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Painting: Rescue during the 1847 Vienna flood
This painting by Leander Russ depicts a rescue operation during a flood in Vienna in 1847.
This painting by Leander Russ depicts a rescue operation during a flood in Vienna in 1847.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, massive floods regularly threatened cities and settlements along the Danube River. The introduction of wide-reaching telegraph networks enabled Habsburg authorities in Vienna to protect the most important city of the empire.
Numerous cartographic and written historical sources tell the story of the measures Vienna’s dynamic Danube riverscape underwent in an extensive effort to secure navigation between the main river arm and the city within the last 500 years.