Richard Keiber, age 14, of Austin, Texas, for his question:
IS THE DANUBE RIVER REALLY BLUE?
One of the great waterways of Europe is the Danube River. It drains nearly one tenth of the area of the whole of Europe. The "beautiful blue Danube" is famous in song and history. Parts of the river look very blue at times while other parts of the waterway always look brown and murky.
The Danube is one of the principal traffic arteries of Europe. It is unique in being the only major European river to flow from west to east.
The Danube rises in the Black Forest region of West Germany and flows in a general easterly direction for a distance of about 1,700 miles, emptying on the Romanian coast into the Black Sea. The delta of the river is a region of desolate marshes and swamps, broken by tree covered elevations.
Navigation by ocean vessels is possible from the Black Sea to Braila, Romania. Then with large river craft it is possible to sail as far as Ulm in West Germany, a distance of about 1,600 miles. Also, about 60 of the approximately 300 Danube tributaries are navigable.
The basin of the Danube, more than 300,000 square miles in area, includes parts of West Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and the U.S.S.R.
Among the important cities on the banks of the Danube are Ulm, Regensburg and Passau in West Germany; Linz and Vienna in Australia; Bratislava, Czechoslovakia; Budapest, Hungary; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; and Galati and Braila in Romania.
Canals link the Danube with three other important rivers: the Main, Rhine and Oder.
The Danube has always been an important water route between western Europe and the Black Sea. In ancient times it formed the northern boundary of the Roman Empire in eastern Eruope and in the Middle Ages it was an artery for the migration of the Slav, Avar, Magyar and other peoples from east to west.
In the 19th Century the Danube became an essential link between the growing industrial centers of Germany and the agrarian areas of the Balkans. At that time, most of the river's middle and upper course lay within the Austrian Empire, while the lower part belonged to the decaying empire of the Ottoman Turks.
As the Turkish control over the Balkans weakened, Austria and the other European powers moved to prevent Russia from acquiring the strategic Danube delta.
By terms of the Treaty of Paris (1856), terminating the Crimean War, a European commission was established to control the delta. The Austrian government facilitated navigation by a series of improvements in that part of the river known as the Iron Gate.
The Treaty of Versailles (1919) set up another international commission to control the Danube above the delta. During World War II, the international commissions were abolished by Nazi Germany, which controlled all the river from 1940 to 1944.
After the war, the Communist bloc nations bordering the river formed a new Danube Commission, with headquarters at Budapest, Hungary. Austria was granted membership in 1960.