It won't happen, not this year and certainly not next year either. When Michael Witfer stands in front of the high concrete walls of the Wüsteneutzsch lock ruins and tells curious passersby about the unique fate of what was once Germany's largest lock staircase, the man from Merseburg in eastern Germany is completely honest.
His dream of a ship passing by here - where today only the remains of a major construction project stretch into the sky, abandoned eight decades ago - will probably not come true in the next decade.
A Canal in the Bushes
But it would still be nice, says Witfer, who dreams of seeing a ship floating on the Saale-Elster Canal someday in his life. Here, on the northern edge of the small town of Wüsteneutzsch near Leuna, the canal can only be guessed at through the dense bushes. The flooded waterway, which was once meant to lead to the Saale River near Merseburg, stretches just beyond Günthersdorf, across the highway.
Along the way, the canal has been excavated in places but remains dry to this day - an adventure playground for motocross riders from the surrounding villages. And in the middle of it all, this lock rises above the flat landscape like a spaceship. From the fields, above which kites circle, rises the massive concrete structure, originally intended to compensate for a 24-meter elevation difference on the way to the Saale River in a technically sophisticated way.
A Dream of a Ship
Like a skyscraper, the ruin rises from the landscape, cast decades ago from thousands of tons of concrete in the middle of nowhere to open Saxony’s way to the sea. The walls stand gray to this day; the cement is barely crumbling but has been covered with trees and reclaimed by bushes into the bosom of Mother Nature.
What was once supposed to be the Saale-Elster Canal ends on the northern edge of the small town of Wüsteneutzsch near Leuna, without even having begun. The towering concrete walls were once intended to be a lock that would connect the canal, which stretched just beyond Günthersdorf, with the Saale, the Elbe, and then the sea. Today, they are a river of stone.
24-meter evelation
The designers had to overcome a 24-meter elevation difference on the 19-kilometer stretch from the Elster in Leipzig to the Saale. Construction began in 1933, and work was stopped in 1942. One year later, the major construction project, officially called the "South Wing of the Mittelland Canal," was halted. This was not an idea of the Nazis but one that goes back to Leipzig city councilor Karl Heine.
As early as the 19th century, the entrepreneur had taken up plans by the Saxon King Frederick Augustus I to connect Leipzig to the Saale and Elbe rivers and began digging the Karl Heine Canal, now named after him, from the White Elster River westward.
Ruins of giant plans
Heine didn’t get far. After two and a half kilometers, it ends on the western edge of Leipzig. It is 20 kilometers to the Saale federal waterway and another 75 to the Elbe. Compared to the Mittelland Canal or the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, which were dug for hundreds of kilometers across the country, this is a mere distance.
In 1926, the German Reich and the states of Prussia, Saxony, Anhalt, Thuringia, and Brunswick concluded a treaty declaring the completion of the waterway as the "southern wing," part of the plans for the Mittelland Canal from Peine to Magdeburg. However, further construction never got underway.
What didn’t even have an official name for decades, before the Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration decided in 1999 to designate the dry stretch as the "Saale-Leipzig Canal," has remained a phantom.
Quiet for eight decades
Immediately after the war, an attempt to restart work fizzled out. Seven and a half kilometers of canal are missing between Günthersdorf and the Saale near Kreypau - and have been for eight decades. The upper lock chamber at Wüsteneutzsch was almost completed.
In the 1950s, the GDR government had the lock gates dismantled and brought to the Oder-Havel Canal. When oil prices rose in the 1970s, there were brief considerations of completing the canal to enable energy-efficient transport of goods. But the planned economy always lacked the money, resources, and strength to make a new attempt.
Beavers and trees
Near Wüsteneutzsch, the almost completed lock chamber therefore stands in an open field like a memorial to the shattered dream of the sea. Eighty-five meters long, twelve meters wide, and sixteen meters high, the concrete walls stretch into the sky. Their counterpart is a hole: the lower lock chamber remained an excavation pit, which has since transformed into a lake where anglers sit and beavers fell trees at night.
On fine days, amazed day-trippers clamber over the lock ruins, lovers of lost places make pilgrimages here, and history buffs are guided by members of the Saale-Elster Canal Friends Association. They explain that the forgotten canal could be much more than a failed megalopolis project from a time when humans believed they could reshape nature and the landscape as they saw fit.
Only 7.5 kilometers left
If Michael Witfer has his way, it should continue. However, the two men from the Saale-Elster Canal Association aren’t thinking about cargo ships and freight transport like previous generations of canal advocates. "All we’re missing is 7.5 kilometers and a boat lift," says Becker, "then it’ll be a tourist attraction."
Hundreds of thousands of visitors would come, he believes, including water tourists from near and far. Years ago in Scotland, he visited the Falkirk Wheel, a seemingly utopian boat lift built 20 years ago that now attracts millions of curious visitors. "That would be exactly what we need," he says.
