Engineer Neweklowsky spent a lifetime marking out the confines of the “Obere Donau,” the Upper Danube, and — once he had staked his claim — in sifting, classifying and cataloguing it inch by inch in space and in time, the colours of its waters and its customs changes, its landscape as we see it now and as it has been over the centuries that have gone into creating it. Like Flaubert or Proust, Neweklowsky devoted his entire existence to the work, to writing, to The Book. The result is a work in three volumes, a total of 2,164 pages (including illustrations), which weighs 5.9 kilos and which, as stated in the tide, deals not with the Danube as such, but more modestly with Navigation and Rafting on the Upper Danube (1952-1964).

In his preface, Ernst Neweklowsky specifies that his treatise is concerned with the 659 km between the mouth of the Iller, which flows into the Danube just above Ulm, and Vienna; including, of course, all the tributaries and subtributaries in the area. In the introduction to the third volume he nevertheless admits, with the impartiality of one serving a cause superior to all personal interests, that the concept — and the space — of the Upper Danube varies according to the standpoint from which it is considered. From the strictly geographical point of view it includes the 1,110 km between the source and the Gonyii waterfall, from the hydrographic standpoint the 1,010 km from the source to the confluence of the March, while for international law it extends for 2,050 km all the way to the Iron Gates; that is, to the old Turkish frontier. The Bavarians, with a more narrowly regional outlook, have it end at the Regensburg bridge, after which they even name a hydro-electric company, and consider the short stretch between Regensburg and Passau as Lower Danube. In the military vocabulary prevailing in the First World War, with regard to transporting war supplies, the name “Upper Danube” was understood to include the stretch between Regensburg and Gonyu.

Aware of the chaotic excess of facts, Engineer Neweklowsky sifts, examines, compares, connects and generalizes all these hypotheses of classification, even though his own point of view, which is that of nautical science, induces him to consider the Upper Danube to be the 659 km between the confluence of the Iller and Vienna. Between 1910 and 1963, the year of his death, Neweklowsky, Director of River Works at Linz from 1908 onwards and “Chief of the Danube” between Puchenau and Mauthausen until 1925, wrote on this subject more than a hundred and fifty articles for specialized magazines, along with lectures, exhibitions, scattered articles and a thesis for a doctor Between 1952 and 1964, when he was dead, the three volumes appeared — the monument to his life.

In those three volumes you find everything: the history of navigation from the pre-Roman era to the present day, the routes used and the types of vessel, pirogues and steamships, the propellers and the floor plates, the parts and the gear of the vessels and their names that varied with the course of the centuries and from region to region, the characteristics and differences of the various tributaries, the whirlpools and the shallows, the innumerable types of raft and barge, the pros and cons of the kinds of wood employed, the convoys, the fords and crossing-places, the rafting of timber, the composition and customs of the boatmen, the sagas and superstitions of the river, the levying rights, the voyages of sovereigns and ambassadors, the poems, the songs, the plays and the novels born of the river waters.…

His doctoral thesis, and later on his three volumes, constitute Neweklowsky's triumph, his achievement of totality, which is attained only when the disorder of the world is assembled in a book and arranged in categories. Neweklowsky sets up as many categories as possible, he tames phenomena and makes them stand in line, but he devotes animated attention also to sensitive, ephemeral details, to unique occurrences. His work also deals with changes of weather, the wind, unpredictable mishaps, a list of accidents (mortal or otherwise) taking place on board, the suicides and the murders, the divinities of the river, the busts of 132 boat-masters of Ulm and the little verses devoted to each of them. He describes the heads of the patron saints of the bridges, records the penalty laid down for the ship's cook who puts too much salt in the soup, and lists the names of the boatmen who were also innkeepers on the side, together with the sites of their inns.