Brandenberger Ache carried timber for six centuries

The Brandenberger Ache in Tyrol served as a major timber transport route for about 600 years, until the last log drive in 1966. ORF reports that the work shaped the region’s economy and its people, and that its history is now being recounted in a new book by historian Georg Neuhauser.

The earliest written record of timber being floated along the river dates to 1412, when logs were sent from areas in Bavaria to Kramsach. About 300,000 logs, known as Drillinge and measuring up to four metres long, were cut each year. At the height of the trade, around 360 people worked in Brandenberg supplying fuel and charcoal wood for ore smelting.

A key structure was the Erzherzog-Johann-Klause, a dam about 14 metres high and almost 40 metres long. Logs were usually floated down the river twice a week. In the 16th century, as much as 60,000 solid cubic metres of firewood or charcoal wood were transported in a year, Neuhauser, a historian at the University of Innsbruck, told ORF.

The work was dangerous. Workers called jammed logs that blocked the river “Füchse,” or “foxes.” To free them, they had to rope down from paths along the river; sometimes dynamite was used to clear a blockage. Neuhauser’s father, Josef, one of the last people to witness the work, learned the trade at 14. He recalled being secured only by hemp ropes as he worked to free logs.

Timber work also took people far from home. Tyrolean lumberjacks went to eastern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, while a French company recruited workers from Brandenberg to Corsica in the 1930s. Conditions were harsh, Neuhauser said. His father recalled staying in a simple winter hut and, in summer, in a bark shelter at a high-altitude work camp, where the workers cooked for themselves.

At the end of the route, a timber weir in the valley caught the logs so they could be pulled from the water and sorted. The practice ended on the Brandenberger Ache in 1966. In his book From Forest to Water, Georg Neuhauser traces both the history of the timber drives and his father’s life. The river’s surroundings are now a popular destination for walks and outings.