Report on the workshop in Novi Sad

Ports on the Danube: Local stories of an international waterway

This summer, the book ‘Harbours on the Danube from Vienna to Novi Sad’ was published as part of the book series ‘Spatial Forms - Social Forms’. The background for the work was provided by the Hungarian National Archives, thanks to which a study examining archival primary sources on several Hungarian harbours was published here for the first time. As a continuation of the topic, MNL, in co-operation with the Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies (IDGL) in Tübingen and the University of Novi Sad (UNS), has begun international research on this topic, covering the entire Danube as far as possible. The conference in Novi Sad in November 2024, which brought together experts from Germany to Romania, was an important step in this process. Without summarising, I would like to highlight some of the interesting ideas from the presentations at this conference.

Balázs Tinku-Szathmáry, an employee of the Hungarian Museum of Technology and Transport, is one of the best experts on the archives of the First Danube Steam Navigation Company (DGT, DDSG). As perhaps the most internationally orientated large-scale enterprise of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the company not only dominated the Danube trade, but also contributed to the development of the Danube's logistical image by expanding its infrastructure. A key objective at the time was to link railway and shipping routes. Consequently, the modern harbours were also freight terminals (Figure 1).

The former railway areas on the edge of the city centre are a common pattern in the layout of larger Danube cities, even though the deindustrialisation of urban planning in the twentieth century largely eliminated both the ports and the railway lines leading to them. In Novi Sad, for example, after the Second World War, the port was moved to the opposite district, and with it not only the freight station but also the old passenger station (Figures 2-3). Although the Danube ports played an important role in local urban history, the use of the Danube remained relatively low compared to the large river ports in Europe of the late 19th and 20th centuries. The reason for this is (in the words of Zsuzsa Frisnyák) that Hungarian transport policy during the era of dualism was "rail-heavy." The Hungarian state tried to compete with the Vienna-based DGT by offering its own railway company cheap fares.

One of the best examples of the contradictions in shipping policy is Bratislava's winter port, whose construction history was presented by Monika Bočková of the Slovak Academy. Although the state-of-the-art "inner basin" port was built at the turn of the century, its utilization fell far short of expectations. The main advantage of the basin was that the fish were comfortable in it, joked an employee of the Pressburger Zeitung. However, experts thought the difficulties were only temporary. Bratislava's first land-use plan, in 1907, envisaged further expansion of the port in the form of an industrial canal that would encircle the city from the east. This was never completed, but after 1918 the new Czechoslovak state set out to make Bratislava the centre of Danube shipping, ahead of Vienna and Budapest. The industrial area next to the warehouses that were built at the time was home to the Danube fairs, which were also important for the emerging Slovenská identity. Today, little of it is visible. Since the opening of a new port in the 1980s, the old port has been largely absorbed by the city (only the immediate shore of the two basins is preserved - who knows for how long). Between the high-rise blocks and shopping malls, the centuries-old buildings that have been saved by the preservationists, like the warehouse “7” known for its tower, which looks directly onto the Danube (figures 4-5), are vanishingly small.

Between the two World Wars, of course, not only Czechoslovakia, but all the successor states, including Hungary, aspired to a leading role in Danube shipping. The history of the port of Csepel is relatively well known, but it was only in the recent work of Valentin Cseh (The History of the National and Free Port of the Late 19th Century). At the conference, Cseh presented the emergence of the petroleum port, which is also representative of the international character of the river, as its owners include Belgian, British and American companies. 

Interestingly, around the turn of the 1930s and 1940s, experts from Belgrade, who were also planning a central Danube port, visited Budapest to study a successful international port. This was the subject of a lecture by Zsolt Lazar, a lecturer at the University of Novi Sad. However, the war meant that the new Belgrade port was not opened until decades later, in the early 1960s. The strong modernist language of the service facilities built at that time is an architectural parallel to the industrial parallels of the residential areas of New Belgrade, which set the stage for the new "Yugoslav" architecture. But the Port of Belgrade, as it stands today, is probably in its final stages. The rail link was demolished to accommodate the city's growth, and lately the poor condition of the Pančova Bridge has made it difficult for trucks to access. The industrial halls, which are mostly empty, are rented out by mass entertainment events and film companies.

The port of Belgrade siphoned off traffic from Vukovar, among other places. At the end of the 19th century, the small Croatian town hoped to rise in prominence along the Danube. German entrepreneurs, primarily from the Banat region, arrived in large numbers to seize business opportunities. Daniela Simon, from the Danube Swabian Institute in Tübingen, highlighted in her lecture that the Danube reinforced the “cosmopolitan” character of Vukovar’s identity. The residents at the time were very proud of being able to reach Vienna, Budapest, and even Constantinople directly by ship. Of course, it is another question entirely whether a resident of Vukovar ever boarded a steamer full of affluent Western travelers. (Lazar Lazić, who spoke at the conference about the modern successors of the former luxury steamers—the Danube hotel ships—emphasized the distinctly Western-oriented and senior-focused nature of this segment.) Returning to Vukovar: Between the two world wars, the Czech factory Bata was a visionary presence in the town, particularly in Borovo, which adjoins the city along the quays. However, the development of the once modern industrial mining town later stalled, and its decline was ultimately sealed by the recent Yugoslav wars.

After discussing the sites that are relatively familiar to Hungarian researchers, we now turn to the Romanian-Bulgarian section of the Lower Danube (Al-Duna). At the end of the 19th century, the young Romanian state sought to align itself with Europe, primarily through trade on the Danube and the sea. Perhaps the most striking example of this regional policy is Brajla (Brăila), a model city laid out in a circular design. Dimitrios Kontogeorgis from the University of Cyprus analyzed this period through the lens of the Greek diaspora's dynamics. According to Nicolae Iorga, it is an established fact in Romanian historiography that, after the Phanariot period (1711/1716–1822), Greeks in cities like Brajla successfully transformed their influence into economic enterprises. However, as Dimitrios Kontogeorgis pointed out, many of the Greeks involved in Danube trade were newcomers, a significant number of whom did not settle permanently but found work only during the shipping season. In addition to affluent merchants, many Greek laborers were also employed in Brajla. The emerging trade in the Lower Danube region was generally characterized by the formation of ethnic diasporas without a corresponding hinterland.

This was the case for the German population of Szörényvár (Drobeta-Turnu Severin), known in Hungarian historiography. According to Daniel Banner, a researcher from Bucharest, the modern city was established as part of Russian Balkan policy to curb Vienna’s expansion in the power vacuum left after the Turks withdrew. The construction of the port was undertaken by the DGT, which leased the area for nearly half a century in the mid-19th century. The local German (monarchy-German) diaspora mainly comprised engineers, workers, sailors, and ship captains employed in the ship repair workshop set up by the company. In the 1990s, the Romanian state took over the factory, leading to a significant decline in the German presence. However, the architectural traces of this relatively short-lived diaspora, which lasted until World War I, are still visible today, including Catholic and Protestant churches and worker housing built according to the company’s designs. Yet, the black marble gravestones testify most strikingly to the diaspora's significance. One even features a photograph of a captain sporting a “sailor’s beard.”

In addition to internationally significant ports, smaller villages and towns were also mentioned. Altenwörth in Austria was, in the truest sense, not a port but rather a place to stop overnight. Andreas Krain, an industrial archaeologist, emphasized the dangers of this stretch of the river, which was unsuitable for navigation. This explains why, until the era of steamships, relatively many small boats traveled downstream and were then sold as timber upon arrival. Upstream journeys required shore-based towing, which only wealthier merchants could afford. As a result, they typically carried more valuable cargo upstream. Altenwörth itself became a riverside settlement only in the 17th century when a natural realignment of the riverbed brought it closer to the water. The port was created from a flood protection line. The residents were not drawn to the shipping trade and sought no connection with the sailors who rested there.

A somewhat more developed port was located in the three villages of Erdut, Dalj, and Aljmaš in the Syrmia region. Local wine merchants were the main users of these ports long before the steamship era. However, these three settlements near Osijek are not famous for their ports but rather for the ferry crossing, known in Hungarian transport history as the “Mushroom Ferry.” For a long time, there was no bridge over the Danube in this area, and trains were pushed onto ships one by one. The ferry’s regional renown is evidenced by the fact that color postcards depicted railway wagons “sailing on the Danube.” The conference focused on modern ports of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, the two preceding topics show overlaps between the pre-industrial and post-industrial eras and highlight that ports can also be an exciting topic for researchers of earlier periods—even if these waterways, in most cases, no longer resemble the uncontrolled conditions of two or three centuries ago.

Maximilian Hartmuth, an art history lecturer at the University of Vienna, offered a glimpse into this pre-modern world through his book Donau-Ansichten (Views of the Danube), published in Vienna in the 1820s. The lithographs in this book depict the entire Danube region, but the illustrations of Turkey are particularly fascinating, as this area was a terra incognita for residents of the Viennese Empire at the time. So unfamiliar, in fact, that the artists who created the images often did not travel east themselves but instead worked from sketches and oral descriptions. These views not only depict reality but also reflect the imaginations of the Biedermeier era’s perception of “the East.” Conversely, the illustrations are prominently centered around ports, suggesting that visitors from Central Europe (if they made the journey) typically retained this watery image in their memories. In conclusion, it is worth noting several general trends. The development of Danube ports is not only a matter of technological, landscape, and urban history but also of political history. Initially, the great empires, and after 1920 the nation-states, sought to exploit the Danube’s foreign policy potential. In a sense, the Lower Danube can be seen as a typical colonial area—albeit with the significant caveat that nation-states emerged as strong players among the empires very early on.

Changes in political regimes usually ushered in a new wave of port construction and the closure or relocation of old ports. In many cases, the growing cities’ demand for space played a crucial role. Investors’ appetite for highly valuable waterfront property has even threatened the survival of buildings with significant technical and architectural quality (consider the Great Market Hall in Pest). Meanwhile, there is now a dedicated body of literature on the reuse of riverbanks, known as “waterfront urbanism.” In this discourse, driven by urban planners, geographers, and sociologists, historiography can explore the genius loci of these locations. A volume containing the conference contributions is expected to be published in 2026 by Böhlau Verlag, edited by Daniela Simon and Máté Tamáska.

The original text was written by Máté Tamáska and translated from Hungarian using AI. The original version is available under the following LINK.