History
Construction of the Mittelland Canal was started in 1906, starting from Bergeshövede (municipality Hörstel) on the Dortmund-Ems Canal. The section to Minden on the Weser was opened in February 1915 and was initially named Ems-Weser-Kanal. The section from Minden to Hanover was finished in the autumn of 1916. The section to Sehnde and the branch canal to Hildesheim were completed in 1928, Peine was reached in 1929, and Braunschweig in 1933. The final section to Magdeburg was opened in 1938, thus creating a direct link between Western and Eastern Germany. The branch canal to Salzgitter was opened in 1941. The planned canal bridge over the Elbe, necessary to avoid low water conditions in summer, was not built due to the Second World War.
After partitioning of Germany following the Second World War, the Mittelland Canal was split between West Germany and East Germany, with the border to the east of Wolfsburg. To provide access from the western section of the canal to Hamburg and Northern Germany, avoiding both East Germany and the Elbe River's sometimes limited navigability, the Elbe Lateral Canal was opened in 1977.
After the reunification of Germany, the importance of the Mittelland Canal as a link from the west to Berlin and the east was reinforced. The project to bridge the Elbe was therefore restarted, and the resulting Magdeburg Water Bridge opened in 2003, providing a direct link to the Elbe-Havel Canal.
Read more about this topic: Mittelland Canal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)