Wire bridge
The wire bridge is located in Kassel in North Hesse ( Germany ). The pedestrian bridge, designed as a suspension bridge, has spanned the Fulda in Kassel's city center since 1870 .
geography
The suspension bridge over the Fulda, whose span measures 84 meters, was built as a pedestrian bridge in 1870 . It is located directly north of the Hessenkampfbahn built in 1926 and can also be used by cyclists . Through the bridge of Auedamm got at the north end of the Karlsaue a connection to the then densely built Unterneustadt and this in addition to the Fuldabrücke another connection to the district center and the city center .
history
After the old city fortifications were razed around 1770 under Landgrave Friedrich II, a ship bridge was built every summer at the site of today's bridge . This connection, which lasted until the 1840s, was later replaced by a ferry . From the year 1813, when Kassel was the capital of the Napoleonic model state of Westphalia , two draft drawings for a three-arched stone bridge to the projected "Ville commerçale" have been preserved. They go back to plans by Heinrich Christoph Jussow and are located on the site of today's bridge. ( Kassel State Museums , Graphic Collection, Inv.GS 6305, 6328)
The wire bridge, the wire system of which is suspended from two pylons , was opened to pedestrians on November 1, 1870. The bridge structure was built by Henschel . Because it was initially privately owned, everyone who wanted to cross the Fulda had to pay by March 31, 1896: pedestrians 3 pfennigs and riders 3 silver groschen. It has been free to cross since April 1 of the same year that it became the property of the city.
In the winter of 1940 the bridge was badly damaged by the bathing bridge, which was torn away by the ice masses, so that its sidewalk segments and the two bridge pylons had to be replaced by similar but larger new buildings. This makes the bridge one of the few secular buildings in Kassel that was built during World War II . During this war the jumper on May 17, 1943, hit by a strong flood after the dam of Edersees was shortly before 2:00 destroyed around by a British air raid. Around 160 million m³ of water then poured through the Eder and Fulda valleys via Kassel to the north into the Weser and thus to the North Sea . With the flood and mud wave, which peaked around 3 p.m., animal carcasses, tree trunks and parts of houses drifted through the low-lying parts of the city, again causing damage to the bridge. The bridge was further damaged by a bombing raid in 1945. The bridge was opened to traffic again as early as 1946.
Between the 1950s and 1997, when there was a fairground in a small part of the Untereustadt , the wire bridge was crossed every year in July and August by the many visitors to the Kassel Zissel , who walked from the fairground to the event site on Auedamm or vice versa. Especially since the removal of the additional pillar mentioned below, the bridge segments mostly fluctuate greatly under the load of the people, which does not affect the stability of the bridge.
After the wire bridge was damaged several times - for example by floods - it often had to be repaired and in 1955 reinforced by an additional pillar in the middle of the river. It was renovated in 1997 , with the pylons restored, the abutment cavities filled with concrete and the sidewalk segments provided with precast concrete elements, among other complex work. Because the suspension bridge's own load-bearing capacity could be restored, the additional pillar was removed. After a three-month closure, the bridge was reopened for pedestrians and cyclists on June 20.
literature
- Wolfgang Hermsdorff: A look back at old Kassel. Volume 2. Kassel 1979.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 44 ″ N , 9 ° 30 ′ 14 ″ E