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.
In this chapter of their virtual exhibition “‘Commanding, Sovereign Stream’: The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers,” the authors examine the dynamic landscapes of the Neva and Danube Rivers, the ways they determine people’s lives and are also modified to secure people’s needs and protect them from flooding.
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.
Analyzing the history of fish populations in the Neva and Viennese Danube, the Russian-Austrian research group discovered numerous links between the great cities and their great rivers, including the fish populations. This introduction to the virtual exhibition “‘Commanding, Sovereign Stream’: The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers” explains how the exhibition visualizes these links and reveal some hidden (or at least not immediately evident) sides of urban life.
In this chapter of their virtual exhibition “‘Commanding, Sovereign Stream’: The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers,” the authors discuss similarities and differences in the history of water supply, pollution, and waste management in St. Petersburg and Vienna.
This exhibition shows some of the many links between the Neva River in St. Petersburg and the Viennese Danube discovered during the joint Russian-Austrian research project “The Long-Term Dynamics of Fish Populations and Ecosystems of European Rivers.”