Danube River Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The Danube River is the second longest in Europe, at 1771 miles-only the Volga River is longer. It has been an important international waterway for many years, and in the ancient world represented the northern border of the Roman Empire as the river Danuvius.

The catchment area for the river is in southern Germany, where two streams, the Breg and the Brigach, combine to form the river near Donaueschingen, a small town on the eastern slopes of the Black Forest. The river then passes through the Swabian and Franconian mountains, passing the Bavarian plateau and then reaching its northernmost point at Regensburg, the capital of the Upper Palatinate. It then flows south through Passau into Austria, passing through Linz to Vienna, where, to reduce the threat of flooding, the river is diverted through a man-made canal. From there it goes into Slovakia, passing through Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital. From there is flows through Komarom, Estergom and Budapest across the Great Alfold Plain until the Iron Gate Gorge, where a massive hydroelectric scheme was developed during the 1970s.

In eastern Hungary, it joins with its tributaries, the Drava, the Tisza and the Sava, with the Lower Danube flowing through Vukovar, in Croatia, then to Novi Sad, capital of the Serbian province of Vojvodina, then passes through Belgrade. It then goes between the Walachian Plain of Romania and the Danubian Plain of Bulgaria. It later splits into three channels heading into the Black Sea. According to legend, this delta region is one of the possible burial grounds for Attila the Hun.

The Danube has long been an important route of commerce through Europe, with large numbers of ships transporting produce and letters. Many barges now transport supplies, and there are also a number of tourist cruises. The Rhine-Main-Danube Canal now connects with the Danube, enabling ships to travel from the English Channel to the Black Sea; and in 1994, the river was declared one of the ten Pan-European transport routes.

Since Roman times, many battles have taken place along the Danube. The river protected Vienna from attack during its siege by the Turks in 1683. Napoleon’s capture of Ulm on October 20, 1805, allowed the French to cross the river, and the battle of Wagram on July 5-6, 1809, was fought on the east bank of the river. During World War I, Austrian soldiers held most of the river. In World War II it provided a route for German supplies. The breakup of Yugoslavia saw fighting in Vukovar in 1991; and in 1999, NATO planes bombed the bridges over the Danube.

As well as hydroelectricity at places such as the Iron Gate Gorge, some ten million people in Europe get their drinking water from the Danube. Although in medieval times, many people lived from fish caught from the river, this only continues in the delta region.

The Danube has also been associated with the Danube School of landscape painting from the sixteenth century, and the subject of the musical waltz by Johann Strauss the Younger (1825-99), An der schinen blauen Donau, better known in English as the “Blue Danube.” There is also The Waves of the Danube by the Romanian composer Ion Ivanovici (1845-1902).

The river is now protected by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River; and the Danube Delta became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.

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