Planena Lock

The Planena lock is a lock on the Saale federal waterway at Saale-km 70.38. The actual village of Planena is a small rural village in the southwest of the district. It is largely occupied by the Saale-Elster floodplain. Registration for the smuggling is done by telephone. It is located in the area of responsibility of the outer district 5 in Merseburg. Between Trotha and the Leuna-Kröllwitz pipe bridge, the Saale has waterway class I and is mainly used by passenger and pleasure boats.

The use of the Saale for the transport of goods or passengers has been documented since 981. In chronicles of Saale shipping, it is reported that the water of the Saale River was dammed as early as the second half of the 14th century. The accumulated amount of water was used to operate mills or for rafting. On 21 October 1530, Emperor Charles V granted the Archbishopric of Magdeburg the privilege of free navigation on the Saale and permission to expand the river. The first wooden locks were used by the skippers to cope with freight traffic. In 1559, at the insistence of Archbishop Sigismund, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, regent of Bernburg, concluded a contract to expand and secure shipping on the Saale. It was not until almost 100 years later, from 1790 onwards, that Saale shipping was further expanded. The Elector of Saxony, Frederick August III, ordered the upper Saale and the Unstrut to be made navigable. After 1816, the Halle city architect Johann Justus Peter Schulze was entrusted with the construction of the Planena and Böllberg locks.

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