An Old Salt Town
Shipping downriver was called "Naufahrt", shipping upriver "Gegenfahrt". Its main cargos were once
salt from the towns of Hallein, Berchtesgaden, Reichenhall and Traunstein, and wood and iron from
the Oberpfalz region. It was also the major supply line in the wars against the Ottoman Empire,
especially during the two sieges of Vienna.
From Hallein, salt was loaded onto ships which
sailed down the Salzach River to the Inn River.
The Inn River is a tributary of the Danube, with
its source in the Swiss Alps near St. Moritz in
the Engadin region, named after the river.
Cities on the banks include Burghausen, the biggest city of the district
Altötting in Bavaria. It probably developed between the 6th and 8th century
at the river bank to take advantage of the salt trade. On top of the mountain
ridge perches the longest castle of Europe, 1.043 meters in length. The
Salzach River finally joins the Inn near Braunau.
The Danube, Ilz and Inn (or En) rivers meet at the same point in Passau, a city known in ancient times
as Celtic Boiodurum, then later as Batavis, and as part of Roman Noricum, Bazzawa, then Passawe,
and ultimately Passau. A bishopric in the fifth century, Passau evolved into the largest in the entire
Holy Roman Empire, its influence extending even into present-day Hungary.
Salt from Hallein was loaded on to ships bound for the old city
of Passau, and since the 13th Century, Hallein supplied nearly
half of its output to the port at Passau. The ancient area of
Passau was settled more than 7,000 years ago. Barbarossa's
armies once stopped in there on their way to the crusades and
Alexander Humboldt described Passau as “one of the seven
most beautifully situated cities in the world”.
At the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century, Bohemian merchants started loading salt
in Passau rather than in Linz after Emperor Heinrich II donated a large part of the northern woods
towards the Bohemian border to the monastery of Niedernburg in 1010. This enabled the monastery
to collect the so called "Bohemian Toll" between Inn and Danube. They gave half of the toll to
Passau and it helped erect new public buildings and to maintain the old and also maintain bridges.
When laws regulating the salt trade were drawn by Bishop
Otto, he ruled that salt which was transported on the Inn had to
be stored and offered for sale in Passau for at least three days
and it went through several "processing stations" there which
were in the hands of businessmen called "Salzfertiger" who ran
the large warehouses for the salt storage. These merchants
established a powerful monopoly against their competition from
Bohemia and Austria. After the three days and the customs
clearance, the salt could continue its way toward the north and
east. The trade route from Passau to Bohemia was one of the
"Golden Paths." Some salt which arrived from the Inn, Salza
and Danube was transported from Passau on the water route
upstream to Regensburg and downstream to Vienna.
Half of the salt went on to Bohemia all the way to Prague. The citizens engaged in the salt trade grew
wealthy, and the salt duty was a substantial source of income for the local bishops.
The salt ships put in at Passau behind the Schaiblingsturm located at the banks of the Inn River in
Passau, which dates back to the 14th century. It was part of the old salt boat harbor in Passau, and
there the salt had to be stored in a salt barn. The 16th century salt ships had a capacity of 14 to 65
metric tons. Each boat carried a load of approximately three hundredweights. In 1500, the crew of a
small salt ship consisted of about eleven, although a big group of ships consisted of fifty seven or so.
The 15th century was Passau's great age and there was then a busier traffic on the Danube and Inn
Rivers than the traffic on the Rhine River.  When Bohemia came under Habsburg rule in 1526,
Passau's salt trade came to an abrupt end when the Bavarian Duke set up his own loading point for
salt close to Passau in the "Hofmark of St. Nikola". In 1534, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and the
Archbishop of Salzburg negotiated that the output of the salt mine in Hallein would from now on
belong to Bavaria and that Bohemia would now receive its salt from Austria.
All salt imports to Passau were forbidden in 1706, and Passau lost the last vestiges of its tremendous
economic importance. It simply faded into a pretty, lazy town by the rivers.
Sources of danger of river travel were rocks, sand bars, whirlpools, low bridges, ice floes and fog.
Spring flooding was a main danger along this river with the many tributaries starting in the Alps, and
a main obstacle for ships were the rapids near Passau and the low Stone Bridge in Regensburg.
Some salt which arrived from the Inn, Salzach and
Danube rivers was transported from where the rivers
converged at Passau, left, upstream to Regensburg and
downstream to Vienna. Half of the salt went on to
Bohemia all the way to Prague and even regions well
beyond. The Danube River was then navigable up to the
town of Ulm, and people used either rafts or river barges.
The River Salzach, an eastern tributary of the Enns, is the main river of Salzburg. Its source is in the
Kitzbühel Alps near Krimml, Salzburg. From here it runs northwards and passes the cities of Hallein
and Salzburg. Then it forms the border between Bavaria, Germany and Austria for almost 43
miles.Beautiful little castles and hamlets once dotted the riverside.The river winds past the numerous
toll stations where the shipments were taxed by the various princes of the region.
It runs north-eastward, entering Austria, and from Landeck eastward through the Tyrol where it
passes the border to Bavaria near Kufstein. In Bavarian territory the river runs northwards and then
it turns east and is enlarged by two major tributaries, the Alz and the Salzach. From here to where it
finally enters the Danube, it forms the border between parts of Germany and Austria.