Elbe River: course, cities, economy and environmental significance

The Low German Elv, the High German name Elbe as well as the Czech name of the river are of the same origin; the Slavic name Labe, in view of its phonetic structure, was borrowed early from Germanic or Latin:

In antiquity, the Greeks, Celts and Romans, such as Pliny and Tacitus, called the river Albis, the Germanic people Albia. The Old High German name of the river is Elba, the Old English Ælf, Ielf and the Old Norse Saxelfr. It is probably etymologically identical with Old Norse elfr "river", which survives in today's Scandinavian languages as Swedish älv, Norwegian elv and Icelandic elfur. The name, attested as early as 18 AD by Strabon, is thus likely to go back to an Urbian appellative *albijō- (cf. the Latinized form albia) meaning "river", which fell out of use early outside Norse. The Elbe was thus simply called "the river" by the early Germanic peoples, which fits the dominant position of the river in the North German Plain, the presumed cradle of the Germanic languages - but certainly of West Germanic.

The name could be analogous to the Gallic river name Albis (today Aube) as "white water", in contrast to the name Dubis (today Dub) for "black water". The name probably goes back to the Indo-European adjective *h₂elbʰ-o- "white" and is related to the Latin albus "white".

With a length of 1094.26 km, the Elbe is the twelfth longest river in Europe and is one of the 100 longest rivers in the world. If the largest tributary, the Vltava, is considered as the source river, the total length is 1245 km (ninth in Europe). The Czech part is 370.74 km, the part of the Elbe flowing through Germany to the Kugelbake near Cuxhaven, which marks the end of the Binnenelbe, is 726.95 km long.

The Czech and German parts are kilometred differently in direction, with the two kilometres overlapping in the 3.43 km long area where the border runs in the middle of the river. In the Czech Republic, the Elbe, starting at the Schmilka / Hřensko border crossing on the right bank of the Elbe, has been continuously kilometred upstream since 2009, with the zero point defined for this purpose at the mouth of the Elbe near Cuxhaven. The German kilometre system begins on the left bank of the Elbe (mouth of the Gelobtbach) at kilometre 0. It counts downstream and also includes the Outer Elbe; it ends at kilometre 769.40 in the open North Sea. More details can be found under Kilometrierung#Elbe.

As a large river flowing directly into the sea, the Elbe is classified as a stream. It drains a catchment area of 148,268 km². With an average discharge of 861 m³/s at the mouth, it ranks in Germany after the Rhine, the Danube and before the Inn (compare: List of rivers in Germany).

First, the river crosses the northern Czech Republic (Bohemia) in a wide arc, then flows through Germany, passing through the cities of Dresden, Magdeburg and Hamburg, among others, and finally flows into the North Sea near Cuxhaven. During the German division until 1990, the Middle Elbe between Schnackenburg and Lauenburg was also a border river for almost 100 km. At times it was exposed to extremely high levels of heavy metals and other pollutants. In recent years, however, the water quality has improved considerably. However, the organic load is still high, classified as "moderately polluted" to "heavily polluted" in the saprobic index. This is mainly due to the intensive agricultural use of the river floodplain and the lack of structural quality and inhibited self-purification capacity caused by the technical development of the "European waterway". Nevertheless, there are several biotopes worthy of protection, especially in the middle reaches.