Harbours in Vienna

For a long time, it was not necessary to build a Harbour in Vienna, because the existing natural landing points were sufficient for the level of trade on the Danube. It was only when steamships began to arrive in great numbers that a harbour offering safe berths became essential. Even then however, goods were for the most part loaded and unloaded at an unenclosed river harbour that was established at the end of the 19th century.

At the time of the Habsburg Monarchy, it was possible to berth at the natural landing points along the Danube, and at the harbour in the Wiener Neustadt Canal. This harbour was originally located near where the Wien Mitte train station now stands; in 1847, it was moved to the site of the Aspangbahnhof.

At first, ships could land in Vienna at the naturally occurring landing points on the Danube. These were flat sections of river bank with a surface of sand or gravel, onto which ships could be dragged to be loaded or unloaded.

Such landing sites required access to the adjoining ground further inland so that the goods delivered by boat could be transported further afield using horses and carts.

Landing points were located inter alia in Heiligenstadt, Nußdorf, Roßauer and Brigittenau. The Salzgries was also used as a landing site, primarily for ships carrying salt (Salz in German).

Not a lot is known about the construction of the unenclosed river harbour.

The harbour was established sometime after the regulation of the Danube in 1875 on the right-hand bank of the Danube. As the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft essentially commanded a monopoly over cargo and passenger transport on the Danube at the time, it seems likely that the company was the sole owner of almost the entire harbour until the end of World War I and the subsequent collapse of Austria-Hungary. After this time, the shipping companies of other states on the Danube had berths with warehouses, storerooms, and sheds as well as the necessary equipment to load and unload ships. The City of Vienna also owned refrigerated warehouses here.

Farthest upstream was an oil and petrol storage facility. This stood on a section of the river bank that was approximately three kilometres long and was the site of 50 tanks belonging to the oil companies Vacuum, Shell, Nova, Fanto AG and Redeventza.

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