The Danube and Vienna: urban resource use, transport and land use 1800 to 1910
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The Danube and Vienna: urban resource use, transport and
land use 1800 to 1910
Simone Gingrich1,*, Gertrud Haidvogl2, Fridolin Krausmann1
1
Institute of Social Ecology Vienna, Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of
Klagenfurt. Schottenfeldgasse 29, 1070 Vienna.
2
Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management, University of Natural
Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna. Max-Emanuel-Straße 17, 1180 Vienna.
* corresponding author. simone.gingrich@uni-klu.ac.at , Schottenfeldgasse 29, 1070 Vienna,
Austria. Phone +43-1-5224000-418, Fax +43-1-5224000-477
8,000words (excl. footnotes)
Special Issue on History of Urban Environmental Imprint
Revised manuscript (2nd version), November 2010
1Abstract
In this article, we investigate the changing role of the Danube river in relation to urban
resource use, transport and land use for the case of 19th and early 20th century Vienna. Vienna
makes a good case study due to its geographical position as a continental city and its dynamic
development of population numbers and transport infrastructure in the 19th century. We trace
the amount of energy used in the city and identify a shift from a biomass-based energy supply
to the large-scale use of coal. Along with this shift went a change in the Danube’s role as
transport route: while until the 1870s, the Danube was the most important freight transport
route, river transport lost importance after the great Danube regulation in 1874, and the
railway took over. The river was the most important route for providing fuel wood well into
the 19th century: Vienna drew wood from remote areas situated upstream along the Danube to
the West of the city. Only after the railway connection to Northern coal deposits in the 1850s
could Vienna’s energy base shift to coal. Finally, we investigate how land use in the city was
affected by resource consumption and the river regulation. Wood use around the city was
subject to legislative protection and was only little affected by Vienna’s resource demand. On
the other hand, the Danube river regulation heavily impacted urban land use by supplying new
areas suitable for settlement expansion.
Keywords
Environmental history, Vienna, Danube, Urban Metabolism, Land Use, Long-term socio-
ecological research (LTSER)
2Introduction
Most cities are located along rivers: rivers provide freshwater, serve to dispose of sewage and
can be used as transport routes (see e.g. Rosen and Tarr 1994). Different cities have shaped
their rivers in various ways, and the functions of rivers have changed in history (Barles 2007;
Disco 2010; Kelman 2003; Mauch and Zeller 2008; Ruhland 2007). In this contribution, we
examine the environmental history of the Danube in Vienna during the 19th century from the
perspective of a material environmental history (McNeill 2003) and discuss the river’s
changing relation to resource use, transport and land use during industrialisation.
We use the regional geography of Johann Heinrich von Thünen as a starting point: von
Thünen presented a concept linking urban resource use, transport and land use in a city’s
hinterland (Thünen 1826). He proposed that in an isolated economy with a city in its centre
and an even distribution of biogeographic conditions and technological equipment, land use in
the urban hinterland would be shaped in concentric circles around the city. He identified two
primary factors determining which type of land use would prevail in the hinterland: a. the
market price of the product, and b. the transport cost from its origin to the urban market. In
reality neither biogeographic conditions nor technological equipment (or any other socio-
economic variables) are ever evenly distributed. Von Thünen to some extent acknowledged
this by considering the role of rivers in urban hinterland relations: in his most famous
pictogram, he showed how the position of a river determines transport routes. Cheap transport
from the areas surrounding the river shores affects land use along the river.
With his theory of city-hinterland relations, von Thünen touches upon two important topics in
material environmental history: (1) the interrelations between land use and the socio-
economic energy system, and (2) the physical constraints of transport and growth before
industrialisation. Von Thünen’s model was developed in the early 19th century for the pre-
industrial period, before the large-scale use of coal affected both energy provision and
transport technology. However, both underwent fundamental changes in the 19th century.
The interrelations between resource provision and land use, as well as their change during
industrialisation have been empirically investigated in several European national and regional
case studies (Billen et al. 2009; Cusso et al. 2006; Krausmann et al. 2008; Kuskova et al.
2008; Schmid-Neset and Lohm 2005). These studies have shown how under agrarian
conditions, agriculture and forestry were the most important means of retrieving technical or
nutritional energy. Land use was directly linked to energy provision. The increasing use of
non-renewable energy carriers in the course of industrialisation (the so-called “energy
transition”, Grübler 2004) loosened the area-dependency of energy provision, and allowed for
entirely new patterns of land use, a process described as a socio-ecological or socio-metabolic
transition (Krausmann et al. 2008; Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl 2007).
The physical constraints of transport in agrarian societies were related to the availability of
energy: the environmental historian Rolf Peter Sieferle (2004) distinguished three types of
energy use in transport before the introduction of fossil and electric energy:
biological converters (i.e. humans or draught animals)
wind power (in sailing boats)
gravity (in downstream river transport)
Human and animal draught power relies on biomass for food or feed. Sieferle illustrates that
transport distances for freight by means of “biological converters” are limited by the amount
of food or feed required by the organism carrying the freight. Using wind power in sailing
boats is a very efficient way of energy use in transport, but it is – naturally – possible only on
open waters, and limited by the direction and strength of wind. Finally, downstream transport
on rivers is another efficient way of transport, but it is limited by the location of rivers, and it
requires a certain amount of energy for return transport of boats back to their upstream origin,
unless boats are fragmented at their destination and sold as raw material. With the
3technological boost of industrialisation and the availability of new, fossil-fuel based transport
technologies (first steamboats and railway, and later automotive transport), the constraints of
agrarian transport were gradually abolished and entirely new dimensions of freight transport
became possible.
In this contribution, we investigate the changing role of the Danube river in relation to urban
resource use, transport and land use for the case of 19th and early 20th century Vienna. The
article is structured as follows: in the next section we provide an overview on the methods and
sources used to quantify energy use, transport and land use patterns in Vienna and its
hinterland. We then give a brief introduction of the case of Vienna and the development of the
city and the Danube in the period of investigation. Subsequently we present empirical
material in four sections: in the first part we pursue the question how much and which
resources were used in Vienna during the 19th and early 20th centuries and present an analysis
of energy use in the city. This is followed by a discussion of the significance of Danube
transport for the supply of the city with energy carriers and other materials. In the third part
we explore the spatial imprint of Vienna’s resource demand along the Danube and its
tributaries with a special focus on wood supply. Finally we analyse how land use within the
city and its immediate surroundings was influenced by resource demand and the Danube
regulation. In a final section we summarise our results and give an outlook into possible
future research.
Materials and methods
The article is structured along four sections which rely on different sources and apply
different methods. In the first section on urban resource use, the concept of urban metabolism
(see for instance Kennedy et al. 2007) serves as the conceptual framework for a quantitative
assessment of Vienna’s energy use in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We apply the
methodology of energy flow accounting as outlined by Haberl (2001) and discuss the
indicator domestic energy consumption (DEC). DEC encompasses not only commercial or
technical energy flows such as fuel wood or coal, but also all nutritional energy used for food,
as well as feed for draught animals. We use published data (e.g. Sandgruber 1983; Sandgruber
1987; Krausmann 2005) and a wide variety of historical sources for the compilation of annual
time series data on energy use in Vienna by energy carriers. The empirical backbone of the
annual time series are tax records reporting the import of some two hundred items into the
city, including food and fuel (Buchmann 1979). Statistical series used for data compilation
include Tafeln zur Statistik (1828-1865); Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Wien (1883-1915);
Ergebnisse der Verzehrungssteuer im Verwaltungsjahr (1860-1891) and Statistische Ausweise
über die Preise der Lebensmittel und der Approvisionierung in Wien (1879ff). Singular works
providing information on production and consumption of resources in Vienna comprise
forestry yearbooks (Wessely 1880; Wessely 1882) and a regional statistical compendium
(Handels- und Gewerbekammer in Wien (ed.) 1867). We quantitatively assess the amount of
energy used within the administrative city limits of Vienna, both in terms of nutritional
energy (i.e. food and feed) and technical energy, i.e. wood and fossil fuels, by applying
material-specific calorific values to the different material categories. Data availability allows
for establishing a data set referring to the area of the respective contemporary city limits only,
i.e. two different units of reference before and after the expansion of city limits in 1890. Thus
the data on resource use do not refer to a constant regional unit (as provided e.g. in Tello and
Ostos, this issue) and total numbers are interpreted cautiously with respect to growth
dynamics. For every year, population and energy use refer to the same spatial unit – per-capita
values are therefore unaffected by this inconsistency. Data on fuel wood and coal prices
provided in Mühlpeck et al. 1979b and Mühlpeck et al. 1979a are used to investigate the
economic dimensions of resource use in 19th century Vienna.
4Data on Danube freight transport to Vienna during the 19th and early 20th centuries are used to
explore the role of Danube transport in providing the city with resources. Transport data are
more scattered than data on energy use, and have not previously been assessed systematically
for the 19th and early 20th centuries. We base our analysis on different Danube transport
statistics: a special edition of Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiete der Statistik (K.K. statistische
Zentralkommission 1870) covers Danube transport in the years 1835 to 1868, an overview
article in Statistische Monatsschriften (Winckler 1876) presents data for 1855 to 1874, and
from 1883, yearly reports on Danube transport are provided in the national series
Österreichisches Statistisches Handbuch für die im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreiche und
Länder (1890-1911). Data from 1835 to 1874 report all goods entering Vienna’s harbours,
while data from 1883 to 1910 refer to goods entering the Danube channel, the branch of the
river passing the city centre which was most important for providing the city with resources
(Michlmayr 1994). However, these data exclude freight transport to Vienna’s new harbours
along the main arm of the Danube. Imports to the city are reported at different degrees of
detail, but fully account for the most important traded categories, i.e. firewood and
construction wood. Information on railway transport from statistical records (Statistisches
Jahrbuch der Stadt Wien, 1900) is used to contrast river transport data.
To explore the imprint of urban energy demand on the hinterland of the city we collected
quantitative and qualitative information on resource providing regions. No comprehensive
surveys about the spatial imprint of urban resource consumption are available. We concentrate
on the spatial imprint of wood and coal consumption and use a variety of historical literature
concerned with Vienna’s supply (Johann 2005; Sonnlechner 2005; Neweklowsky 1964;
Wessely 1880; Wessely 1882; Anonymous 1866).1 We quantitatively analyse a particular
source about wood supply of Vienna which includes information on the exporting regions
(k.k. statistische Zentralkommission 1870). Sources on rafting privileges provided for specific
Danube tributaries in the 18th and 19th centuries are used for a geographical positioning of the
origin of fuel wood in the 19th century. The origin of coal used in Vienna in the 19th century is
assessed on the grounds of a detailed map of 1868 providing information on the production
and transport of coal in the Habsburg Empire (Foetterle 1868; Foetterle 1870).
Finally, land use change in the city and its immediate surroundings is assessed on the basis of
archival material available from the Franciscean Cadastre (F.C.) on Vienna and its
surrounding villages (F.C.Aspern 1829; F.C.K.Ebersdorf 1829; F.C.H.K.Ebersdorf 1829).
Land use data of the Viennese region “Lobau” are compared to a previous study on land use
in rural Danube floodplains (Haidvogl 2008). The specific impact of the Danube river
regulation on urban settlement areas is investigated based on the reports by the Danube
Regulation Commission (Donauregulierungskommission 1868) and literature (Thiel 1904;
Thiel 1906; Michlmayr 1994).
The case of 19th century Vienna and the Danube
Vienna and the Danube make a promising case for studying the role of the river in urban
resource use, transport and land use for both socio-economic and biogeographic reasons.
Vienna, capital of the Habsburg Empire, was an important economic and cultural centre in the
19th and early 20th centuries and experienced rapid population growth: around 1800,
th
approximately 250.000 people lived in Vienna. Throughout the 19 century, the urban
population grew rapidly (see Figure 1a), owing mainly to immigration from other provinces
of the Empire. Population peaked at slightly above two million inhabitants just before World
War I (Juraschek 1896; Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Wien various years), a number which
1
Additionally, we considered literature concerned with forestry and wood transport conditions in specific supply
regions, such as Neweklowsky 1962, or the bulk of forestry history literature about wood rafting, as e.g. Koller
1970, Koller 1975a, Koller 1975b, Hafner 1979 as well as regional geographic studies such as Stepan 1951.
5has never been reached after the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. Population growth
was accompanied by the gradual expansion of the city limits: until 1850, the urban territory
was formally confined to an area of only 3km² or what today resembles the historic city
centre. Already in this period, sources on population and resource use refer to the area within
the city’s tax boundary (the “Linienwall”), spanning an area of around 60km² and including a
number of peri-urban settlements. Formally, these settlements were incorporated only in
1850. In 1890, the city limits were again extended. This increased the city area to 178 km² and
its population by 60%. While the fact that our data set refers to changing geographical units
poses some challenges for data interpretation (see materials and methods section), the
dynamic development of population makes Vienna an interesting case.
Figure 1: Basic data Vienna: a. Population and city boundaries 1800-1912, b. satellite image of the city in Formatiert: Schriftartfarbe: Schwarz
its current boundaries. Source of image: Stadt Wien – Vienna GIS, http://www.wien.gv.at/viennagis.
Numbers and legend added by authors. The dark areas in the west and east are forests, the angled
structures in the north-east and south are agricultural areas, the fragmented structures are settlement areas.
a. b.
2.500.000 500
2.000.000 400
1.500.000 300
km²
cap
1.000.000 200
500.000 100
0 0
1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900
inhabitants [cap] area [km²]
With rising population numbers and industrialisation, Vienna’s transport infrastructure
changed fundamentally during the 19th century. The great regulation of the Viennese Danube
in the years from 1870 to 1875 falls into the time period and allows addressing the
consequences of river regulation on resource use, transport and land use. Throughout the 19th
century, several new river regulation projects were discussed (Michlmayr 1994). The
improvement of navigation was the main target throughout the period. While until the 19th
century the most important aim was to maintain access to the city via the Viennese Arm or
Danube channel (see Figure 1b), in the 19th century steam boats changed the requirements for
the stability and configuration of the river bed. The regulation of the main Danube arm
became a necessity. The erection of a permanent and stable bridge was another important goal
related to the Danube regulation. Until the opening of the first stable bridge in 1870, regular
flood and ice jam damages on the existing wooden bridge obstructed transport between the
city and the regions on the left bank of the river. Even the first railway connecting Vienna to
the coal fields in the north was affected by the frequent destruction of the wooden bridge.
Railway traffic was interrupted almost every year for several weeks (Anonymous 1850;
Pasetti 1850). The need for flood protection was another aim of the Danube regulation since
the 18th century (Thiel 1904).
The 19th century was also the time period when an expanding railway network changed the
relation between Vienna and its hinterland. Shortly after the construction of the first train
stations in Vienna in the 1830s, the Austrian railway lines were attached to the international
6network with the first connection in Prussia (1848), and a decade later (in 1859) the railway
first linked Vienna to a sea port, Trieste (Meißl 2005). The state authorities awarding
construction licences prioritised the creation of tracks which would strengthen Vienna’s
position as the centre of transport routes in the Monarchy (Dinhobl 2006), and Vienna became
the focal point of several long-distance routes.
Also in biogeographic terms, Vienna is an interesting city for studying the role of a river in
urban resource use, transport and land use. Vienna is situated between the prealpine hills to
the west and the Pannonian lowlands to the east, and, in contrast to many other major urban
centres in Europe, is a strictly land locked city, the nearest sea ports in the northern Adriatic
being roughly 500km away from the city. Moreover, the Adriatic ports are not directly
accessible via river transport. The Danube connects the city to the upstream Alpine regions in
the west, and to the downstream Pannonian plains in the east, as well as, after almost
2,000km, to the Black Sea. Therefore, Vienna was particularly dependent on river Danube
transport before the introduction of the railway.
How much energy did Vienna use? Vienna’s urban metabolism 1800-1910
As a starting point for understanding the changing role of the Danube in Vienna in terms of
land use and transport, we investigate how Vienna’s resource use developed in the period
1800 to 1910, focusing on energy: Vienna’s demand for energy increased strongly in the 19th
and early 20th centuries. Energy use not only multiplied in this period, but was characterised
by a shift from biomass to fossil energy carriers (Figure 2). Figure 2a shows that total
Domestic Energy Consumption (DEC) grew from around 10 PJ (Petajoule, 1015 Joule) per
year in 1800 to over 60 PJ/yr in 1910. The development was not linear: until the mid-19th
century, energy use hardly increased at all. Only around 1850 a growth dynamic set in, and
DEC reached 30 PJ/yr in 1890. The expansion of city limits in 1890 accelerated this trend,
and energy use doubled again to over 60 PJ/yr in 1910.
Figure 2: Domestic Energy Consumption (DEC) in Vienna, 1800-1910. a. Total DEC of all energy carriers,
b. per-capita DEC of the technical energy carriers firewood and coal
a. b.
80
Change of city
boundaries 30
60
GJ/cap/yr
20
PJ/yr
40
10
20
- -
1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910
Food Feed (draught animals) Firewood Coal Firewood Coal
The mix of energy carriers changed fundamentally: until the mid-19th century, biomass
accounted for more than 95% of total energy use in Vienna. The share of firewood amounted
to roughly three quarters of this energy, the remainder being food for humans and feed for
urban working animals. From the 1850s, the use of coal began to increase. Within only two
decades coal use surpassed fuel wood use. The rise of total energy use in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries was above all due to the increase of coal use and to a smaller extent
related to the growing demand for food for the growing population and feed for the rising
stock of draught animals. The use of fuel wood gradually declined to about 50% of the level
of the pre-coal era. These changes in energy use in Vienna comply with the typical pattern of
7the energy transition which has also been observed for other parts of the Habsburg Empire
such as Austria (Krausmann et al. 2008) or Bohemia and Moravia (Kuskova et al. 2008).
However, the share of fossil fuel use in total DEC rose to particularly high levels in the urban
centre.
In the period from 1800 to the 1860s, population grew faster than energy use. Figure 2b
shows that energy available per inhabitant declined by 50% and fell to only 15 GJ/cap/yr in
the early 1860s. This period was also characterized by a noticeable increase in the price of
fuel wood (Mühlpeck et al. 1979): fuel wood prices doubled between the 1830s and the mid-
1870s. Only then, prices began to decline in response to the growing availability of coal. The
decline of per-capita energy use in the observed period has to be seen in the context of
different developments: first of all, with population growth the demand for fuel wood
increased and gradually more distant forests and woodlands had to be exploited to feed the
growing city (Johann 2005, see below). This increased transport costs and, hence, energy
prices. Secondly, declining per-capita consumption probably also reflects a certain
pauperisation of the population which was related to the immigration of people from the
provinces and the relative growth of a poor working class. And thirdly, efficiency gains
especially in household stoves may have compensated at least partly for the decline in fuel
supply. Available energy services (heat supply) probably did not decline at the same pace as
primary energy input (see Sandgruber 1987; Radkau 1989). The increasing substitution of
coal for wood from the mid-19th century onward began to mitigate the tight situation with
respect to urban energy supply. Between 1870 and 1910, the prices for coal declined by 20%.
In the mid-1870s, energy use per capita began to grow and in 1910 it reached a level of 30
GJ/cap/yr as it had been typical for the early 1800s. Vienna’s decreasing per-capita energy
availability and increasing energy prices in the mid-19th century can be interpreted as signs of
relative energy scarcity. This scarcity was not an issue of overall resource endowment in the
hinterland but rather related to transport limitations.
How were goods transported to Vienna? The changing role of Danube transport
The change in Vienna’s energy use during the 19th century was accompanied by a change in
freight transport and supply routes. Until the opening of the first railway lines in the late
1830s (and in effect even 10 to 20 years beyond that), Vienna’s supply with materials and
energy carriers relied on cart-based land transport and raft or ship-based water transport. The
most important transport route for urban supply with wood, food and other goods was the
Danube, traversing Vienna from west to east.2
Figure 3: Danube transport to Vienna, a. total mass of goods imported to Vienna on the Danube, 1835-
1910 (shaded areas indicate data interpolations), b. relative contribution of river imports to total urban
consumption of cereals, firewood and coal. Transport data from 1835 to 1874 consider freight into all
harbours of Vienna, data from 1883 to 1910 refer to all goods which entered Vienna through the Danube
channel.
a. b.
2
The only other significant water route was the Wiener Neustaedter Kanal, a 63 km long artificial waterway
opened in 1803 which connected Vienna to its hinterlands in the south. It was used to transport wood, bricks and
coal into the city (Riebe 1936).
8700.000 100%
600.000
80%
500.000
60%
400.000
tons/yr
300.000 40%
200.000
20%
100.000
0%
-
1835 1850 1865 1895 1910
1835 1845 1855 1865 1875 1885 1895 1905
Firewood Construction wood All other goods Cereals Firewood Coal
Figure 3a displays the total amount of goods which were imported every year to various
harbours in Vienna from 1835 to 1910, shortly after the establishment of the first Austrian
Danube Steamship Company in 1829.3 Total Danube transport to Vienna more than doubled
from around 250,000t/yr (metric tons per year) in 1835 to around 600,000t/yr in the late
1860s. Around 1870, the number of rafts and barges unloading goods in Vienna fluctuated
around 15,000 per year (Winckler 1876). Still, even in this period of rapid growth of Danube
transport, contemporaries observed the relative backwardness of Vienna’s Danube transport
as compared to other European cities (Winckler 1876, Klunzinger 1891), a fact which was
attributed to bad harbours of Vienna, which were only improved with the regulation of
1870/75, as well as difficult shipping conditions along the river.
From the 1870s on, i.e. after the great Danube regulation, Danube freight transport to Vienna
declined continuously until the early 20th century, reaching its 1835 value again around 1900.
In the early 20th century, it increased again rather rapidly, with our data series ending at
around 400,000t/yr in 1911. It has to be noted that these data somewhat underestimate freight
volumes in the years after 1874. After the Danube regulation, data are reported only on goods
entering the Danube channel, i.e. the branch of the river directly flowing through the city (see
Figure 1b). The harbours constructed on the new main river are not reported regularly in
statistical sources. Despite this caveat, the data indicate a trend of declining urban river
imports beginning already before the Danube regulation. The most important material
category responsible for the decline in freight transport to Vienna was firewood: firewood
imports along the Danube decreased from around 200,000t/yr in the early 1870s to around
20,000t/yr around 1910.
Figure 3b compares the amount of cereals, firewood and coal transported to Vienna via the
Danube with the total urban consumption of these goods in selected years between 1835 and
1910.4 This comparison of imported goods to urban consumption gives an impression on the
relative importance of Danube transport for the urban provision with resources. Until the late
1860s, when Danube transport still increased, so did the relative contribution of transported
goods to urban resource consumption: the share of cereals transported on the Danube went up
dramatically from less than 10% in 1835 to over 80% in 1865. Fuel wood transport along the
3
In contrast to the data on Vienna’s urban metabolism, these data are presented in terms of mass, not energy.
This seems like the more suitable unit when looking at transported goods, because considerable shares of goods
transported along the river consist of construction materials, sands, etc. which do not contain calorific values and
could thus not be considered from an energetic perspective.
4
The comparison between import flows on the Danube and total urban consumption is not straight forward for
several reasons: Imports in specific year do not necessarily refer to actual consumption in this year: Particularly
for the case of cereals, large depositories within the city collected the imported goods for later use. As discussed
above, transport data do not refer to imports into the same harbours over time. And finally, imports are compared
to the consumption in a changing reference system (because of a shift in city boundaries). This might decrease
the relation between freight transport and urban consumption after 1890.
9Danube was a constantly important factor. Roughly half of the wood burned in Vienna was
floated on the Danube, while in the 1860s only roughly 20% were delivered from the
immediate hinterland on horse carts (Wessely 1882). And, finally, even Danube transport of
coal contributed significantly to Vienna’s coal provision until 1850, a period when absolute
coal use in Vienna was still extremely low. As soon as the railway network reached a certain
expansion, the significance of Danube imports declined while overall consumption increased.
From the 1890s, when Vienna’s city limits encompassed a much larger region than before,
and the absolute amount of goods transported along the Danube channel decreased, the
relative importance of Danube transport went down dramatically. The only material category
which retained a certain importance until the late 19th century was fuel wood.
The decrease in Vienna’s Danube transport at a time when the river was regulated and the city
expanded can only be understood in the context of Vienna’s changing energy use and the
growing railway system (Meißl 2005). The northern and southern railway stations were
opened in the late 1830s. After several decades Vienna was fully connected to the industrial
centres of Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia and Prussia in the north (1848) and to the Adriatic
harbour of Trieste (1859) in the south. Data on railway freight transport are difficult to
interpret because of the various line operators who did not consistently report freight volumes.
In 1900, the Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Wien reports that private operators alone
imported around 3 million tons of goods to the city. Half of this was made up by coal.
Considering that roughly one million tons were re-exported from the city, the net import of
goods via railway was still around ten times higher than imports by Danube transport. And
this does not include the state-owned Staatsbahnen which connected the city to the
agricultural production regions of Hungary. By 1900, the railway had become a much more
important freight transport route for Vienna than the Danube had ever been.
The data presented in this section indicate that during the 19th century, the Danube in Vienna
lost its role as major supply route. Firewood, which had been an important transport good,
was transported less and less to the city because urban energy use shifted to coal. The Danube
regulation did not lead to a simple increase in river transport to the city for which it had partly
been intended, but rather seems to have turned the river into a transit route: instead of entering
the city, many goods transported along the Danube after river regulation were directly
transferred to the newly established railway line along the river for further transport
(Klunzinger 1891). On the other hand, the opening of long-distance railway lines accessed
areas outside the Danube watershed such as Silesia from which new resources (coal) could be
imported to the city. The shift of transport from river to railway was directly connected to
Vienna’s energy transition from fuel wood to coal.
Where did the resources come from? The spatial imprint of wood rafting
To meet the growing demand for materials and energy carriers, the city had to draw on an
increasing hinterland, impacting on land use in these resource providing regions. In this
section we explore the spatial patterns of urban supply, focusing on wood. With respect to
river transport, wood is a very good example, as it was the most important transport good in
terms of mass along Austrian rivers (Johann 2002). The energy shift from wood to coal will
also be discussed.
The Danube connects Vienna to extensive woodlands in the west of the city, several hundred
kilometers upstream. With the growing demand for wood in the capital, these woodlands were
gradually made accessible for Viennese markets. New rafting privileges for the wood supply
of Vienna were given in particular during the 18th century. Before, mainly the Danube itself
and the larger tributaries were used for wood rafting, but the anticipated risk of wood shortage
in Vienna in the 18th century drove the expansion of the supply infrastructure to more remote
places. Often complex technical constructions were established like channels connecting
different river catchments, tunnels or elevators (Hauska 1932). The expansion of the wood
10transport network in the 18th century was a prerequisite for Vienna’s supply with wood in the
early 19th century. Figure 4 shows the rivers on which wood was transported to Vienna in the
19th century and distinguishes rivers for which new privileges were given throughout the 18th
and early 19th centuries.
Figure 4: Danube tributaries used for wood transport to Vienna in the 19th century
In the first half of the 19th century, Vienna required roughly a million cubic meters of wood
annually. Assuming that wood extraction was not related to deforestation, this corresponded
to a hypothetical forest area of 3,000 km². Figures about the geographical origins of this wood
are scattered and not available in time series. Table 1 (k.k. statistische Zentralkommission
1870) shows the regional distribution of Vienna’s wood supply in the late 1860s. Lower and
Upper Austria were the main areas with a share of one third each. Almost a quarter came from
Bavaria, while Salzburg and Tyrol, areas with a high local need for wood for mining, salt and
metal processing, contributed less than 5%. There was a difference between the regions
providing fuel wood and timber: firewood came to a larger extent from Lower Austria while
Upper Austrian forests provided a high share of construction wood. The latter was mainly
floated on the larger right hand Danube tributaries, which were mostly situated in Bavaria and
Upper Austria. On most of the small tributaries in Lower Austria loose pieces of trunks were
rafted. A similar situation can be observed for the left hand tributaries of Upper Austria.
Vienna thus supplied its wood from quite remote places which were connected to the city via
the river.
Table 1: Proportion of the different origins of total wood, fire wood and construction wood transported
via the Danube and its tributaries to Vienna in 1868 (total: ca. 400.000 tons)
Origin Transport Total wood Firewood Construction
11distance to % % wood
Vienna km %
Lower AustriaThe Viennese Danube floodplains are also a good example for the importance of institutional
factors such as legislation and property rights for land use. Most areas of the floodplains were
used extensively until the early 19th century. While in other Danube sections (e.g. Machland,
see Haidvogl 2008), agricultural land dominated in the beginning of the 19th century, the
Viennese Danube floodplains were mainly covered by floodplain forests. For the area of what
is today the Viennese national park Lobau at the south-eastern fringe of the city, a survey of
land use was made for the early 19th century (Haidvogl et al. 2010). Similar to other parts of
the Viennese Danube floodplains like the Prater or parts of the later district Brigittenau, the
Lobau was dominated by its function as imperial hunting ground throughout the 19th century.
The role of the Danube floodplains changed fundamentally in the course of the 19th century
with respect to settlement areas. Until the beginning of the 19th century, settlement areas had
been limited in the Danube floodplains, but these regions soon became one of the most
important land resources for residential and commercial buildings in the rapidly growing city.
The availability of land resources in the floodplains benefited to a large extent from the
Danube regulation. The link between the Danube regulation and urban land use appears as a
public concern for the first time in the evaluation report of the second Danube Regulation
Commission (DRC) in 1868 (Donauregulierungskommission 1868). It was argued that
Vienna’s spatial development had to concentrate on locations in the south and south west far
away from the main transport routes, because the risk-prone Danube floodplains and flood-
protected banks were unsuitable for industry and commercial enterprises. Although the
improvement of navigation and flood protection were still the main targets of the Danube
regulation, the later was from this moment on linked to urban development. The Danube
regulation made large areas along the new Danube channel and on the former islands
available for residential buildings and commerce favoring close access to the main transport
routes such as the Danube. Also the railway lines were successively extended in the Viennese
floodplains (Winckler 1876). After the economic crisis in 1873, new built-up zones were
established especially along the right hand banks of the new channel. Until the first two
decades of the 20th century, settlement in the floodplains on the left river banks grew strongly
(Figure 5). These areas were mainly used for industrial and trading enterprises as well as for
rental buildings (Eigner et al. 2003). Three districts among the five with the highest
population growth rates between 1888 and 1918 were situated completely or partially in the
former Danube floodplains (Müller 2007).
Figure 5: Land use in the Viennese Danube floodplains a. 1770 and b. 1913 (from Eigner & Schneider,
2005; © Michael Albrecht, Renate Kienzl). Dashed lines indicating the floodplains were added by the
authors.
a. b.
13This section demonstrates the influence of legal regulations on land use and the availability of
local resources for the case of wood in the vast forests around Vienna. A main factor for land
use change in the 19th century was the Danube regulation. The newly flood-protected areas
soon became an important land resource for the growing city, even though the creation of
settlement areas was originally not among the main aims of the river regulation.
Conclusion
This article addresses the changing role of the Viennese Danube for urban resource use,
transport and land use in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We show that Vienna’s
industrialisation went along with dramatic changes in resource consumption. From the mid-
19th century onwards, Vienna turned from a city based on mainly organic energy sources to
one dependant on the imports of coal. The energy transition went along with a revolution in
freight transport. While the Danube was regulated to improve imports to the city in the 1870s,
the data presented here suggest that the Danube lost its importance as major freight transport
route, while the railway took over in the late 19th century. The Danube was turned into a
transit route, and the most important bulk material fuelling the city – coal – came from areas
outside the Danube watershed which became accessible through the railway (see Figure 6).
Nevertheless, wood transport along the Danube maintained a certain importance throughout
the 19th century. It affected land use in large upstream hinterland areas in Lower Austria,
Upper Austria and Bavaria which had been made accessible for floating through privileges
since the 18th century. The changes in resource use and the river regulation were also
connected to land use within Vienna’s city limits: while vast forest areas in Vienna’s
immediate surroundings were largely protected from intensive use through legal regulations,
after river regulation in the 1870s the Danube floodplains became important land resources
for urban settlement expansion.
Figure 6: Connections to Vienna via large rivers and the northern Railway
14Coming back to von Thünen’s ideas about the interrelations between urban resource use,
transport and land use, we want to stress three points which are evident for the case of Vienna
and the Danube river in the 19th and early 20th centuries: Firstly, and well in line with von
Thünen’s considerations, the Danube river appears as an important transport route supplying
Vienna with resources throughout much of the 19th century. River transport to the city also
seems to have been a major driver for land use change along the shores, particularly in the
upstream forest areas providing wood. Secondly, we observe a phenomenon somewhat in
contradiction with von Thünen’s arguments, for forest areas surrounding Vienna: Instead of
providing wood for the adjacent city on a large scale, Vienna’s surrounding forests were
protected by legal regulations to serve as imperial hunting grounds. Legal regulations, or more
generally power relations, were thus more important in this case than simple economic
relations of potential costs and revenues. And, finally, our study also shows how the
interrelations between urban resource use, transport and land use which have been described
by von Thünen changed fundamentally in the course of industrialisation: With the
introduction of new transport infrastructure – the northern railway line – which connected
Vienna to new hinterlands, urban energy use could shift from wood to coal. This necessarily
entailed land use change in the wood and coal-supplying hinterlands. However, in order to
develop a more conceptual understanding of these changes, more in-depth analyses of specific
urban hinterlands will be necessary.
Acknowledgements
The research in this article was part of the research project “Environmental History of the
Viennese Danube 1500-1890”, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (P22265). The authors
are grateful to the organisers and participants of the workshop “Environmental history of
urban environmental imprints” (Paris, September 2009) who contributed useful and inspiring
comments, as well as two anonymous reviewers.
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