HISTORY

The Lobau is a flood-plain area (2,160 hectares) in the 22nd district of Vienna of which 1,261 hectares are wetland woods).

The name derives from the Old High German word "Lo" (= dense wood).

The river Danube meandered through this region for thousands of years, flooding regularly and providing a valuable environment for many beautiful and rare species of plants and animals (heron, cormorant, otter, red deer, peewit, kite, and others).

The river was split into many more or less shallow channels, difficult to cross and impossible to navigate with large ships. The surrounding marshy land was also difficult or impossible to build on.

From Medieval times, emperors and other nobles used the woodland territories surrounding the River Danube for hunting, and built hunting lodges or palaces along the Danube to support their excursions. But those ‘Auen’ (areas) weren’t accessible to the public.

In 1745 Empress Maria Theresia donated the forested wetlands of the Lobau to "the poor of Vienna".

It was in the Lobau that the battle of Aspern-Essling between Napoleon’s advancing troops and Austria’s defending army under Erzherzog Karl (Archduke Charles) took place on May 21/22, 1809. Memorial stones have been erected at the sites of Napoleon´s headquarters, entrenchment, powder magazine and the French cemetery. Napoleon’s soldiers and heavy equipment became bogged down in the swamps and never reached the gates of Vienna. The battle was the first time Napoleon had been personally defeated in over a decade. (Some of the cannon balls from this time were found by local people and kept as trophies. They can occasionally be found embedded in house facades as well as in local museums.)

The desire to protect Vienna from the effects of regular flooding resulted in a regulation of the Danube in several phases. The first was between 1870 and 1875 when the Hubertusdamm was built opposite Floridsdorf and today’s Donaustadt, a main channel was dug out right through the area for shipping and one of the original wider meanders of the river was retained as a ribbon lake for recreational purposes, the ‘Alte Donau’. The French engineering firm who did the work was the same as the one that completed the Suez canal, so they possessed all the necessary skills, experience and machinery.

Five new bridges were built across the Danube at this time.

As a result of the channelling of the Danube, all the side-arms were cut off and became lakes, the regular flooding of the Lobau ceased, the water table dropped and the ecology of the area began to change too. Backwaters of the river slowly silted up and dried out, gravel banks ceased to shift, became colonised by grasses and later bushes and trees, the mix of plant and animal species thriving in the area also changed. People began to build on areas that would previously have been considered unsafe and concerns were raised that a valuable wetland community was in danger of disappearing.

In 1905 the Lobau became a protected area as an important part of the woodland and meadowland belt stretching all along the banks of the Danube between Vienna and its Eastern neighbours. Since 1918 the Upper Lobau has formed part of the municipality of Vienna, the Lower Lobau is owned by the Republic of Austria.

The natural process of drying out continued and the area was used for recreational purposes by a large number of Viennese, particularly those living on the ‘left bank’, todays ‘Donaustadt’. Some of the backwaters were cleared in an attempt to maintain them as lakes for fishing. During times of severe food shortage, beginning in 1917 before the First World War, parts of the area were used for farming.

In 1938, during the period of Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany, part of the natural landscape was destroyed by the construction of oil tanks, a petroleum refinery and an oil port. Plans for a major shipping canal between the river Oder in Central Europe (Czech Republic, Poland, Germany) and the Danube were begun and the southernmost part was begun in the Lobau. Although only 100m was completed, it is clearly visible today in the area near Grossenzersdorf.

At the end of World War II the allies dropped many bombs over this area in an attempt to destroy the oil refinery and many of these craters can still be seen in the forest.

In spite of flood protection measures however, major floods in 1954 made it clear that more needed to be done.

In 1972, a new project was started to dig out an overflow channel alongside the main one, the New Danube as it is now known, closed at each end by dams that can be opened at times of high water to carry the flood water rapidly away. The material dug out during this work was piled up in the area between the two channels and the Danube Island was created. It is 21km long and between 70m and 210m wide, an extremely popular recreational facility, a traffic-free island planted informally with trees, bushes and meadows with completely free access and what is effectively an elongated swimming lake running the whole length along one side. The flood protection aspect has also proven very effective and since then there has been no flooding in Vienna.

The Lobau however has continued to suffer a slow drying out and environmentalists have been concerned to preserve as much as possible of the original wetland character, as well as conserving the remaining true wetlands along the Danube from Vienna into Slovakia and Hungary.

In 1977, the Lobau region was declared a conservation area by the Austrian government, as well as by UNESCO.

As a result of many protests and debates, the Donau-Auen National Park was established in 1996 which includes the Lobau at its western extremity.