1. Scope
Throughout history, watercourses, in the broadest sense, and rivers, in a narrower sense, have been a prerequisite for industrial trades and crafts and for traffic and transportation. Accordingly, their use has been subject to intensive legal regulation from the earliest of cultures, primarily expressed as the so-called Flussordnung.
The various uses of watercourses under consideration include the drainage and removal of water as well as its introduction; damming or reducin…