SUPERVISOR: Gertrud HAIDVOGL

PROJECT ASSIGNED TO: Valerie LIMBACH

My dissertation examines the industrialization of the Danube in the Linz Basin between 1820 and 1945 as a long-term socio-ecological transformation process. It focuses on physical changes to the river landscape and land use as well as the social, economic, and political processes that influenced the transformation. In this context, the Danube is not only viewed as a transportation route and economic resource but also as a dynamic river landscape. Its regulation and increasing intensity of use gave rise to new spatial structures and long-term physical legacies. 

Since the nineteenth century, state-led regulation transformed the Austrian Danube from a dynamic, multi-channel river system into a deep, stable navigation channel. This was part of a broader transformation of state-building, capitalist development, industrialization, and urbanization. During this time, the state increasingly surveyed and engineered its territory and nature. The river regulation aimed at improving navigation, mitigating floods, and reclaiming land. Although Linz remained a small- to medium-sized, not yet fully industrialized urban center, it experienced substantial growth, creating new socio-ecological landscapes and vulnerabilities. 

Another period of profound transformation of the river began with Austria’s so-called “Anschluss” to the National Socialist Germany in 1938. In addition to ideological-nationalist and military-expansionist objectives, this was also shaped by economic interests, in particular access to mineral resources, energy sources, labor, and industrial facilities. The Danube assumed a distinctive economic and military role as a transportation corridor to Southeast Europe. This initiative was linked to extensive port planning, including in Linz. The associated infrastructure and industrial projects led to new land claims and interventions in the Danube landscape, but were only partially realized. The transformation of the Danube landscape during the Nazi era must be viewed not only as infrastructural and industrial change but also in the context of the violent social conditions of the Nazi regime.

I investigate these changes through two complementary papers. The first examines changes in land use in the Linz Basin between 1820 and 1940 using historical maps and GIS-based methods, particularly in connection with the regulation of the Danube and urbanization processes in Linz. The second analyses the transformation of the Danube landscape resulting from the expansion of port and industrial infrastructure during the Nazi era. It relates the physical changes of the river landscape to the political, economic, and power structures, as well as the exploitative conditions, of the Nazi regime.