Doneauschinger and the source of the Danube River

We drove from Dettingen through more small towns and more (now German) countryside to Donaueschingen. This was another town John selected to visit today. It known as being the source of the Donaubach in (historically considered the source of the Danube).

Wikipedia: Donaueschingen is a German town in the Black Forest in the southwest of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg in the Schwarzwald-Baar Kreis. It stands near the confluence of the two sources of the river Danube. Donaueschingen stands in a basin within low mountainous terrain.

There was a big yellow onion-spired church (St. Johann) named after John the Baptist, near the Quelle (source) of the river. There was a sculpture of the Baptist’s head out front.

The floor is beautiful.

Inside the church is a beautiful life-sized 500 year-old wood carved Madonna and Child sculpture.

Outside, we went down several flights of stairs to the Quelle where the water was bubbling up from the ground. There are several underground springs that come up and they consider these the origin of the Danube River.

Donaubach spring

The Donaubach rises on the castle grounds near the left corner of the front face of the castle Donaueschingen in a karst spring. This karst spring has an embankment of 15 to 70 L/s and enters into the Brigach after flowing 90 meters belowground. The Brigach and the Breg become the Danube after 1.5 km. The source is one of 22 sources in the area of the junction of Brigach and Berg. All of these sources are fed by both water which trickles away above them and rainfall which trickles away on the karstified downs of a landscape called Baar. Together, the Brigach and the Breg empty out between 400 and 1000 L/s.

The Donaubach spring was considered the source of the Danube since the 15th century at least (Hartmann Schedel in his Weltchronik from 1493), but several hints suggest that this might have been true even in Roman times (Pliny the Elder in Naturalis Historia), in which the river was located in the fringes of the populated areas. The oldest cartographic depiction by Sebastian Münster from 1538 shows the Donaubach spring as a rectangular pool; in 1875, the spring was modelled into a round pool after Adolf Weinbrenner’s design. In 1895 the artist Adolf Heer created a group of statues above the pool, depicting “the mother Baar” showing her “daughter”, the young Danube, the way. The supposed source of the Danube is a popular tourist attraction.. . .

The river Danube properly begins with the confluence of the two headwater streams Brigach and Breg in the region of Donaueschingen. The river flows on from there into the delta of the Black Sea, after 2811 km.

Beautiful cobble stones:

Here’s how the town is situated:

Then we walked into the town center, which was quite festive as Karnival approaches.

We stopped at the Tourist Info office and got a walking map and took a walk around town. Everyone here in these towns is setting up for Karnival or Fasnacht/Fasnet. There are banners hanging in all the towns, draped back and forth across the streets. Fabric strips about 3-4″ wide by about 12″ long hang from the banners/ropes and decorate streets everywhere. Town squares are also criss-crossed with these hanging banners of fabrics.

The Fastnacht theme here seems to be “the Fool, or “Narro.” The German word for fool is Narr. Shop windows are filled with scary masks and costume faces and witches and fools. The celebrations begin this week. It’s as big as Halloween at home with lots of masks and costumes and fun.