At the Leine Weir in Döhren

© Matthias Kothe

When everything is still quiet all around and the city is slowly waking up, that’s the perfect time to sit dreamily on the rough stones along the banks of the Leine and watch the sun rise. And suddenly, it becomes crystal clear once again why strength lies in stillness.

In the past, people used to wash wool at the weir

It wasn’t always so peaceful and quiet in this area around Leine Island. Just over 45 years ago, the industrial buildings of the Döhren Wool Washing and Combing Plant—known locally in Hannover as “Döhrener Wolle”—stood where the pretty houses are today. Since the 1870s, raw sheep’s wool from Australia, New Zealand, and South America had been cleaned and combed at the weir in the river—which had been built in 1667 and at that time still supplied a watermill on the Döhren Leine Island. Thanks to its prime location directly on the Leine, which always provided sufficient water for washing the wool, “Döhrener Wolle” quickly developed into a large-scale operation with 2,000 employees. The boom lasted a full century; in 1973, the plant was shut down. After the buildings were demolished, the current residential neighborhood was built on the former factory grounds. At least a few historical landmarks have survived: the clock tower from 1909, for example, with its picturesque corner towers and battlements (it once served as a hose tower for the factory fire department), as well as the workers’ housing estate “Döhrener Jammer” and the ram sculpture at the corner of Am Uhrturm andAm Leinewehr, which was originally erected in 1893 as a symbol of the merger of the four German wool combing mills into the “German Combing Convention.”

Three spots left for breakfast by the water

But even the former Wolle Weir was not to last: in 2004, the city of Hannover had the dilapidated structure demolished and installed a flat concrete weir in the riverbed, over which the waters of the Leine now swirl. From the “balcony” at the roadside near the bridge, you can watch the turbulent activity in the river in peace. Much more idyllic and even quieter, both at sunrise and at dusk, is the small spot with a bench on the Wiehegraben upstream along the Leine, reached by a path running along the houses above the weir. The narrow sandy beach, on the other hand, which can be seen on the opposite bank, is accessible only by a footpath that winds through the bushes behind the nearby bridge on Johann-Duve-Weg along the Leine.