Lock Halle-Trotha

The Halle-Trotha lock is a lock located at kilometer 89.20 of the federal waterway Saale in the urban area of the city of Halle in Saxony-Anhalt. Registration for locking takes place via telephone. It is situated in the jurisdiction of the outer district 5 in Merseburg of the Magdeburg Waterways and Shipping Office. Between Trotha and the Leuna-Kröllwitz pipe bridge, the Saale has waterway class I and is mainly used by passenger and sports shipping. In the urban area of Halle, there are five locks. Downstream are the Planena lock, the Böllberg lock, the Halle-City lock, the Gimritz lock, and the Halle-Trotha lock. The facilities compensate for a height difference of about nine meters over a river length of 15 kilometers.

The use of the Saale for goods or passenger transport has been documented since 981. Chronicles of Saale shipping report that the water of the Saale river was already dammed in the second half of the 14th century. The stored water was used to operate mills or for timber rafting. On October 21, 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 served shipowners in managing freight traffic. Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, ruler over Bernburg, concluded a contract in 1559 at the urging of Archbishop Sigismund to expand and secure Saale shipping.
Elector Frederick III personally laid the foundation stone for the first stone lock on the Saale in Trotha near Halle on July 13, 1694.
It was not until nearly 100 years later, starting in 1790, that Saale shipping was further expanded. The Elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus III, ordered that the upper Saale and the Unstrut be made navigable. The currently existing and usable lock was to be bypassed by a bypass canal linking Halle with the Halle lock. The construction documents were fully prepared in the 1930s. The three locks, the Gimritz lock, the city lock Halle, and the Böllberg lock were to be bypassed and the waterway made usable for the 1,000-ton ship. As for the Saale locks between Calbe and Wettin, a usable length of slightly more than 100 meters and a width of 20 meters was planned. The Halle bypass canal and the Halle lock were not constructed or completed due to the war.

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