Wörnitz (river)

Wörnitz Donauwörth

The Wörnitz is about 132 km long left tributary of the Danube and north in Bavaria.

• 3.1 River and Talnatur
• 3.2 Leisure and Tourism

Name

The name is preserved in the 11th century as Werinza, in the 12th century, wrote Warinza. For this name, there are two possible explanations. The name researcher Joseph Schnetz led in 1950 to the name Indo-European root ver with the basic meaning " ( to ) contact, ( to ) turn " back what the Partizipialendung - entia occurred. Thus Wörnitz means "the writhing, Spiralling ". Name researcher Wolf Armin von Reitz Stone has argued that the Indo-European root is uer, meaning water, was used, derived from the by -nt - suffix. This statement was, however, rejected by Schnetz.

The river gave its name several communities: Wörnitz, Wörnitzhofen, Wörnitzostheim and Wörnitzstein.

Geography

Source

The Wörnitz rises in Schillingsfuerst on the Frankenhohe a combined fountain and pulls from there in quite resistant to race in southern eastern directions.

Course

First, she moved to the south by the municipality Wörnitz through a very rural, with stock of forested hills meadow valley side to Dinkelsbühl and takes up the road from the right Ampfrach and Zwergwörnitz on. Just before this medieval town with its closed city wall begins a section in which her ​​many streams and ditches on both sides to distributions of Südsüdostkurs now, feed the numerous ponds, and gazing out to the Riesrand; some of the tributaries dissolves almost in a chain of ponds. Always eastern constantly they first reached this Wilburgstetten where their - again from the west - the tapers rotách.

From here she moves east-northeast until after Wittelshofen at the western foot of the mountain Hessel, where the largest tributary of the upper reaches, the Sulzach from its conclusion, their close and almost parallel run has denied her her east of here so far left more inflows. From there she moves in the direction of the incoming Sulzach on to east-southeast and reaches close to the other end of the small Hesselnberg massif Wassertruedingen where she abruptly returns to the south just before the recording of the Lentersheimer Mühlbach from the north. In South Course it enters the wide flat landscape of the Nordlinger Ries in Auhausen in the Northeast.

Even in the north, they passed the small residential town Oettingen. Almost at the southern edge of the ream, which they crossed in Southern Stream closer to its eastern border, it flows from the right to the Eger, which drains the greater part of the flat flat countryside to the west and zoom moves to its origin beyond the Württemberg border through Nördlingen. Then she enters a narrow, spiral, southeast running valley in the Jura Mountains on the border of eastern Swabian Alb and south Frankenalb in which the town of Harburg lies on the shore. Soon after it opens, after a run of over 130 km, in Donauwörth in Bavarian Swabia from the left into the Danube.

Catchment area

The Wörnitz drains an area of over 1600 sq. km south-southeast by the Danube. It covers a large part of the western Franks height and to the south the entire Ries with his border mountains. In the lower reaches it breaks in a Meander through the Swabian-Franconian Jura at the point where Swabian Alb from the west and Franconian Alb collide from the east.

In the north- west and north within its catchment area in Schillingsfuerst competes on a small piece of watershed beyond the Tauber on Main, on the largest part of the north-eastern boundary within its catchment area the Altmühltherme, which flows into approximately parallel run of the Danube. In the same west the Jagst pulls to the Neckar.

The Wörnitz is a part of the old, southeast -oriented tributary system to the Danube, which is expressed in a very uniform gradient curve of the river and an average bed slope of about 0.7 ‰. The Danubian also Altmühltherme in the northeast has a value of around 0.5 ‰, while achieve double the value of Wörnitz or exceed the Rhine -oriented neighboring rivers Jagst the west and Tauber in the northwest here.

It is the first major, today the Danube river draining to the southeast, which one encounters coming from the direction of the middle Neckar at Heilbronn, when one crosses the West German level country to the east. Before longer periods of geological time, the front now in progress at the Neckar Kocher and Jagst still flowed in this direction to the Danube. A clear indication of the profit of the Rhine system one sees when Schillingsfürster origin. Law and northwest of the top run there falls the Franks height beyond a small terrain undulation in the town on the first two kilometers of exposed through the Rhenish erosion violently attacking Hohenlohe level by more than 80 m steep, while the Wörnitz not yet on their over 130 km run once 100 m slope shows.

Colonization

In the valley are usually only small villages and farms, the only major cities are in front of the Danube Mündungsort Wörth an der Donau with under 19,000 inhabitants Dinkelsbühl with less than 12,000 and Wassertruedingen, Oettingen and Harburg with 5000-6000 inhabitants. Even from these lives a significant portion outside the centers in many small hamlets and farmsteads, because the communities and towns include in this sparsely populated landscape large areas in agricultural and forestry corridor.

Inflows

The 10 km long tributary of the Wörnitz in order of Zumündung ( data after the main article):

Wörnitzquelle in Schillingsfuerst at the Dombühler road at about 490 m above sea level. NN.

• Ampfrach, right across from wet cheeks -Reichenbach, about 10.5 km.
• Zwergwörnitz, from right to 440.8 m above sea level. NN between tuft hole and Lehengütingen, 16.0 km and 23.1 km ².
• Rotách, right at Wilburgstetten, 20.8 km and 87.7 km ².

• Sulzach, left at Wittelshofen below the Wörnitzbrücke, 40.6 km.
• Lentersheimer Mühlbach, left right in front of Wassertrüdinger Oberau mill, about 18.2 km. Headwaters names digging holes, then Eglesgraben.

• Augraben, right at Oettingen, about 11.2 km.
• Mühlbach, right at Munningen, about 14.7 km.
• Grimm ditch from the right at Munningen, about 10.3 km. Calculated with the longer upper reaches of the right -side Grimm trench.
• Rohrach, left at Wechingen, about 19 km. Current flows through the middle reaches of the Hahnenkammsee.
• Toboggan Bach, from left at Alerheim to 406.4 m above sea level. NN, about 13.9 km.
• Schwalb or Schwalbach, from left to Bühl in Ries, 14.1 km.
• Eger, from right at Heroldingen to over 405 m above sea level. NN, 36.9 km

• Ellerbach, left at Ebermergen to below 403 m above sea level. NN, about 11.8 km.
• Kaibach, from left in Donauwörth, 10.9 km.

Mouth of the Danube Wörnitz in Wörth to about 395.1 m above sea level. NN from the left into the Danube.

Outflow

The average discharge is at level Harburg (river mile 19.3 ) 11.3 m³ / s, the average flood discharge 147 m³ / s The highest measured outflow was on 21 December 1993 444 m³ / s Such water levels lead to wide overbank flooding and even to block the B 25

Environment

River and Talnatur

The above-mentioned low gradient of an old river also explains the character of the watercourse and its valley. The Wörnitz draws on large stretches of their course with numerous meanders through a low, moist grassy hollow, often accompanied by abandoned oxbows and straight drawn drainage ditches, which should make the floodplains of farming land. The surface of the river is often as smooth as glass and can be recognized at first glance have no movement. End of the feed streams are often dammed to form ponds, some of it dissolves into a chain of such water areas. In some places there are old mill building on the banks or on side channels.

At the river Mulde accompanying low altitudes to the neighboring valleys often grows forest; only on the route through the flat ream the right side remains open throughout.

Only at the very least in the gap through the Jura near Harburg first appear on high and steep valley sides.

Leisure and Tourism

The Wörnitz is known for its meandering course of a variety of loops and arches, it is therefore also called " snake river ". Because of its pure water and its leisurely flow rate is available at the Wörnitz several river pools and bathing places, including in Dinkelsbühl ( Wörnitzstrandbad ) Wassertruedingen ( Wörnitzbad ) and Oettingen ( Wörnitzfreibad ). Because many mills are located along the river and its dams are different to portage poorly than about when Altmühltherme that Wörnitz is difficult to navigate by canoe.