Environmental History of the Viennese Danube 1500-1890

This project aims to produce the first integrated, interdisciplinary environmental history of the Viennese Danube from Early Modern times to the completion of the great regulation at the end of the 19th century. It is the first part of our efforts to study the environmental history of the Danube. As environmental history, it is situated on the interface of several scholarly fields and strives to bridge approaches. Social and natural dynamics are equally important, the project focuses on their interaction. The project consists of three thematic subprojects. We will study how humans perceived of riverine landscapes, which strategies guided land use along the river`s course, how the river shaped patterns of supply and disposal of materials for the city, how Vienna was affected by catastrophic floods, and how the river itself was changed and changed its characteristics over the roughly 400 years investigated. The subprojects are connected via two cross- cutting issues. One is the critical reflection of sources and their usability for environmental history. Secondly, we shall establish a concept-based synthesis to integrate the results, adequately dealing with the complexity of interactions within and around the city over time. Thematic integration is fostered by five overarching research questions. We will focus on the changing role of the river Danube from 1500 to 1890, on the functions of the river for the city and its surroundings, on the interventions humans undertook to secure these functions and to protect humans and infrastructures from the river`s threats, on the long-term legacies of these human interventions into the riverine landscape, and, linking centre and periphery on the effects of the urban development of Vienna on selected regions along the Austrian Danube. The project breaks new ground as it broadens our knowledge of the role of rivers for an urban society in the time before industrialisation. It aims to widen the temporal scope of existing approaches to study e.g. energy supply or land use by systematically assembling historical sources from the 16th century onwards and making them available for the study of the river`s role in urban development. An array of methods will be combined and adapted, such as historical GIS, and historical material flow analysis. The application and further development of these methods for their use in environmental history is a major achievement in itself. Our study will produce a multitude of results related to hydromorphology, urban metabolism, cultural representation, historical source reflection and concept-based synthesis. The results will be synthesized in scholarly papers.

ENVIEDAN produced the first integrated environmental history of the Viennese Danube from 1500 to the early 20th century. The project was carried out by an interdisciplinary team of environmental historians, social ecologists and river morphologists. It created new scientific knowledge by demonstrating the longevity of the rivers transformation from a dynamic fluvial system into a straight river channel with fixed banks. For reconstructing past hydro-morphological patterns and dynamics a new method, the regressive-iterative-approach, was developed. The rivers functions and roles were conceptualized as socio-natural sites in which humans and nature form hybrids that can be studied as co-evolutionary developments of practices and arrangements. Threats imposed by regular floods and the use of the rivers kinetic energy for navigation and urban supply were a main driver for technical interventions into the riverscape throughout the whole study period. In contrast, other drivers such as military defense or the reclamation of urban land can be found only at specific times. The Danube and its urban tributaries were the main discharge system for urban waste for centuries. When urbanization and industrialization processes intensified in the course of the 19th century technical infrastructure became part of the wastewater arrangements. Human perception of the Danube in Vienna was studied by comparative analysis of topographical sources of Danube landscapes (Andraschek-Holzer & Schmid 2011, 2012). Fluvial patterns and dynamics were reconstructed with historical maps, archival sources and GIS-tools (Hohensinner et al. 2013 a, b). Investigating the role of the Danube for defense in the 16th and 17th centuries provided new insights into the military role of urban rivers (Sonnlechner et al. 2013). Changing spatial patterns of urban development demonstrated the increasing importance of the floodplains especially in the 19th century (Haidvogl 2012, Haidvogl et al. 2013). Reconstructing the rivers role for transport and discharge revealed fundamental changes in the urban metabolism (Gierlinger et al., 2013; Gingrich et al., 2012). Results of ENVIEDAN are to date published in nine peer-reviewed journal articles and 12 other articles and book chapters A thematic issue of The International Journal of Water History (volume 5/2 June 2013) is the most important product. ENVIEDAN was presented to a wide range of scientific communities at several international and national scientific conferences and workshops (altogether 31 presentations). The project was also made available to a larger public by articles and interviews in newspapers, journals and on national radio programs. Animated reconstructions are available on YouTube. ENVIEDAN has laid the groundwork for two follow-up projects granted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Viennese Wood Supply) and the Austrian Science Fund FWF (URBWATER).