At the invitation of the Camping Club Serbia, we drove from Belgrade along back roads above the Danube to a campsite near Smederevo, where we planned to attend the club's annual meeting.

When we arrived, numerous club members were already present and had already prepared refreshments for those arriving. In addition to the delicious food, there were many conversations, and we also learned previously unknown details about the Danube.

The Danube and its Significance in Greco-Roman History

As the second-largest European river, the Danube has left numerous traces in the cultures of its many riparian countries and beyond. Hesiod describes the Danube, according to its Greek name, as the son of Oceanus and Tethys. As early as the seventh century BC, Greeks sailing upstream from the Black Sea via the town of Tomis, present-day Constanța, ended their explorations at the Iron Gate, a rocky, cataract-filled stretch of shallows whose dangerous course made it impossible for Greek ships to continue their journey across the Southern Carpathians and the Serbian Ore Mountains (on the present-day border between Romania and Serbia).

The Greeks called the lower reaches Istros; the upper reaches were unknown to them.

The name Istros for the lower reaches was initially also used by the Romans; they named the upper reaches after the Celtic name Danuvius, who was worshipped as a god in ancient times. Under the Romans, the Danube formed the border with the peoples of the north almost from its source to its mouth and was also a route for troop transport and for the supply of the settlements downstream.

From the year 37 until the reign of Emperor Valentinian I, the Danube Limes was the northeastern border of the empire, with occasional interruptions, such as the fall of the Danube Limes in 259. The Roman Empire only succeeded in crossing the Danube into Dacia in two battles in 102 and 106 after the construction of a bridge near the garrison town of Drobeta at the Iron Gate. This victory over the Dacians under Decebalus gave rise to the province of Dacia; however, this province was lost again in 271.

Danube – from Hungary to Romania

Initially, Croatia (right bank) and Serbia (left bank) share the Danube. Not far from Batina, the Great Bačka Canal branches off to the left, which is part of the Serbian Danube-Tisza canal system. At Bačka Palanka, the Danube bends and then crosses Serbia in a southeasterly direction, from the Croatian to the Romanian border.

Just 25 kilometres after the Danube crosses the border from Hungary and the border inspection point of Bezdan, opposite Batina, lies the port city of Apatin, the first major Serbian city on the Danube. Until the end of the Second World War, it was inhabited almost exclusively by Danube Swabians. Further downstream, the river passes the city of Novi Sad, whose bridges were severely damaged in the Kosovo War in 1999. For over six years, traffic between the two halves of the city was carried out over a temporary pontoon bridge. Since this bridge was only opened three times a week, it represented the most significant obstacle to shipping along the Danube. Since the reopening of the Liberty Bridge on October 11, 2005, the Danube has been navigable again.

After another 75 kilometres, the Danube reaches Belgrade, the third-largest city on the Danube with 1.4 million inhabitants and one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on its banks, with settlements dating back some 7,000 years. The settlement was built around the mouth of the Sava River, with the Kalemegdan Fortress forming its core on a hill above the mouth.

Continuing its course through Serbia, the Danube flows past the industrial cities of Pancevo, at the mouth of the Timiș River, and Smederevo, where the Morava River flows into the Danube. Near Stari Slankamen, the Tisza, the Danube's largest tributary, joins it from the left.

Below the ruins of the Serbian fortress of Golubac, it enters the impressive Danube Gorge at the Iron Gate. Here, the Danube forms the border between Serbia and Romania up to the two dams, Djerdap 1 and 2. On the Serbian side is the famous Djerdap National Park.

The Danube's importance for nature

The Danube passes through many landscapes and climate zones, and its flora and fauna are correspondingly diverse. Despite numerous, sometimes severe, human interventions, the river landscape remains extraordinarily rich in species in many sections, partly because some particularly sensitive habitats have been protected.

A very significant problem is the constant erosion of the riverbed, which various government measures are intended to counteract, including regular dredging. Nevertheless, around 70 million cubic meters of sediment still reach the Black Sea every year, leading to constant changes in the delta area.

The Danube in Mythology

The Danube has been considered the archetype of a river in Eastern Europe since the Middle Ages. C. G. Jung increasingly developed his concept of the "archetype" to see it beyond the psychic realm. There is a "certain probability that matter and psyche are two different aspects of one and the same thing," and thus the archetype is essentially "determined beyond the psychic sphere," even if it manifests itself psychically. "Archetypes therefore have a nature that cannot be described with certainty as psychic." They also possess a "non-psychic aspect."

Jung maintained a long-standing exchange with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli on the questions of the "psychoid archetype" and the relationship between psyche and matter. The mythologies and religious systems of different cultural areas exhibit many similar or identical structures, patterns, and symbolic images. This can be interpreted as evidence of a common background of archetypal structures in the human psyche. One example is the worldwide occurrence of myths of a "Great Goddess" or "Mother" (the so-called mother archetype). Even Paleolithic Venus figurines may be an indication of this.

There are a total of 12 archetypes, divided into four groups, all of which address primordial images in the collective unconscious of humanity: order, fulfilment, change, and connection. Examples of archetypal symbols can be: a child, a warrior, a wanderer, a protector, a savior; fruit, house building, fire and blaze, a river, a lake, or the sea.

Thus, in Konstantin Kostenetsky's eulogy to Belgrade, the Danube is one of the so-called four rivers of paradise. The equation of the Danube with the Pishon goes back to earlier ancient views by Severian of Gabala and was revived by Byzantine writers through Michael Psellos.

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