Hartbach

The Hartbach is a small tributary of the Inn in western Upper Austria. It rises near St Martin im Innkreis and winds north-west for about nine and a half kilometres through gentle farmland and the edge of the Hartwald forest. Near Reichersberg it becomes the Reichersberger Bach and finally slips into the Inn’s broad flood-plain between two hydroelectric plants. Monks from Reichersberg Priory shaped the lower course in the 11th century. They diverted the stream for five and a half kilometres along the hillside to water the monastery lands and gardens, creating pronounced meanders that still look natural today. Early engineers even advised digging the channel so that it would ‘run like a boar’s grunt’. Higher up, the monks also redirected water from the Senftenbach to feed the Hartbach, work begun around 1085 when they drained the marshy meadows around today’s Schloss Arco-Zinneberg. The river’s mouth lies within one of Austria’s most important conservation areas, the Lower Inn Europark. This mosaic of wet meadows, oxbow lakes and reed beds shelters rare birds and plants. Visitors can follow quiet paths along the dykes and through the Auwälder, watching kingfishers dart above the shallow waters and listening to the calls of warblers in the reeds. The Hartbach’s gentle curves and the monks’ old weirs offer a quiet lesson in how water and landscape can be shaped with care.