Rhine River

German Rhein

River, western Europe.

Rising in the Swiss Alps, it flows north and west through western Germany to drain through the delta region of The Netherlands into the North Sea. It is 820 mi (1,319 km) long and navigable for 540 mi (870 km). Its many canals connect it with the Rhône, Marne, and Danube river systems. It has been an international waterway since 1815 (see Congress of Vienna). It has played a prominent part in German history and legend. During World War II its course was a major line of defense. Major cities along its banks include Basel, Mannheim, Koblenz, Cologne, Duisburg, and Rotterdam.

* * *

▪ river, Europe

Introduction

German  Rhein , French  Rhin , Dutch  Rijn , Celtic  Renos , Latin  Rhenus 

 river and waterway of western Europe, culturally and historically one of the great rivers of the continent and among the most important arteries of industrial transport in the world. It flows 865 miles (1,390 kilometres) from two small headways in the Alps of east-central Switzerland north and west to the North Sea, into which it drains through The Netherlands (Netherlands, The). An international waterway since the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, it is navigable overall for some 540 miles, as far as Rheinfelden on the Swiss-German border. Its catchment area, including the delta area, exceeds 85,000 square miles (220,000 square kilometres).

 The Rhine has been a classic example of the alternating roles of great rivers as arteries of political and cultural unification and as political and cultural boundary lines. The river also has been enshrined in the literature of its lands, especially of Germany (German literature), as in the famous epic Nibelungenlied. Since the time when the Rhine valley became incorporated into the Roman Empire, the river has been one of Europe's leading transport routes. Until the 19th century the goods transported were of high value but relatively small in volume, but since the second half of the 19th century the volume of goods conveyed on the river has increased greatly. The fact that cheap water transport on the Rhine helped to keep prices of raw materials down was the main reason the river became a major axis of industrial production: one-fifth of the world's chemical industries are now manufacturing along the Rhine. The river was long a source of political dissension in Europe, but this has given way to international concern for ecological safeguards as pollution levels have risen; some 6,000 toxic substances have been identified in Rhine waters.

 No other river in the world has so many old and famous cities on its banks—Basel, Switz.; Strasbourg, Fr.; and Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, Ger., to name a few—but there are also such industrial cities as Ludwigshafen and Leverkusen in Germany that pollute the waters and mar the scenic attraction of the riverbanks. Nonetheless, the middle Rhine (the section between the German cities of Bingen and Bonn), with such steep rock precipices as the Lorelei crag and numerous castles, still presents breathtaking vistas and attracts tourists. This is the Rhine of legend and myth, where the medieval Mouse Tower (Mausturm) lies at water level near Bingen and the castle of Kaub stands on an island in the river. The Alpine section of the Rhine lies in Switzerland, and below Basel the river forms the boundary between western Germany and France, as far downstream as the Lauter River. It then flows through German territory as far as Emmerich, below which its many-branched delta section epitomizes the landscapes characteristic of The Netherlands.

Physical features

Physiography

      The Rhine rises in two headstreams high in the Swiss Alps. The Vorderrhein emerges from Lake Toma at 7,690 feet, near the Oberalp Pass in the Central Alps, and then flows eastward past Disentis to be joined by the Hinterrhein from the south at Reichenau above Chur. (The Hinterrhein rises about five miles west of San Bernardino Pass, near the Swiss–Italian border, and is joined by the Albula River below Thusis.) Below Chur, the Rhine leaves the Alps to form the boundary first between Switzerland and the principality of Liechtenstein and then between Switzerland and Austria, before forming a delta as the current slackens at the entrance to Lake Constance (Constance, Lake). In this flat-floored section the Rhine has been straightened and the banks reinforced to prevent flooding. The Rhine leaves the lake via its Untersee arm. From there to its bend at Basel, the river is called the Hochrhein (“High Rhine”) and defines the Swiss-German frontier, except for the area below Stein am Rhein, where the frontier deviates so that the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen are entirely within Switzerland. Downstream the Rhine flows swiftly between the Alpine foreland and the Black Forest region, its course interrupted by rapids, where—as at Laufenburg (Switzerland) and Säckingen and Schwörstadt (Germany)—barrages (dams) have been built. In this stretch the Rhine is joined by its Alpine tributaries, the Thur, Töss, Glatt, and Aare, and by the Wutach from the north. The Rhine has been navigable between Basel and Rheinfelden since 1934.

      Below Basel the Rhine turns northward to flow across a broad, flat-floored valley, some 20 miles wide, held between, respectively, the ancient massifs of the Vosges Mountains and Black Forest uplands and the Haardt Mountains and Oden Forest upland. The main tributary from Alsace is the Ill, which joins the Rhine at Strasbourg, and various shorter rivers, such as the Dreisam and the Kinzig, drain from the Black Forest. Downstream, the regulated Neckar (Neckar River), after crossing the Oden uplands in a spectacular gorge as far as Heidelberg, enters the Rhine at Mannheim; and the Main leaves the plain of lower Franconian Switzerland for the Rhine opposite Mainz. Until the straightening of the upper Rhine, which began in the early 19th century, the river described a series of great loops, or meanders, over its floodplain, and today their remnants, the old backwaters and cutoffs near Breisach and Karlsruhe, mark the former course of the river.

 The middle Rhine is the most spectacular and romantic reach of the river. In this 90-mile stretch the Rhine has cut a deep and winding gorge between the steep, slate-covered slopes of the Hunsrück Mountains to the west and the Taunus Mountains to the east. Vineyards mantle the slopes as far as Koblenz, where the Moselle River joins the Rhine at the site the Romans called Confluentes. On the right bank, the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein dominates the Rhine where the Lahn tributary enters. Downstream the hills recede, the foothills of the volcanic Eifel region lying to the west and those of the Wester Forest to the east. At Andernach, where the ancient Roman frontier left the Rhine, the basaltic Seven Hills rise steeply to the east of the river, where, as the English poet Lord Byron put it, “the castle crag of Dachenfels frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine.”

      Below Bonn the valley opens out into a broad plain, where the old city of Cologne lies on the left bank of the Rhine. There the river is spanned by the modern Severin Bridge and by the rebuilt Hohenzollern railway bridge, which carries the line from Aachen to Düsseldorf and the Ruhr industrial region. Düsseldorf, on the right bank of the Rhine, is the dominant business centre of the North Rhine–Westphalia coalfield. Duisburg, which lies at the mouth of the Ruhr River, handles the bulk of the waterborne coal and coke from the Ruhr as well as imports of iron ore and oil.

      The last section of the Rhine lies below the frontier town of Emmerich in the delta region of The Netherlands. There the Rhine breaks up into a number of wide branches, such as the Lek and Waal, farther downstream called the Merwede. With the completion of the huge Delta Project in 1986—constructed to prevent flooding in the southwestern coastal area of The Netherlands—all main branches of the Rhine were closed off; sluices and lateral channels now allow river water to reach the sea. Since 1872, however, the New Waterway Canal, constructed to improve access from the North Sea to Rotterdam, has been the main navigation link between the Rhine and the sea; along this canal was built Europoort, one of the world's largest ports.

Alice F.A. Mutton Karl A. Sinnhuber

Hydrology

      The Alpine Rhine—with its steep gradient, high runoff coefficient (80 percent of the precipitation in its catchment area), pronounced winter minimum, high water in spring from snowmelt, and high early summer maximum resulting from heavy summer rains—has a characteristic Alpine regime. Although variations in flow are evened out by Lake Constance, which is fed by upland streams as well as by the Rhine (and which also acts as a filter), they are increased again by the confluence with the Aare, which on an average carries more water than the Rhine. Below Basel, however, the tributaries from the uplands, with their spring maximums at higher and winter maximums at lower elevations, increasingly moderate the unbalance. Thus, at Cologne the average deviations from mean flow are slight, and the regime is favourable to navigation. Winters in the navigable regions of the river, moreover, are generally mild, and the Rhine freezes only in exceptional winters.

The economy

      As a commercial artery, the Rhine is unrivaled among the world's rivers, historically as well as in the amount of traffic carried. The Romans maintained a Rhine fleet, and the importance of the river increased enormously with the rise of medieval trade, which relied on water transport wherever possible because of the poor roads. The rock barrier of the gorge at Bingen divided navigation into two sections: predominantly upstream traffic by seagoing vessels to Cologne and predominantly downstream movement of commodities—brought first across the Alpine passes—from Basel to Mainz and Frankfurt am Main. After about 1500, navigation declined because of reorientation of trade toward the Atlantic and political disintegration of the Rhineland. The rise of modern navigation began in the 19th century, and its present magnitude is attributable largely to four factors: removal of political restrictions on navigation, physical improvements to the navigation channel, canalization of the Rhine's hinterland, and increasing industrialization of the riparian countries.

      The principle of free navigation on the Rhine was agreed upon by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and was put into effect by the Mainz Convention of 1831, which also established the Central Commission of the Rhine. This first treaty was simplified and revised in the Mannheim Convention of 1868, which, with the extension in 1918 of all privileges to ships of all countries and not merely the riverine states, remains (broadly speaking) in force.

Navigational improvements

      Historically, two sections presented serious handicaps to navigation: the rock barrier at Bingen and the southern upper Rhine. At Bingen two navigation channels were blasted out in 1830–32; canalization of the upper Rhine by confining it within an artificial bed and straightening its course was undertaken in 1817–74. In neither case were the resulting improvements entirely satisfactory, but the channels at Bingen were doubled in width and deepened, thus eliminating the need for a pilot. Navigation on the upper Rhine, despite the further improvements made after 1907, suffers from seasonal variations of flow and the swift current.

      To improve navigation and to procure hydroelectric power, France (by the Treaty of Versailles (Versailles, Treaty of)) obtained the right to divert Rhine water below Basel into a canal that was to rejoin the Rhine at Strasbourg. Construction of the first section of this Grand Canal d'Alsace, designed to take vessels of 1,500 tons, was completed with the building of a dam at Kembs in 1932 and greatly improved navigation. Construction was resumed after World War II, but in a treaty (1956) France, in return for West German agreement to the canalization of the Moselle, consented to terminate the canal at Neu Breisach. The remaining four of a total of eight dams utilize Rhine water by the construction of canal loops only.

      Below Basel the Huningue branch of the Rhine–Rhône Canal leads to Mulhouse, where it meets the main arm of that waterway, which joins the Rhine at Strasbourg. The Rhine–Rhône Canal (1810–33) is navigable by 300-ton craft and carries only moderate traffic. More important, although no larger, is the Rhine–Marne Canal (1838–53), which also joins the Rhine at Strasbourg.

      The Neckar (Neckar River) is canalized through Stuttgart as far as Plochingen and the Main as far as Bamberg. There, the completed northern portion of the Main–Danube Canal (Main-Danube Canal) leads south to Nürnberg, which has become an important port. A treaty signed in 1956 between West Germany, France, and Luxembourg provided for canalization of the Moselle from Koblenz to Thionville (170 miles), which was completed in 1964. The Lahn (Lahn River) also is canalized for small (200-ton) craft for 42 miles.

      In the Ruhr region the Ruhr itself (except for the last seven miles) and the Lippe are not used as waterways. Their place is taken by the Rhine–Herne Canal, completed in 1916 between Duisburg and Herne and linking the Rhine through the Dortmund–Ems Canal (Dortmund-Ems Canal) with the German North Sea coast and through the Mittelland Canal with the waterways of central and eastern Germany and eastern Europe; and by the less important Wesel–Datteln–Hamm Canal (1930), which runs parallel to the lower course of the Lippe. The Rhine–Herne Canal's capacity for craft of 1,350 tons became the standard both for the minimum capacity of canals built since World War II and for barges. Nearer the Rhine's mouth, the Merwede Canal (enlarged 1952) south of Amsterdam provides another route to the sea for ships displacing as much as 4,300 tons.

Traffic

      Three factors were important in the rise of traffic on the Rhine. First, the political impediments to free navigation—particularly the approximately 200 toll stations along the course of the river—were removed by the Congress of Vienna of 1815. Second, the means of transport were improved by the introduction of steam-powered, and later diesel-powered, tugs; prior to the mid-19th century, barges moving upstream were towed either by teams of horses or gangs of men. Third, the waterway itself was improved, the stages of which are discussed above.

      The first steamship voyage on the Rhine was made from London to Koblenz in 1817, but this was a solitary event. The harbour installations of Mannheim were opened in 1840, and for almost a century this was the effective head of navigation. Although Basel had been reached by a steamship by 1832, its development as a Rhine port started a century later. Despite the improvement of the navigation and means of transport, there was at first little growth in the volume of transport. Increase came with the rise of modern industry in the 19th century, which necessitated the bulk movement of coal, ore, building materials, raw material for the chemical industry, and (since about 1950) oil. Although coal and ore transport declined, there was an overall increase in the volume of transport until the mid-1960s; since then, however, freight tonnage has decreased to about a third of its former level.

      The mode of transport from 1840 onward was by tugs towing a number of barges. Development after 1945 involved initially the introduction of self-propelled barges and subsequently the introduction of push tugs, whereby one tug can propel four-barge units and thus save labour costs. An increase in the traffic volume was also effected by the introduction of radar navigation in the 1950s, which made round-the-clock operation possible. There is also regular passenger service on the Rhine during summer, especially the middle Rhine section and from Rotterdam to Basel, but this is almost exclusively for tourists.

History

      The effects of rivers on the regions through which they flow tend to alternate between trends toward unifying the regions culturally and politically and making a political boundary of the river. Of this phenomenon the Rhine is a classic example. During prehistoric times the same culture groups existed on both banks; similarly, in early historic times Germanic (Germanic peoples) tribes settled on either side of its lower and Celts alongside its upper course. Although bridged and crossed by Julius Caesar in 55 and 53 BC, the Rhine became for the first time, along its course from Lake Constance to its mouth at Lugdunum Batavorum (Leiden, Neth.), a political boundary—that of Roman (ancient Rome) Gaul. This division did not endure for long, because under the emperor Augustus the provinces of Germania Superior and Germania Inferior were established on the other side of the Rhine, and south of Bonna (Bonn) the boundary of the Roman Empire was marked by the limes (Roman fortified frontier) well east of the river. Nevertheless, because the Rhine had been the boundary of Gaul for a time, it resulted in later claims by France, esteeming itself the successor to Gaul, to the Rhine as its natural boundary. When the Western Roman Empire disintegrated, the Rhine was crossed along its entire length by Germanic tribes (AD 406), and the river formed the central backbone first of the kingdom of the Franks and then of the Carolingian empire. When in 843 that empire was divided, stretches of the Rhine formed the eastern boundary of the central part, Lotharingia, until 870 when the Rhine again became the central axis of a political unit, the Holy Roman Empire. Subsequent events shifted the axis of this empire eastward and caused political disintegration along the Rhine. The Thirty Years' War (1618–48) ended with the final separation of the Rhine headwaters and delta area from Germany and a gradual advance of France toward the Rhine, which it reached under Louis XIV through his acquisition of Alsace.

      The French Revolutionary Wars included further French advances, and the Treaty of Lunéville (1801) made the Rhine, along most of its course, France's eastern boundary. But France advanced beyond the Rhine and included northwestern Germany within its borders, and the Confederation of the Rhine (Rhine, Confederation of the), created by Napoleon, extended French control as far as the Elbe and Neisse rivers. The resultant upsurge of German nationalism was expressed by E.M. Arndt (Arndt, Ernst Moritz), who in 1813 wrote, “The Rhine is Germany's river, not its boundary.” The Congress of Vienna, nevertheless, left France in possession of Alsace and thus with a Rhine frontier. Ambitions of Napoleon III to acquire further Rhenish territory strongly aroused German feelings. In 1840 Max Schneckenburger wrote his patriotic poem “Die Wacht am Rhein” (“The Watch on the Rhine”), which was set to music by Karl Wilhelm in 1854 and became the rousing tune of the Prussian armies in the Franco-German War of 1870–71. One result of this war was that France lost Alsace and thus its Rhine frontier, which it regained after World War I.

      The fortified defensive system of the Maginot Line (built in 1927–36) adjoined the French bank of the upper Rhine from the Swiss frontier to near Lauterbourg. The opposing Westwall, or Siegfried Line (1936–39), adjoined the German bank from the Swiss frontier to near Karlsruhe.

      Events after World War II suggested that the struggle for possession of the Rhine had been superseded by a trend toward economic and even political union of the riparian states. In addition, the increased pollution of the Rhine has resulted in growing international cooperation to combat the threat.

Karl A. Sinnhuber

Additional Reading

William Graves, “The Rhine: Europe's River of Legend,” National Geographic, 131(4):449–499 (April 1967), is based on a voyage aboard a Rhine tanker from Rotterdam to Karlsruhe. Goronwy Rees, The Rhine (1967), is a longer description that follows the Rhine from its source to its mouth and includes historical, political, cultural, and economic information. Royal Institute of International Affairs, Regional Management of the Rhine (1975), is a collection of scholarly but readable papers on the effects of human activity on the ecology of the river, with analyses of transport, navigation, flood control, pollution, generation of electricity, regional planning, and recreational use. H.J. Mackinder, The Rhine (1908), is a classic study by one of the founders of modern academic geography, still worth reading. E.M. Yates, “The Development of the Rhine,” Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, publication no. 32, pp. 65–81 (1963), examines the physical evolution of the Rhine and its valley from the Oligocene to the end of the Ice Age. Roy E.H. Mellor, The Rhine: A Study in the Geography of Water Transport (1983), surveys the history of navigation on the river. Fuller systematic treatments, which provide discussions of the history of economic activity of the region, population dynamics, and political and cultural developments, include Étienne Juillard, L'Europe rhénane (1968); and Jean Dollfus, L'Homme et le Rhin (1960).Karl A. Sinnhuber

* * *