Editing Aller (Germany) (section)

=== Timber rafting ===
Timber rafting was probably being used on the Aller by the 14th century. The logs thus transported were used for construction as well as fuel. An early centre of timber rafting and the wood trade was the princely ''[[Residenz]]'' town of Celle. At first the nobility had the wood transported as fuel to heat [[Celle Castle]] and other royal buildings. The timber was felled in the royal forests. The transportation of logs by raft was roughly 10 times more efficient than moving it by horse and cart.

A major rafting operation took place on the Aller in 1680 when a large quantity of construction wood was floated down to the Weser and its mouth. The wood came from the southern [[Lüneburg Heath]] and was used to build around 100 houses in the Swedish [[fort]] of Carlsburg on the site of present-day [[Bremerhaven]].

From the 17th century, wood was also rafted down the Aller tributaries, such as the [[Ise (river)|Ise]] and [[Örtze]] to Celle. In Celle, the logs collected at a [[needle dam]] in the Aller Land and were stored in a wood yard. Rafts also ran past Celle and down the Weser to Bremen. After the death of [[George William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg]] in 1705, timber rafting on the Upper Aller to Celle fell into decline. When the royal household moved to Hanover, Celle lost the [[baroque]] lustre of a Residenz town. Raft dealers took over the business. On the Lower Aller, timber rafting flourished again at the end of the 19th century during the ''[[Gründerzeit]]''. There was a large demand for wood in [[Bremen]], Bremerhaven and the [[Landkreis Wesermarsch|Weser Marshes]], where wood was used for the construction of houses and shipbuilding. In the years around 1895, about {{convert|8,000|m3||adj=pre|solid}} of wood were rafted down to the Weser. After the [[First World War]], timber rafting on the Aller dwindled to nothing.