Eidersperrwerk – Eider Barrage

The Eidersperrwerk is 20 km away from the holiday apartment and can be reached in 20 minutes.

The Eider is a river in the Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein. It rises North of Kiel and separates the counties of Schleswig and Holstein. The once natural course of the river has been altered completely over time.

The estuary, however, remained unchanged. Without the Eider barrage, without any of the locks along the river, large areas around the rivers of Eider and Treene would have been flooded during every storm tide – with the excepting of the higher located islands. The area was now protected from flooding, but this caused shipping routes and drainage sysemts to silt up.

Until 1935, the tide range, the difference between high tide and low tide, was up to 2.4 meters in Friedrichstadt and 1.5 meters in Rendsburg.

Rendsburg had been endangered during a high tide once, with dykes breaking along the river and flooded railway tracks. The communities nearby were unable to cope with the costs long term. In the 1930ies, they decided to dam the Eider close to Nordfeld, ca. 5 km south of Friedrichstadt.