Here is a painting of the view from the "Isteiner Klotz" in southwestern Germany prior to the "Rheinbegradigung": https://www.gkgbs.ch/obsolet/schulleben/oekow

Here is a painting of the view from the "Isteiner Klotz" in southwestern Germany prior to the "Rheinbegradigung": https://www.gkgbs.ch/obsolet/schulleben/oekowoche/1998-2003/landschaftswandel/isteiner-klotz/bild1_1.jpg/@@images/e625f3b9-43f7-4e14-925a-fcbd7c489fde.jpeg https://www.gkgbs.ch/obsolet/schulleben/oekowoche/1998-2003/... Here is a picture of the (approximately) same view today (well, 20 years ago), you can use the church for orientation. The Rhine is at the far right corner. The village once had a small fishing harbor. https://www.gkgbs.ch/obsolet/schulleben/oekowoche/1998-2003/landschaftswandel/isteiner-klotz/bild1_2.jpg/@@images/4ba10283-070b-47c3-a851-b4416f97dcc6.jpeg https://www.gkgbs.ch/obsolet/schulleben/oekowoche/1998-2003/... > which is totally insane from the perspective of the available technology at the time. What they did was pretty clever: they didn't dig an entire new river bed (that would've been impossible), but only some small, narrow shortcut "pilot beds", protected by a dam. You can see such a shortcut here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/K%C3%BChkopfDurchstich.JPG/1024px-K%C3%BChkopfDurchstich.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/K%... After the shortcut was finished, they opened up the dam. The Rhine then slowly dug a new bed itself.