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The Elbe ( ; ; or Elv; Upper Sorbian and , ) is one of the major of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, northwest of Hamburg. Its total length is .
The Elbe's major Tributary include the rivers Vltava, Ohře, Saale, Havel, Mulde, and Schwarze Elster.
The Elbe river basin, comprising the Elbe and its tributaries, has a catchment area of , the twelfth largest in Europe. The basin spans four countries; however, it lies almost entirely just in two of them, Germany (65.5%) and the Czech Republic (33.7%, covering about two thirds of the nation's territory). On its southeastern edges, the Elbe river basin also comprises small parts of Austria (0.6%) and Poland (0.2%). The Elbe catchment area is inhabited by 24.4 million people; its biggest cities are Berlin, Hamburg, Prague, Dresden and Leipzig.
Here the Elbe enters the vast vale named Polabí (meaning "land along the Elbe"), and continues on southwards through Hradec Králové (where Orlice flows in) and then to Pardubice, where it turns sharply to the west. At Kolín some further on, it bends gradually towards the north-west. At the village of Káraný, a little above Brandýs nad Labem, the Jizera enters in.
At Mělník its stream is more than doubled in volume by the Vltava, a major river which winds northwards through Bohemia. Upstream from the confluence the Vltava is in fact much longer ( against of the Elbe so far), and has a greater discharge and a larger drainage basin. Nonetheless, for historical reasons the river retains the name Elbe, also because at the confluence point it is the Elbe that flows through the main, wider valley while the Vltava flows into the valley to meet the Elbe at almost a right angle, and thus appears to be the tributary river.
Some distance lower down, at Litoměřice, the waters of the Elbe are tinted by the reddish Ohře. Thus augmented, and swollen into a stream wide, the Elbe carves a path through the basaltic mass of the České Středohoří, churning its way through a picturesque, deep, narrow and curved rocky gorge.
The river rolls through Dresden and finally, beyond Meissen, enters on its long journey across the North German Plain passing along the former western border of East Germany, touching Torgau, Wittenberg, Dessau, Magdeburg, Wittenberge, and Hamburg on the way, and taking on the waters of the Mulde and Saale from the west, and those of the Schwarze Elster, Havel and Elde from the east. In its northern section both banks of the Elbe are characterised by flat, very fertile (Elbe Marshes), former flood plains of the Elbe now diked.
At Magdeburg there is a viaduct, the Magdeburg Water Bridge, that carries a canal and its shipping traffic over the Elbe and its banks, allowing shipping traffic to pass under it unhindered.
From the sluice of Geesthacht (at kilometre 586) on downstream the Elbe is subject to the , the tidal Elbe section is called the Unterelbe (Low Elbe). Soon the Elbe reaches Hamburg. Within the city-state the Unterelbe has a number of branch streams, such as Dove Elbe, Gose Elbe, Köhlbrand, Norderelbe (Northern Elbe), Reiherstieg, Süderelbe (Southern Elbe). Some of which have been disconnected for vessels from the main stream by dikes. In 1390 the Gose Elbe (literally in ) was separated from the main stream by a dike connecting the two then-islands of Kirchwerder and Neuengamme. The Dove Elbe (literally in ) was diked off in 1437/38 at Gammer Ort. These hydraulic engineering works were carried out to protect marshlands from inundation, and to improve the water supply of the Port of Hamburg. After the heavy inundation by the North Sea flood of 1962 the western section of the Southern Elbe was separated, becoming the Old Southern Elbe, while the waters of the eastern Southern Elbe now merge into the Köhlbrand, which is bridged by the Köhlbrandbrücke, the last bridge over the Elbe before the North Sea.
The Northern Elbe passes the Elbe Philharmonic Hall and is then crossed under by the old Elbe Tunnel (Alter Elbtunnel), both in Hamburg's city centre. A bit more downstream, the Low Elbe's two main Northern Elbe and the Köhlbrand reunite south of Altona-Altstadt, a locality of Hamburg. Right after both anabranches reunite, the Low Elbe is passed under by the New Elbe Tunnel (Neuer Elbtunnel), the last structural road link crossing the river before the North Sea. At the bay Mühlenberger Loch in Hamburg at kilometre 634, the Northern Elbe and the Southern Elbe (here now the cut-off meander Old Southern Elbe) used to reunite, which is why the bay is seen as the starting point of the Niederelbe (Lower Elbe). Leaving the city-state the Lower Elbe then passes between Holstein and the Elbe-Weser Triangle with Stade until it flows into the North Sea at Cuxhaven. Near its mouth, it passes the entrance to the Kiel Canal at Brunsbüttel before it into the North Sea.
| Špindlerův Mlýn | 979 |
| Vrchlabí | 11,968 |
| Dvůr Králové nad Labem | 15,170 |
| Jaroměř | 12,260 |
| Smiřice | 2,969 |
| 90,596 | |
| 88,520 | |
| 32,046 | |
| 14,536 | |
| 18,755 | |
| 19,472 | |
| Štětí | 8,438 |
| Roudnice nad Labem | 12,506 |
| 22,950 | |
| Lovosice | 8,605 |
| 90,378 | |
| 47,029 | |
| Bad Schandau | 3,423 |
| Königstein | 2,085 |
| Pirna | 38,361 |
| Heidenau | 16,540 |
| 555,351 | |
| Radebeul | 33,743 |
| Coswig (Saxony) | 20,462 |
| 28,080 | |
| Riesa | 28,850 |
| Strehla | 3,651 |
| Belgern-Schildau | 7,579 |
| 19,625 | |
| 44,984 | |
| Coswig (Saxony-Anhalt) | 11,494 |
| 78,731 | |
| Aken (Elbe) | 7,363 |
| Barby | 8,173 |
| Schönebeck | 30,067 |
| 236,188 | |
| Tangermünde | 10,350 |
| 16,682 | |
| Dömitz | 2,991 |
| Hitzacker | 5,020 |
| Bleckede | 9,613 |
| Boizenburg | 10,689 |
| Lauenburg | 11,644 |
| Geesthacht | 31,539 |
| 1,906,411 | |
| Wedel | 34,151 |
| 47,579 | |
| Glückstadt | 10,719 |
| Brunsbüttel | 12,381 |
| Otterndorf | 7,443 |
| 48,318 |
By the Treaty of Versailles the navigation on the Elbe became subject to the International Commission of the Elbe, seated in Dresden.The commission was staffed with two representatives of Czechoslovakia and one representative of Anhalt, Belgium, France, Hamburg, Italy, Prussia, Saxony, and the United Kingdom each, with Czecholosvakia and the German states being those, whose territory was crossed by the Elbe and thus competent for maintaining navigation installations. Cf. Der Große Brockhaus: Handbuch des Wissens in zwanzig Bänden: 21 vols., completely revised ed., Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 151928–1935, vol. 5 (1930): Fünfter Band Doc–Ez, article: 'Elbe', pp. 400seqq., here p. 402. No ISBN. The statute of the commission was signed in Dresden on 22 February 1922.Text in League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. 26, 220–247. Following articles 363 and 364 of the Treaty of Versailles, Czechoslovakia was entitled to lease its own harbour basin, Moldauhafen in Hamburg. The contract of lease with Germany, and supervised by the United Kingdom, was signed on 14 February 1929, ending in 2028. Since 1993 the Czech Republic holds the former Czechoslovak legal position.
Before Germany was reunited, waterway transport in Western Germany was hindered by the fact that inland navigation to Hamburg had to pass through the German Democratic Republic. The Elbe-Seitenkanal (Elbe Lateral Canal) was built between the West German section of the Mittellandkanal and the Lower Elbe to restore this connection. When the two nations were reunited, works were begun to improve and restore the original links: the Magdeburg Water Bridge now allows large barges to cross the Elbe without having to enter the river. The often low water levels of the Elbe no longer hinder navigation to Berlin. NoorderSoft Waterways Database
Many of these ferries are traditional reaction ferry, a type of cable ferry that uses the current flow of the river to provide propulsion.
The Elbe has long served as an important delineator of European geography. The Roman Empire knew the river as the Albis; however, they made only one serious attempt to move the border of their empire forward from the Rhine to the Elbe, and this attempt failed with the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, after which they never seriously tried again. In the Middle Ages the Elbe formed the eastern limit of the Empire of Charlemagne (King of the Franks from 769 to 814). The river's navigable sections were essential to the success of the Hanseatic League in the Late Middle Ages, and much trade was carried on its waters.
From the early 6th century Slavic tribes (known as the Polabian Slavs) settled in the areas east of the rivers Elbe and Saale (which had been depopulated since the 4th century). In the 10th century the Ottonian Dynasty (dominant from 919 to 1024) began conquering these lands; a slow process of Germanization ensued, including the Wendish Crusade of 1147.
The Elbe delineated the western parts of Germany from the eastern so-called East Elbia, where soccage and serfdom were more strict and prevailed longer than westwards of the river, and where feudal lords held bigger estates than in the west. Thus incumbents of huge land-holdings became characterised as East Elbian . The Northern Germany area north of the Lower Elbe used to be called Nordalbingia in the Middle Ages. When the four Lutheran Landeskirche there united in 1977 they chose the name North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church. Other, administrative units were named after the river Elbe, such as the Westphalian Elbe département (1807–1813) and Lower Elbe département (1810), and the French département Bouches-de-l'Elbe (1811–1814).
On 10 April 1945, Walther Wenck of the German Twelfth Army located to the west of Berlin to guard against the advancing American and British forces. But, as the Western Front moved eastwards and the Eastern Front moved westwards, the German armies making up both fronts backed towards each other. As a result, the area of control of Wenck's army to his rear and east of the Elbe River had become a vast refugee camp for Germans fleeing from the approaching Soviet Army. Wenck took great pains to provide food and lodging for these refugees. At one stage, the Twelfth Army was estimated to be feeding more than a quarter of a million people every day. During the night of 28 April, Wenck reported to the OKW in Fuerstenberg that his Twelfth Army had been forced back along the entire front. According to Wenck, no attack on Berlin was possible as support from Busse's Ninth Army could no longer be expected. Instead, starting April 24, Wenck moved his army towards the Forest of Halbe, broke into the Halbe pocket and linked up with the remnants of the Ninth Army, Hellmuth Reymann's "Army Group Spree", and the Potsdam garrison. Wenck brought his army, remnants of the Ninth Army, and many civilian refugees across the Elbe and into territory occupied by the U.S. Army.
In 1945, as World War II drew to a close, Germany came under attack from the armies of the western Allies advancing from the west and those of the Soviet Union advancing from the east. On 25 April 1945 these two forces linked up near Torgau, on the Elbe. The victorious countries marked the event unofficially as Elbe Day. From 1949 to 1990 the Elbe formed part of the Inner German border between East Germany and West Germany.
During the 1970s the Soviet Union stated that Adolf Hitler's ashes had been scattered in the Elbe following disinterment from their original burial-site.Hans Meissner, Magda Goebbels, First Lady of the Third Reich, 260–277
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