The Wiese () is a river, 57.8 kilometres long, and a right-hand tributary of the Rhine in southwest Germany and northwest Switzerland.
From its source in Baden-Württemberg in the Southern Black Forest on the mountain of the Feldberg, it flows for a short distance though the county of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald and then mainly across Lörrach and through numerous settlements including the county town of Lörrach. After crossing the international border, the lower reaches of the river pass through the canton of Basel-Stadt, mainly through the city of Basel and through its district of Kleinbasel before emptying into the Upper Rhine.
The valley of the Wiese, which drains a catchment of 455 square kilometres, is called the Wiesental or Wiese Valley; it is oriented roughly towards the south-west. Its largest tributary is the Little Wiese (Kleine Wiese) which approaches from the north. The right-hand Rhine tributary of the Wiese and the left-hand Rhine tributaries of the Birsig, which discharges into the Rhine at the Basel port of Schifflände, and the Mühlebach, which flows under the Dreirosen Bridge, are the three biggest Upper Rhine tributaries on Swiss soil.
Name Etymologically, the name Wiese is probably derived from the Old European root word virs or is- for water, or water, and has nothing to do with the German word , which means "meadow".Krahe, Hans: Theorie über die älteste Gewässernamengebung, see also Vennemann (1994), Steinbauer (1996).
Geography Course of the river
The Wiese rises in the Black Forest in the Southern Black Forest Nature Park. Its source, the Wiesenquelle lies in the county of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald immediately west of the residential area of Hebelhof in the municipality of Feldberg between the Feldberg (), the highest mountain in the range, to the northwest and the Grafenmatt () to the south-southwest at about .Topographic map 1:25,000 scale The section of the B 317 from Feldberg Ort via Hebelhof to Todtnau runs past the source a few metres to the north.
The Wiese crosses into the county of Lörrach just below its source. It flows through the Black Forest, initially in a southwest direction along the B 317 through the Wiesental valley. Leaving from the Feldberg, it flows, hemmed in by the steep mountainsides of the High Black Forest, past the hamlets of Fahl and Brandenberg, still as a mountain stream, and through the village of Todtnau. From there it heads to and through Badnau, past Geschwend, through the villages of Utzenfeld, Schönau im Schwarzwald, Wembach, Fröhnd, Mambach, Atzenbach and Zell im Wiesental.
Between Zell and Hausen the narrow Black Forest valley of the Wiese opens up into a wide plain in which the Wiese first passes Fahrnau and then reaches Schopfheim. There it turns westwards and separates the Black Forest from the Dinkelberg.
After flowing through the town of Schopfheim, it passes by or through the villages of Gündenhausen, Maulburg, Höllstein and Steinen, and the Lörrach quarters of Hauingen, and Haagen, before crossing under the A 98 motorway, then Tumringen, Lörrach itself and Stetten, after which the B 317 turns away from it.
Behind the bridge over the Wiese in Stetten on the Weil am Rhein-Lörrach railway, the Wiese leaves German territory and flows, for its last 6 kilometres, on Swiss soil, initially through the municipality of Riehen. The German municipality of Weil am Rhein, which borders on the north-west of Riehen, does not reach all the way to the Wiese; but a short section of the Mühleteich, a branch of the river, flows through Weil am Rhein. After leaving Riehen, in the district of Kleinbasel, the river crosses under the Karlsruhe–Basel high-speed railway and, shortly thereafter, at the junction of the Swiss A2 and A3, under the A2, which becomes the German A5 motorway a little further to the north.
The Wiese finally enters the Upper Rhine between the Kleinbasel quarters of Klybeck to the south and Kleinhüningen to the north at a height of . A little further south the Upper Rhine becomes the High Rhine at the Basel Rhine Knee. Immediately north-northeast of the confluence of the Wiese and the Rhine lies the Basel Rhine port and opposite the confluence to the west on the far side of the Rhine is the French municipality of Huningue.
Tributaries The biggest tributary of the Wiese is the Kleine Wiese, which gives its name to the collective municipality of Kleines Wiesental, and which is fed by two headstreams, the Belchenwiese (source on the southern slopes of the Belchen) and the Köhlgartenwiese (rises southwest of the Belchen on the southern slopes of the Köhlgarten), which merge in Tegernau. From there the Kleine Wiese flows southwards and empties into the Große Wiese west of Schopfheim.
The following noteworthy tributaries empty into the Wiese and its main tributaries (entries indicate which side they enter from, the DGKZ, length and catchment:: upper reaches as far as Todtnau 22.534 km2 (r) Schönenbach (232–12; 8.487 km, 20.134 km2) + 5.332 km2 (l) Prägbach (232–2; 14.654 km, 30.795 km2) + 2.839 km2 (r) Wiedenbach (232–32; 7.729 km, 19.869 km2) (r) Aiternbach (232–332; 7.324 km) + 23.507 km2, including the Aiternbach (r) Böllenbach (232–34; 7.089 km; 13.204 km2) + 3.384 km2 (l) Künabach (232–394; 6.215 km, 10.338 km2) + 11.943 km2 (l) Angenbach (232–4; 8.622 km, 22.018 km2) + 35.813 km2, total 221.7 km2 (r) Kleine Wiese (232–6; 22.298 km, 91.383 km2) upper reaches of the Köhlgartenwiese 5.014 km2 (r) Klemmbach (232–6–12; 4.953 km, 7.088 km2) + 16.469 km2 (r) Riederbächle (232–6–16; 4.621 km; 6.962 km2) + 4.303 km2, total to here 39.836 km2 (r) Köhlgartenwiese (232–6–2; 10.91 km, 29.969 km2) from now on the Kleine Wiese; + 21.578 km2, total 91.383 km2 + 0.007 km2 (l) Schlierbach (232–72; 9.728 km, 13.728 km2) + 4.73 km2 (right-hand side) (left-hand branch) Gewerbekanal (232–74; 3.873 km, 14.446 km2) (left-hand branch from Schlierbach to the Wiese)Floßkanal (232–74–2; 5.544 km) + 7.461 km2 (r) Steinenbach (232–8; 13.683 km; 46.277 km2) Upper reaches 19.095 km2 (l) Schwammerich (232–8–2; 7.91 km, 11.765 km2) + 5.828 km2 (r) Heilisaubach (232–8–4; 5.928 km, 8.822 km2) + 0.767 km2, total 46.277 km2 + 53.581 km2, total 453.313 km2 at 57.76 km length
Catchment
The catchment of the Wiese cover 455 square kilometresAccording to however 458 km2. and has a fairly uniform width along its typical elongated shape. In its upper reaches the Wiese is fed by various streams, on its right-hand side by, inter alia, the Schönenbach and Wiedenbach, on its left-hand side by the Prägbach and Angenbach. At Maulburg the Kleine Wiese empties into the Wiese. It is the largest and longest tributary and receives about one third of its waters from the Köhlgartenwiese. The last major tributary, the Steinenbach, discharges into it at Hauingen.
Geomorphology Since the formation of the Black Forest and its foothills during the geological upheavals of the Upper Rhine Graben, the Wiese has shaped the landscapes in the Southern Black Forest and the Dinkelberg through its continuous erosion and sedimentation work. The Wiese flows through two topographically and geologically distinguishable sections, which divide the Wiesental valley into its upper reaches in the valley of the Schwarzwaldwiese between Fahl and Zell, and the Lower Wiesental valley in its lower reaches between Hausen and Kleinhüningen.
In recent earth history, the alternation of warm and cold periods during the Pleistocene has characterized the appearance of the Wiesental. The valley of the Schwarzwaldwiese was formed by the Feldberg Glacier. Only in the upper part between Fahl and Todtnau was the glacier powerful enough to carve out a trough valley into the crystalline basement. The glacial tongue, however, reached as far as Wembach. In the upper reaches, near Todtnau and Gschwend, the Wiese flows in some places through gorge-like valleys with rapids and small waterfalls.
After the end of the last ice age, the Würm Glaciation about 10,000 years ago, the lower Wiese valley had been filled by gravel and boulders from the Feldberg Glacier and the valley floor was formed at about 20 to 30 metres above today's level. As a result of the melting of ice age glaciers, large quantities of meltwater were released and the Wiese cut downwards up to 15 metres below today's level. After repeated gravel deposition and the formation of the present river terraces about 2,500 to 6,000 years ago, the Wiese created the present valley floor with its river meadows and broad meanders by further downward erosion. In the area of the Wiese river delta, these ice age river deposits so strongly affected the course of the Rhine that its river bed was pushed about five kilometres to the southwest, where it flows today around the characteristically shaped Rhine Knee (Rheinknie). In Kleinbasel, below the Riehenring bridge, the Wiese was in turn deflected by an existing Nagelfluh gravel bank, which resulted the striking 90° bend in the lower reaches of the Wiese. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, the Wiese flowed largely unregulated from its source in the Black Forest to its mouth on the Rhine, swinging between the scarp of the lower river terrace and carving its way through the gravel and sandbanks of the river meadows. The annual floods frequently resulted in a change in the course of the river.
Only the Wiesewuhre, an artificial watercourse that used water for agriculture, trade and handicrafts, and later for the industries of the Wiesental and Kleinbasel, impeded the course of the Wiese and diverted a not inconsiderable part of the Wiese into the various commercial water canals. In the Wiesental, the term Teich is used as a synonym for artificial canals, along with the Alemannic/Basel German terms Diich and Tych.
Hydrology The mean annual precipitation within the catchment varies between about 2,000 millimetres in the Feldberg area and 882 millimetres in Lörrach. The amount of precipitation decreases from west to east and from north to south. The greatest precipitation occurs mostly in the months November to January, and, in the Black Forest, mostly as snow.
As a result of the river's low storage capacity in the catchment area in the upper reaches of the Wiese and the combination of sudden snow melts during the föhn and heavy rainfall, flooding used to occur regularly in the past causing great damage to the population, property and the countryside. The increasingly severe floods of the second half of the 19th century were put down by contemporary writers to the ruthless deforestation of woods in the Kleine and Grosse Wiese valleys and the desolate and worthless areas on the Feldberg and Belchen, which were clearly unable to retain the amount of water that they had been able to in the past.Schülin, F. (1965): Chronik von Rötteln/Haagen, p. 290. Viewed over the year, the Wiese discharges the most water around the Christmas season and from mid-March to mid-April, and the least amount of water in August.Hochwasservorhersagezentrale des Landes Baden-Württemberg The average discharge rate in Kleinhüningen is 11.3 m3/s. The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment measured the highest discharge rate during the period from 1933 to 2006 as 342.5 m3/s in 1944. However, events of this magnitude can be expected only every 200 years.
Exceptional floods On 20 February 1999 the Wiese burst its banks near Maulburg after heavy rainfall. Along the Maulburg Wuhr, the river broke out of its riverbed and tore out the flood defences on its right bank to a depth of 30 to 50 metres. River defences were only renovated on the left bank. Today, the gravel banks and sandy beaches around Maulburg, which are surrounded by grassland, have become a popular recreation area. The Christmas floods of 22 December 1991, were the worst floods in 25 years with a discharge rate of over 170 m3/s at the measuring station in Basel-Kleinhüningen.