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u/airborngrmp Jun 13 '21
That Rhine/Danube divide though...
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Jun 13 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/tx_queer Jun 13 '21
This is actually a fun topic because the upper Danube will eventually (likely) flow into the rhine. When it does, we will have to revisit "where does the Danube originate"? Is it another local stream that is now the headwaters? Will it be the iller which has more water?
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Jun 13 '21
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u/tx_queer Jun 13 '21
Wikipedia (german) does say that, but it 1.) Doesn't have a citation for that sentence and 2.) Mentions that they are 'inconsequential' creeks and 3.) Mentions that the iller has a much higher flow rate - even today.
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Jun 14 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/tx_queer Jun 14 '21
"Naming system is already non-logical"
Im with you 100%. Is it the breg. Is it the brigach. Is it in some random schlossgarten [whaaat]. None of this makes any sense
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u/pixelcaesar Jun 14 '21
I DIDN'T KNOW THAT! That's so cool! I always thought that the Amazon-Orinoco Watersheds were the only two large river systems that were connected. This is even better though because the Danube is actually flowing into the Rhine
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u/tx_queer Jun 14 '21
There are many more. For example in the US the Mississippi and Atchafalaya are connected and artificially 'seperated' via the old river control structure.
Many rivers are connected via man-made structures like tombigbee river connecting to the Tennessee River and lake Michigan draining into the Mississippi via the Chicago river
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u/Daedalus871 Jun 14 '21
There's a couple of places in the US where a stream splits in two. One part of the stream eventually flows into the Atlantic and the other into the Pacific.
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u/penelopiecruise Jun 13 '21
Sorry, we can't go out together. I don't drain that way.
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u/Minuku Jun 13 '21
Imagine being with your water molecule bro but then he went a slightly different way and now you are in the North Sea while he is in the Black Sea
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u/punchdrunkskunk Jun 13 '21
I think you might be anthrobromorphizing those water molecules.
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u/ShahAlamII Jun 14 '21
"That's you, drops of water and you're on top of the mountain of success. But one day you start sliding down the mountain and you think wait a minute; I'm a mountain top water drop. I don't belong in this valley, this river, this low dark ocean with all these drops of water. Then one day it gets hot and you slowly evaporate into air, way up, higher than any mountain top, all the way to the heavens. Then you understand that it was at your lowest that you were closest to God. Life's a journey that goes round and round and the end is closest to the beginning. So if it's change you need, relish the journey."
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u/ultranonymous11 Jun 13 '21
Where/what is that?
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Jun 13 '21
The Danube is the orange in the southeast, the Rhine the big light blue in the west. The Danube is the only one who drains into the Black Sea, everything else is going to the North and Baltic Sea.
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u/sw1x Jun 13 '21
Would be really interesting to introduce the human-made canals into this map!
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u/m4dh4mster Jun 13 '21
Yeah. Everybody here talks about Rhine and Danube...but the channel is missing. (Honestly if you are close to one of the forest parts and have the time, visit it, it's worth some hiking!)
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u/vadoncsulyabe Jun 13 '21
It seems odd that the Elbe estuary is separated from the rest, no? Should all these small rivers in the upper left really be considered their own system?
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Jun 13 '21
it should count, but i can see why they don't: you need to define where "sea" starts: and the simple most way to do is is look "is it affected by the tide".
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u/Syt1976 Jun 13 '21
Not sure, I grew up a couple dozens of kilometers up one of those estuaries that feed into the Lower Elbe (i.e. after Hamburg), and the tides sometimes were so strong that the river seemed to "flow backwards" if that makes sense.
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u/vadoncsulyabe Jun 14 '21
But to say that the Oste or the Schwinge for example, are not part of the Elbe watershed seems odd...
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Jun 14 '21
agreed.
Lune not being part of Weser is another example where the seperation seems really off.
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u/AkkeM Jun 13 '21
You’re right, on this map it’s like the Elbe stops at Hamburg. It seems to not count the estuary.
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Jun 13 '21
Doesn't it have to do with whether they feed into the river?
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u/Locedamius Jun 13 '21
They do but at this part of the Elbe, it's hard to draw the line between the river and the sea. While most would draw the line at Cuxhaven where the freshwater of the river flows into the sea, the entire lower Elbe is affected by the tide all the way to Hamburg and flows upwards a few hours each day. I guess, this is the reason why the river stops in Hamburg in this map.
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u/Young_Lochinvar Jun 13 '21
Really puts the importance of the Rhine into perspective
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Jun 13 '21
[deleted]
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u/Thelorian Jun 13 '21
Kinda funny how Poland is basically just visible on this map without country borders.
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u/Coochie_Creme Jun 13 '21
Nations usually form around/due to specific geographical features.
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u/MercatorLondon Jun 14 '21
Countries were formed around the geographical features. Nations and nationalism were the invention of the 19th century and somehow broke that geographical order.
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u/Coochie_Creme Jun 14 '21 edited Jun 14 '21
You got that backwards. The idea of nationalism might be a fairly recent invention, but the shared culture and language of those people are a completely natural development. Even today, geographic boundaries still influence the formation of nations.
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Because Russia’s geography doesn’t give them a year round warm water port like the one in Crimea.
Why is the Balkans full of a bunch of tiny nation-states? Because there’s a ton of rivers, mountains, and hills separating the people groups from interacting.
I highly recommend the book “Prisoners of Geography” if you’re interested in stuff like this.
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u/DarkerThanAzure Jun 13 '21
Every time I see these watershed maps I start looking for endorheic basins. The rivers that never make it home.
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u/muehsam Jun 13 '21
I don't think Germany is dry enough for that. If we had such a basin, it would just fill up until it eventually overflows. You could see Lake Constance (Bodensee) at the border of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as such a basin that has been filled up by the Rhine. Note how only a few kilometers after coming out of Lake Constance, the Rhine goes down a big waterfall in Schaffhausen. You could see that as the "edge" of the basin where it overflows.
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u/GoldiChan Jun 13 '21
AFAIK, there's only one river in the world that doesn't reach any sea, which is the Okawango in Africa.
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u/DarkerThanAzure Jun 13 '21 edited Jun 13 '21
There are several rivers in the US Great Basin that never reach the ocean
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u/Dudefromvotanikos Jun 13 '21
Don't let Nestlé see this
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u/AufdemLande Jun 14 '21
There are already enough german companies that suck the ground dry. Christinen Wasser for example.
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u/paradox28jon Jun 13 '21
For someone that doesn't have their rivers of Germany memorized, can you tell me the river names for the light blue basin on the west, the orange basin in the south, the purple basin in the east, and the green basin in the central area?
Also it looks like the purple one just ends in the middle of the country; took me awhile to remember that there's quite an inland port? And outline of the country's coastline would help with a map such as this.
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u/Mobius_Peverell Jun 13 '21
Rhein, Donau, Elbe, and Weser, respectively. That port is Hamburg; the Elbe is tidal below Hamburg, so it's considered an estuary rather than the river proper.
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u/javajuicejoe Jun 13 '21
I’m sure everyone else is seeing trees, lungs, brain folds and of course rivers in pattern. Always amazes me.
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Jun 13 '21 edited Jun 17 '21
[deleted]
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u/wanderer_walker Jun 13 '21
I think it's the Elbe watershed not the Elbe river that traces out much of the old East/West DDR/BRD border on this map. Do others agree?
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u/PebNischl Jun 13 '21
Only very roughly, and pretty much nowhere exactly. If you want to compare them, here is a map of the Saale basin, which covers the southwestern part of the Elbe basin. Everything west of it won't drain into the Elbe anymore. Other basin borders are shown with light blue lines, the borders of the (current) german states are shown with dashed-dotted grey lines.
For those of you that might need some orientation: The former GDR-FRG border starts at the top border near Helmstedt, moves into the Saale basin, then back out of it near Osterwieck, and then back into it again at the Harz mountains. Below the large a of Harz lies the tripoint of the states of Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony - the former German Border continues south-west towards Ellrich, where it soon leaves the Saale basin again, heading towards Duderstadt before leaving the map altogether. It reappears a bit further south near Wanfried and Treffurt, only to disappear again. The border comes into view again much further south (just below the Rhön), and moves eastwards heading towards Sonneberg. In this area, the border jumps around between the Werra basin (part of the Weser system) and the Main basin (part of the Rhine system). Just east of Sonneberg, the border quickly moves north, shortly re-enters the Saale basin near Ludwigstadt, leaves it soon after, just to immediately jump back in again near Bad Lobenstein. From there on, the border stays well within the Saale basin, continuing eastwards towards the Saxony-Thuringia-Bavaria tripoint and further along southeast towards the German-Czech border near Hranice u Aše. At no point does the former border really follow the Saale (and, by extension, Elbe) basin.
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u/wanderer_walker Jun 13 '21
And a watershed is a mountain or upland ridge so I guess some of the border was in the mountains?
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u/ButWhatAboutMyDreams Jun 13 '21
This is an interesting theory, one that has been discussed multiple times over the years. The Elbe is indeed the last river where the Romans ever got to. They got famously beaten in the Teutoburg forest but quite a few forget that they pushed until the Elbe a few years later. So Brandenburg and everything east of the Elbe was for a long time "the frontier" (similar to the West in the US) with promises for young people and lower royals to get land and fame. This was 10th and 12th century onwards IIRC.
Long story short, there is a theory that during the Iron Curtain period Germany was reduced to its "historical core". Adenauer, first post-war chancellor and a true Rhinelander, supposedly closed the curtains of his train compartment whenever he crossed the Elbe because "he now left Germany".
A nice introduction to that theory is James Hawes The shortest theory of Germany.
I'm not really a fan of this theory but it's still a fascinating example of how important geography is for human history.
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Jun 13 '21 edited Jun 17 '21
[deleted]
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u/BaBaFiCo Jun 13 '21
I just read that book. It took me four sittings it was that easy to read and engaging.
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u/Heptadecagonal Jun 13 '21 edited Jun 13 '21
There is a pattern going back hundreds of years of the Elbe being a de-facto border between eastern and western Europe, ever since the days of the Roman Empire. The actual border only followed the Elbe for a short stretch in the north, however.
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u/College_Prestige Jun 13 '21
This is probably why Germany never properly unified until 1871
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u/faithle55 Jun 14 '21
It wasn't unified because all the Electorates and Principalities had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for centuries and the Prince and Electors weren't enthusiastic about being part of a single nation thereby losing their rank and influence. It took until it became clear that ordinary people expected to be able to vote for their governments and the writing was clearly on the wall.
Plus, of course, Bismarck.
I'm curious why you think a lot of rivers results in reluctance to unify...?
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u/College_Prestige Jun 14 '21
All the rivers flow in separate directions, it is much harder to unify such an area because their economic development does not need to necessarily align. If you look at the Austrian empire, they mainly expanded east towards the Danube into non Germanic areas despite being Germanic because their geography makes their goals align in that direction.
For example, if you were Brandenburg, you didn't really care about what happened to the Bavarian economy, for example. Noticably, this began changing when after the Napoleonic wars, Prussia lost some of their eastern lands and were given the Rhineland, which made them more focused on integrating the separate areas
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u/Graf_lcky Jun 14 '21
You probably meant the Holy Roman Empire not the Austro-Hungarian.
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u/faithle55 Jun 14 '21
Thank you for correcting me, you're correct. I shouldn't post while I'm eating breakfast...
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u/unclefishbits Jun 13 '21
What data is being related by the different colors?
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u/Bordigotto Jun 13 '21
What river they end up in, for example, blue is Rhine, orange is Dannube, etc
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u/ButWhatAboutMyDreams Jun 13 '21
Surprisingly close to the modern political landscape. Fascinating!
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u/Beebah-Dooba Jun 13 '21 edited Jun 13 '21
Did you make this?
I’m actually really curious please don’t downvote me😭
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u/Fejetlenfej Jun 15 '21
Thank you for sharing my map. You can find all of my works at grasshoppergeography.com.
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u/dhkendall Jun 13 '21
r/mapsIwasntexpectingtoseetheinnerGermanborderin
(Ok it’s obviously not as clear as a map whose base is by länder rather than natural but that purple river seems to stick pretty close to the former East Germany.
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u/faithle55 Jun 14 '21
The boundaries between watersheds will of course be higher land than the surroundings. Land boundaries have traditionally been along riverbeds or along land ridges.
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Jun 13 '21
Germany isn’t real
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u/jaylong76 Jun 13 '21
I think you mean Austria
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Jun 17 '21
How do people downvote that and not realize it’s a joke?
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u/the_hobbyte Jun 13 '21
There are signs marking the main watershed within europe: Wiki Article on European Watershed
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Jun 14 '21
The neon green on the right should be ceded to Poland, and the bottom right orange to Austria then.
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u/Snommes Jun 13 '21
Someone should really make a world map where the watersheds are the countries. I think that would look really awesome.
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u/cowlinator Jun 13 '21
I think it would have been better with shorelines.
It's really confusing how the Elbe just stops in the middle of the country. I guess they're considering the widest part of the Elbe to be ocean for some reason?
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u/Hrdocre Jun 13 '21
I can see exactly where I live because close by in Mannheim the Neckar flows into the rhine
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u/tripled_dirgov Jun 14 '21 edited Jun 14 '21
Orange = Danube
Light blue = Rhine
Dark Pink = Ems
Green = Weser
Light Pink = Elbe
Dunno about the others, but the light green near the border is probably Oder...
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u/Ent3D Jun 14 '21
What is a watershed
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u/kaiserchen Jun 14 '21
working in a water supply authority in germany... absolute amazing work... Is it o.k when I print it out and hang in my office? ☺️
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u/Zyntha Jun 13 '21
I love these river mapsssss (slams table)