Pader regulations against a „wildness“ of the Pader

With the exception of a few strip plots extending west and east of the „Neuhäuser Weg“, the flatter northern bank of the Pader was hardly suitable for agriculture and horticulture. Before the major Pader regulations of the 19th and 20th centuries, the original riverbed meandered through a wide strip of wet to marshy meadowland. Its banks were only suitable as pasture for sheep and small livestock. Field names on the original „Neuhäuser Uraufnahme“ (Neuhaus survey) (1837/38) such as “Wiesen auf den Pfühlen” (meadows on the ponds) near the fulling mill still refer to the former wetlands. The royal building officer Michaelis, who was in charge of planning the state regulation project in the 1870s, summarised the landscape as follows after a viewing of the course of the river (1871):

„The valley of the Pader is a narrow meadow valley. The meadows from the island bridge [Benedictine Island] near below Paderborn to the „Höpper-Brücke“ (Bridge) near above Neuhaus are, especially on the right [northern] bank of the Pader, in a state of advanced swamp formation.“[1]

At the lower reaches of the Pader, numerous riverbank properties from the town of Neuhaus were regularly flooded during unfavourable weather. Since there was no efficient drainage of the naturally wet meadow and arable land until well into the 19th century, Pader water stood on the flooded plots for many weeks after heavy rainfall, even in the summer months.[2] As an example of this, in August 1862 the landowner Schaefer zu Neuhaus complained to Dr. Grasso, the royal district administrator of the district of Paderborn:

„Although the present flooding was caused by the heavy thunderstorm that occurred here on the 22nd of the month [August 1862], the properties along the other rivers here were already freed of water 2 days later, whereas the meadows along the Pader are still so [flooded] that one can hardly see the tips of the grasses in many places. The second cut is totally spoiled both for hay utilisation and for pasture.“[3]

Increasing sedimentations, irregular plant pruning and half-hearted clearings of the riverbed, all of this being work that had to be done jointly by the state and the millers since 1830,[4] contributed to the „wildness“ [5] of the Pader in the 1860s. In order to counteract its unwanted renaturation, the district government of the town of Minden commissioned the „Baurat“ (building councillor) Michaelis to plan a comprehensive „Pader regulation“. Prior to this, a „police regulation for the large and small Pader“ was published in the „Amtsblatt“ (official gazette) of Minden on 5 March 1866.