See also
literature
- Herbert Liman: Chausseen - Alleen - Milestones - Chausseehäuser , Landesbetrieb Straßenwesen Brandenburg
- Brandenburg Monument Preservation, publisher: Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeological State Museum, Volume 16, Issue 1, Verlag Willmuth Arenhövel, Berlin 2007
Individual evidence
- ↑ On -site appointments - stations of Brandenburg-Prussia on the way to the modern world, exhibition catalog of the project "Kulturland Brandenburg 2001", Museum Association of the State of Brandenburg (publisher), Verlag Henschel, 2001, p. 65
- ↑ Achim Beyer: The Brandenburg Residential Landscape in the Long 16th Century , Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2014, p. 30f
- ^ Ines Elsner: Friedrich III./I. von Brandenburg-Prussia (1688–1713) and the Berlin residential landscape , Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2012, p. 66
- ↑ Lorenz Friedrich Beck, Frank Göse: Brandenburg and its landscapes: center and region from the late Middle Ages to 1800 , Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2009, p. 194
- ↑ Winfried Reinhardt: History of Public Transport from the Beginnings to 2014 , Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden 2015, p. 121
- ^ Brandenburgische Denkmalpflege , editor: Brandenburgisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologisches Landesmuseum , Volume 16, Issue 1, Verlag Willmuth Arenhövel, Berlin 2007, pp. 43–49
- ↑ Lorenz Friedrich Beck, Frank Göse: Brandenburg and its landscapes: center and region from the late Middle Ages to 1800 , Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2009, 1st edition, p. 112
- ^ Felix Escher, Wolfgang Ribbe: Städtische Siedlungen im Mittelalter , Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin - New York 1980, p. 3
- ↑ Christopher Clark : Prussia - Aufstieg und Niedergang 1600–1947 , Pantheon Verlag, 2006, p. 22
- ↑ On -site appointments - stations of Brandenburg-Prussia on the way to the modern world , exhibition catalog of the project “Kulturland Brandenburg 2001”, Museum Association of the State of Brandenburg (publisher), Verlag Henschel, 2001, p. 44
- ^ Otto Büsch, W. Neugebauer: Modern Prussian History 1648–1947 - An Anthology , Volume 2, de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin-New York 1981, p. 954
- ^ Hanns Weber: Bankplatz Berlin , Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Cologne and Opladen 1957, p. 10
- ^ Herbert Liman: Chausseen - Alleen - Milestones - Chausseehäuser , Landesbetrieb Straßenwesen Brandenburg, p. 13
- ↑ Wolfgang Torge: History of Geodesy in Germany, Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin-New York 2007, p. 80
- ↑ Winfried Reinhardt: History of Public Transport from the Beginnings to 2014 , Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden 2015, p. 122
- ↑ Dietmar Fack: Automobile, traffic and education: motorization and socialization between acceleration and adaptation 1885-1945, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Opladen 2000, p. 52
- ↑ (Eds.) Frank Göse, Winfried Müller, Kurt Winkler, Anne-Katrin Ziesak: Prussia and Saxony - Scenes of a Neighborhood, Sandstein Verlag, 2014, p. 132
- ↑ Jürgen Peters: Alleys and cobblestone streets as cultural heritage - development history and today's importance using the example of the Mark Brandenburg , UVP report 18 (2 + 3), 2004, p. 105
- ↑ Winfried Reinhardt: History of Public Transport from the Beginnings to 2014 , Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden 2015, pp. 122–124