Imagine a waterway stretching from Vienna to the Oder River. This grand vision was never fully realized. Here at Donau-Oder-Kanal Becken II, you stand at a fragment of that dream.
The Donau-Oder-Kanal also called Oder-Donau-Kanal was planned as an artificial waterway. It would connect the Lobau in Vienna to the Oder River near Cosel in Upper Silesia. The canal was meant to traverse the March River through Moravia. This ambitious project aimed to link the Baltic Sea with the Danube and Black Sea. It was part of the European waterway E 30.
Emperor Charles IV envisioned a navigable link between the Oder and Danube rivers in the 14th century. Further ideas for this inland waterway emerged in the 19th century.
During the Nazi era, plans for the canal resurfaced. A 320-kilometer waterway was projected. It would start at the Oder near Cosel and end in Vienna. This route needed to overcome a 124-meter height difference.
In 1939, Rudolf Hess inaugurated the Adolf Hitler Canal now called Gleiwitzer Kanal. He also broke ground for the Oder-Donau Canal. Work on the canal on the Upper Silesian side stopped in 1940.
Of the planned 40-kilometer stretch in Austria from Vienna to Angern an der March only a few kilometers were built by 1940. These are the four sections called DOK I to IV. You can still see the first part of the Donau-Oder-Kanal DOK I on the northeastern bank of the Vienna-Lobau tank port.
The remaining three canal sections DOK II to IV are now mainly used for swimming and fishing. From the 1960s DOK III and IV were divided into plots. These sections are now part of a small garden settlement. They lie outside the Lobau mostly in Lower Austria.
Donau-Oder-Kanal Becken II is about 1.2 kilometers long. It is in the Lobau nature reserve within the Donau-Auen National Park. Unlike the other two canal sections DOK III and IV it is natural and used as a swimming lake. The part of the Donau-Oder-Kanal in the Lobau is the widest and largest of the four completed sections.
The city of Vienna also calls canal basins II and III Zweierkanal and Dreierkanal. Residents have formed a water cooperative. They maintain and renovate DOK IV.
Between 1964 and 1970, Poland revived part of the old plans. They completed the branch from the Gleiwitzer Canal. This section is now the Kandrziner Canal. It connects the Azoty Kedzierzyn AG nitrogen plants to the Oder.
In the 1990s, Austria and Czechia promoted further construction. However, there were major environmental concerns. In 1999, the WWF presented a study. It said that the construction would affect 61 nature reserves. These reserves covered 400,000 hectares. This was unprecedented in Europe.
Despite these concerns Poland and Czechia continued to pursue the plans. In 2018, costs were estimated at 10.9 billion euros. Czechia began preparations for an initial section despite the criticism.
Environmentalists heavily criticized not only the canal construction itself but also the necessary expansion of existing rivers for commercial shipping, especially the Oder. The German transport minister signed a controversial German-Polish waterway agreement in 2015. Poland continues to expand the Oder based on this agreement. This is despite a Polish court ruling against it. Following a massive fish die-off in 2022, the German environment minister called for a halt to the Oder expansion by Poland.
In 2023, Czechia abandoned the canal construction project. They released the corresponding corridors and areas for other purposes. This likely ended the decades-long controversial project. The project aimed to create a shipping connection from the Baltic Sea to the Danube the Black Sea.
Standing here at Donau-Oder-Kanal Becken II we see not just water. We see a reflection of grand ambitions and the ongoing tension between progress and nature.