Configurations of the River in the 19th Century

A river that flows majestically through this popular epiteton the Danube has assumed the status of an imperial landscape. Although the epitheton has always been attributed to the greatest river of Central Europe, in the 19th century it has become inflatory. What was this majesty, the insignia of which could not been omitted even in the most objectiv descriptions, based on? Although the Danube was the second greatest river of Europe, its economic relevance was markedly inferior to that of the Elbe and the Rhine. Even his natural beauty had to be stressed again and again when compaired with that of the Rhine. The Danube was majestic not because it was a great river, but because as an element of nature it had to be made suitable for human plans and norms. It were the amazing ambitions and goals connected with it in the 19th century and the efforts that were necessary for accomplishing those goals that made it gigantic. It was the river regulation that has made this political discourse of the Danube particularly important, because it made the river to an assignment of the state that had to regulate and andminister it. However, the concept of the water highway Danube was connected with strategic goals of the Habsburg Monarchy int Southeast Europe. Proponents oft he Danube regulations preferred to call this a mission oft he Danube a mission, to which it yet had to be made capable. It had to be converted into a highway, on which goods and commodities could be transported in order to fulfill this mission. An intensified trade and communication argued advocats of river regulation would bring countries of the upper and the lower Danube closer to each other an would guarantee the emerging of a great economic territory equipped with various resurces. The monograf The Danube is the form tries to show how issues of the Danube regulation were discussed in the Austrian and Hungarian public, how they contributed to the concept of a Danube space and also by what kind of contradictions the concept was characterised. Through the analyses of albums and of travelogues in English, German and Hungarian is being shown how the aesthetic concept of the Danube as a whole was created in the 19th century.

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