Why was the Kiel Canal built where it was? Why does it not cut across Denmark/Germany in the shortest possible land route?

by Reddit_Wolfe

Additionally, it seems the canal is a distinct diagonal shape that breaks off from the Elbe river, why not start the canal near Hamburg and then finish it nearby in Lubeck? This seems to be a shorter and less labor intensive route.

y_sengaku

Actually, there had been another famous canal around that area that connect River Elbe and River since the end of the 14th century: Stecknitz Canal. This waterway was a one of rare examples of canals with locks that controlled the water levels to facilitate the transfer of ships (linked to the picture of the canal lock in Wikipedia), and it had played an important role for Lübeck merchants to transfer the salt from Lüneburg both to the Baltic and to the North Sea (via Hamburg) at the heyday of the Hanseatic League. The canal had been essentially the predecessor of now Elbe-Lübeck Kanal (or Elbe-Trave Canal) that would be constructed in the end of the 19th century (1895).

On the other hand, the modern Kiel Canal also had its predecessor, though dated back only to the 18th century, Eider Canal that connected the Wadden Sea in the West with the Baltic Sea. In short, Kiel Canal in the 19th century re-used some of its waterways, not built from a scratch.

Then, why [ex-]Eider Canal was preferred to [ex-] Stecknitz Canal as a course of the new (?), actually renovated waterway by the emperor? I'm not so well versed in the 19th German history, but some previous research suggests the money was the issue.

  • Compared with Kiel and its canal, River Trave at Lübeck was shallow and had difficulty in keeping up the general upsizing of steam cargo ships in 19th century. It would have required much more money to dig the riverbed in accordance with the latest standard.
  • The political status of Lübeck in the 19th century was a bit unique......it became the small independent state after the dissolution of HRE in 1806, though it met various difficulties both in political-diplomatic and financial ways (small state with concurrent neighbors in trade). It joined in North German Confederation in 1867, then integrated into the German Empire in 1871, but the state seemed to inherit its financial weakness from the the former small independent state.
  • Lübeck also invested with the establishment of the railroad transport networks in the middle of the 19th century, so the policy of state government itself was not enough coherent to promote the further renovation of the old canal waterway (Stecknitz) around 1870s, Tanizawa argues (Tanizawa 2018: 152f.) Once the city government sold all the stocks of railway companies in 1883, they favored the canal again, but it was probably too late to compete with Kiel in the first round of the renovation of the canal.

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