Using and abusing a torrential urban river. Tanneries and other crafts at a Viennese Danube tributary before and during industrialization (Wien River, Vienna-Austria)

• In Event: Local and Global Environmental Histories of Production and Trade

Abstract

During the 19th century, the Wien River valley became a center of commercial production in Vienna and the use of the river, especially for wastewater discharge intensified. This largest tributary of the Viennese Danube has a highly dynamic flow regime with a low average discharge and recurrent big, fast floods. Both, periods of water scarcity and floods posed big challenges to river use by crafts and industries as well as to regulative interventions. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the river was forced into a straightened concrete bed it had to share with a railway line (now metro line). Pollution from domestic and industrial wastewater was used as a main argument for its regulation. Tanneries were perceived by urban health authorities as one of the main polluters which should be banned from using the river.
To analyze the role of the river for supplying water to crafts and industries and for wastewater discharge from the late 18th to the beginning of the 20th century, we used digitized maps from 1780, 1825 and 1875 together with address books and commercial schemes. The analysis of the spatial distribution of tanneries and other crafts showed that textile dyers and printers were located close to the river and its mill creeks while tanneries were often located in some distance. Only in areas which were industrialized with larger factories after 1850, tanneries were built closer to the river and, in some cases, they used diverted mill streams.
Our study not only analyzes spatial distribution patterns of tanneries and other industries, but also investigates water supply and wastewater discharge of tanneries in the catchment of the Wien River as well as conflicts with other crafts and industries, e.g. breweries which needed clean water.

Authors

• Gudrun Pollack, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

• Gertrud Haidvogl, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna