The White Elster[ The "White Elster" river at www.germany-tourism.co.uk][ White Elster from National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Bethesda, MD, USA. Accessed on 16 Jan 2011.] (, ) is a river in central Europe. It is a right tributary of the Saale. The source of the White Elster is in the westernmost part of the Czech Republic, in the territory of Hazlov. After a few kilometres, it flows into eastern Germany where it cuts through the Vogtland in (according to the Encyclopædia Britannica) a "deep and picturesque valley".
Name
Although "Elster" is German for "
magpie", the origin of the name has nothing to do with the bird. The name comes from the Indo-European root el-/ol- meaning "flow" and the Germanic ending "-str".
Alster has the same etymology.
[Jürgen Udolph: Namenkundliche Studien zum Germanenproblem, S. 245, Sieboldshausen 1993, oder , im Eurasischen Magazin, 26. März 2004] The White Elster never meets the
Black Elster, which flows from
Lusatia into the
River Elbe. The rivers have the names "white" and "black" to distinguish between them.
History
The White Elster proved disastrous to the French troops when they retreated from
Leipzig in October 1813, as a part of the
Napoleonic Wars.
[Brookes, Richard and Marshall, John (1832). A new universal gazetteer: containing a description of the principal nations, W.W. Reed & Co,, New York, p. 270] Józef Poniatowski, Marshal of France, drowned in the river on 19 October 1813.
Elster-Quelle, Aš.jpg|Source of the White Elster
See also
