"River meadow farming" in the 19th and 20th centuries

From 1873 onwards, the centuries-old wetlands of the Pader were for the first time converted on a large scale into raft and trickle meadows. On the newly reclaimed land, tenants and owners alike were to increasingly gain fodder grass and hay crops as well as new pastures.

The first beginnings of a raft meadow economy on the Pader can already be found in the early modern period. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Abdinghof monastery built a new dam on the Riemeke brook in the western Paderborn „Feldmark“ (parish land), in order „to be able to raft its meadows better.“[1] Until around 1870, however, the artificial irrigation of a Pader meadow was a private matter. [2] In early spring and summer, some residents, often to the chagrin of the mill operators,[3] cut through the banks of the higher-lying „Mühlenpader“ („Mill Pader“, a mill race) with spades to flood their grassland or hayfield. Also, summertime riverbank cuttings could conveniently supply drinking water to the grazing cattle. The annual „rafting“ (watering) served first and foremost to fertilise the soil naturally by supplying the grasses and herbs with the nutrients dissolved in the dammed water.[4] On the neighbouring Alme, these capital- and labour-intensive meliorations were initially carried out by larger aristocratic estates between 1824 and 1857.[5] From the mid-1850s, they were followed by farmers’ meadow cooperatives. Their members, like the cooperative in Wünnenberg on the Alme, Afte and Aa in 1856/57, invested their collective money in increasing fodder yields.

At first, the large landowners along the Pader converted their wetlands, which had previously only been used off the beaten track, into productive grassland. In addition to the Neuhaus economist Friedrich Schaefer, the landowner and building contractor Heinrich von Köppen (1824-1894) at Haus Ringelsbruch near Wewer was particularly involved in the conversion of the Pader meadows („Köppen meadows“). After the legal opposition of the Neuhaus mill owners Friedrich Müller (wheat mill) and Ludwig Gockel (fulling mill) was rejected by decision of the „Königliche Generalkommission in Münster „ (royal general commission in Münster) at the end of October 1870 – they feared water losses for their mills – the levelling and excavation work could begin. [6] According to older plans by the meadow engineer Bastian from Warburg (1866) and the „Project A“ (1872), numerous locks, weirs and ditches were completed by the end of the 1870s. The knight’s estate owner von Köppen implemented the construction measures. [7] He also undertook to take over the burden of the annual clearing of the Pader in the section between the city wall and the Höpper Bridge from the treasury for the one-off payment of 1,200 Talers (§ 2). After completion of the construction measures, von Köppen was to receive an additional 3,100 Talers from Berlin as „compensation“ for his participation (§ 1).

At the end of the 1880s, the raft water was increasingly polluted with organic waste. With the completion of the Paderborn slaughterhouse (1886), the „Schlachthauskanal“ (slaughterhouse canal), which was also newly constructed, took over the disposal of soluble slaughterhouse waste, which accumulated en masse in the city.[8] Constructed as an artificial diversion from the „Maspernpader“, this new branch also served as the main irrigation line for the city’s trickle meadows. The „Inselbad“ sanatorium on the Fürstenweg (prince way) was also affected by this, and the director of the institution, Dr. Brügelmann, finally took legal action against it. On a „complex of several hundred acres of meadows“[9] the foul-smelling but nutrient-rich sewage henceforth fertilised extensive green areas in the Pader meadows. It was only with the application of artificial mineral fertilisers that the costly and labour-intensive raft meadow management was gradually abandoned. In the 1960s, the last raft and trickle meadows slowly disappeared from the landscape of the Pader.[10]