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The Rhine knee or Rhine's knee (German : Rheinknie) is the name of several distinctive bends in the course of the river Rhine.
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The Rhine knee or Rhine's knee (German : Rheinknie) is the name of several distinctive bends in the course of the river Rhine.
In Basel, the Rhine changes its westerly direction of flow in an angle of 90 degrees to a northerly direction, along the borders of France and Germany, to flow to the North Sea. From a political viewpoint, the Rhine knee is near the tripoint of France, Germany and Switzerland. Therefore, this region is called Regio TriRhena. The Basel knee separates the High Rhine from the Upper Rhine section.
The whole Rhine knee lies within Swiss territory and is settled by the city of Basel and its adjacent municipalities Riehen and Bettingen. Farther north are the German cities of Lörrach and Weil am Rhein as well as the French towns Huningue and Saint Louis.
The Basel knee arose in the last glacial period (Würm glaciation), when the river flowed directly from today's Grenzach-Wyhlen west of the city to the area of Weil am Rhein in the north. The northern Wiese tributary transported large rubble and gravel sediments from the Feldberg glacier into the Rhine Valley, enforcing the river's characteristic bend to the south.
The Upper Rhine again changes its flow direction from west to north at another bend near the German town of Bingen and the mouth of the Nahe tributary. Coming here from the city of Mainz, parallel to the crest of the Rhenish Massif, the turn to the north at Bingen marks the opening of a water gap between the Hunsrück mountain range in the west and the Taunus in the east, stretching up to Koblenz in the north and separating the Upper from the Middle Rhine.
The Rhine narrows at the site are called Bingen Hole (Binger Loch), marked by the Mouse Tower on an island in the river and uphill Ehrenfels Castle. Until several blasting operations in the 19th century, an underwater reef of quartzite was a great threat to ship transport.
There is also a bridge in Düsseldorf called "Rhine knee bridge".
The Rhine is one of the major European rivers. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms the Swiss-Liechtenstein border and partly the Swiss-Austrian and Swiss-German borders. After that the Rhine defines much of the Franco-German border, after which it flows in a mostly northerly direction through the German Rhineland. Finally in Germany, the Rhine turns into a predominantly westerly direction and flows into the Netherlands where it eventually empties into the North Sea. It drains an area of 9,973 km2.
The Upper Rhine is the section of the Rhine between the Middle Bridge in Basel, Switzerland, and the Rhine knee in Bingen, Germany. It is surrounded by the Upper Rhine Plain. Most of its upper section marks the France–Germany border.
The Alpine Rhine Valley is a glacial alpine valley, formed by the Alpine Rhine, the part of the Rhine between the confluence of the Anterior Rhine and Posterior Rhine at Reichenau and Lake Constance. It covers three countries, with sections of the river demarcating the borders between Austria and Switzerland and between Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The full length of the Alpine Rhine is 93.5 km.
The Lahn is a 245.6-kilometre-long (152.6 mi), right tributary of the Rhine in Germany. Its course passes through the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia (23.0 km), Hesse (165.6 km), and Rhineland-Palatinate (57.0 km).
Bingen am Rhein is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Weil am Rhein is a German town and commune. It is on the east bank of the River Rhine, and extends to the tripoint of Switzerland, France, and Germany. It is the most southwesterly town in Germany and a suburb in the Trinational Eurodistrict of Basel. The town has around 30,000 inhabitants, and the Eurodistrict metropolitan area has about 830,000.
High Rhine is the name of the part of the Rhine between Lake Constance and the city of Basel, flowing in a general east-to-west direction and forming mostly the Germany–Switzerland border. It is the first of four named sections of the Rhine between Lake Constance and the river delta at the North Sea.
The Wiese is a river, 57.8 kilometres long, and a right-hand tributary of the Rhine in southwest Germany and northwest Switzerland.
The Wutach is a river, 91 kilometres long, in the southeastern part of the Black Forest in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is a right-hand tributary of the Rhine. In its lower reaches it flows for about 6 kilometres along the border with the canton of Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
Niederheimbach is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Trechtingshausen is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
The Baden main line is a German railway line that was built between 1840 and 1863. It runs through Baden, from Mannheim via Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Offenburg, Freiburg, Basel, Waldshut, Schaffhausen and Singen to Konstanz. The Baden Mainline is 412.7 kilometres long, making it the longest route in the Deutsche Bahn network and also the oldest in southwest Germany. The section between Mannheim and Basel is the most important northern approach to the Swiss Alpine passes, whilst the section between Basel and Konstanz is only of regional significance. The stretch from Karlsruhe to Basel is also known as the Rhine Valley Railway (Rheintalbahn) and the Basel–Konstanz section as the High Rhine Railway (Hochrheinstrecke).
The Untersee, also known as Lower Lake Constance, is the smaller of the two lakes that together form Lake Constance. The boundary between Switzerland and Germany runs through it. The lake surrounds several islands, the largest being Reichenau Island.
The Weil am Rhine–Lörrach railway, also known as the Gartenbahn, is a 4.836 km long electrified, single-track main line railway in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, near Basel. It runs from Weil am Rhein on the Rhine Valley Railway through Tüllinger Berg to Lörrach-Stetten on the Wiese Valley Railway. The continuation of the former bypass of Switzerland was the now disused Wehra Valley Railway from a branch near Schopfheim on the Wiese Valley Railway to Bad Säckingen on the High Rhine Railway (Hochrheinbahn).
During the Battle of Kehl, a Republican French force under the direction of Jean Charles Abbatucci mounted an amphibious crossing of the Rhine River against a defending force of soldiers from the Swabian Circle. In this action of the War of the First Coalition, the French drove the Swabians from their positions in Kehl and subsequently controlled the bridgehead on both sides of the Rhine.
The border between the modern states of Germany and Switzerland extends to 362 kilometres (225 mi), mostly following Lake Constance and the High Rhine, with territories to the north mostly belonging to Germany and territories to the south mainly to Switzerland. Exceptions are the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen, the Rafzerfeld and hamlet of Nohl of the canton of Zürich, Bettingen and Riehen municipalities and part of the city of Basel in the canton of Basel-City and the old town of the German city of Konstanz, which is located south of the Seerhein. The canton of Schaffhausen is located almost entirely on the northern side of the High Rhine, with the exception of the southern part of the municipality of Stein am Rhein. The German municipality of Büsingen am Hochrhein is an enclave surrounded by Swiss territory.
A knee, or river knee, is a bend in a river changing its course greatly, suddenly to a different general direction. It is different from most (one-off) riverbends, and from a (particular) meander which connotes one of several bends in a sinuous course, without changing the general direction.
Weil am Rhein station is a small railway junction in Weil am Rhein in the German state of Baden-Württemberg on the German-Swiss border. The Weil am Rhein–Lörrach railway branches off the Mannheim–Karlsruhe–Basel railway at the station. From 1878 to 1937, the station was the starting point of the Weil am Rhein–Saint-Louis line to the French town of Saint-Louis.