Századok – 2014
TANULMÁNYOK - Pósán László: Vízszabályozás, mocsárlecsapolás és árvízvédelem a középkori Poroszországban II/335
ÁRVÍZVÉDELEM A KÖZÉPKORI POROSZORSZÁGBAN 349 WATER REGULATION, DRAINAGE OF MARSHLAND AND FLOOD PROTECTION IN MEDIEVAL PRUSSIA by László Pósán (Abstract) The study briefly presents the natural geographical features of the Vistula delta before the German settlement there in the 14th century, and then examines the means by which the Teutonic Order which dominated the area managed to populate it with settlers. These ways mainly involved efforts at drainage, the regulation of waterways, and protection against flooding. The cultivation of the Vistula delta was directly connected to the transfer of the Order’s capital in 1309 to Marienburg (Malbork), which lay along the Nógat, a tributary of the Vistula. The provision of the Grand Master’s court and of the central convent which comprised several knights and other members of the Order was only feasible by bringing the area under cultivation, and populating with tax-paying villages the marshy, waterlogged lands of the delta which, while fertile, sometimes lay under the sea level. The technique of drainage and flood protection that was employed in the Order’s state had been developed in the Low Countries, and was imported therefrom by settlers to the banks of the Vistula. The construction of the drainage ditches and dams needed considerable manpower, so work on the dams went hand in hand with settlement itself. In medieval Prussia work on the dams was a public obligation, and nor were exempt from this obligation the Order itself, the Prussian bishops and chapters, or the towns. Alongside protecting the settlements and the arable, the dams also served as the main arteries of land traffic. The study also devotes some attention to the fact that the dams, while absorbing a hugh amount of work and money, often failed to provide effective protection in those years of extreme rainfall and frequent storms which became ever more frequent in the period of late medieval climate change.
