Adalbert Bridge
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 19 ″ N , 13 ° 25 ′ 20 ″ E
| Adalbertbrücke (new building) | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| use | Cars, trams and pedestrians | |
| Convicted | Adalbertstrasse | |
| Crossing of | Luisenstadt Canal | |
| place | Berlin center | |
| construction | single arch stone vault bridge | |
| overall length | 20 m | |
| width | between 8.2 and 8.8 m | |
| Construction height | 0.5 m | |
| Clear height | 3.3 m | |
| start of building | 1903 | |
| completion | 1904 | |
| planner | Ludwig Hoffmann | |
| location | ||
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The Adalbertbrücke - in the course of Adalbertstrasse in Berlin-Mitte - led over the former Luisenstadt shipping canal , which connected the Spree with the Landwehr Canal . The street was named after Prince Adalbert of Prussia (1811–1873); likewise the continuous Admiralstrasse with the Admiralbrücke .
history
Previous construction
The original wooden construction of the Adalbertbrücke was built between 1850 and 1852, like the other ten bridges that were made necessary by the construction of the Luisenstädtischer Schifffahrtskanal. Since flood problems often arose in spring along the low bank of the Spree and its surroundings, and because they probably shied away from the costs of a stone bridge, they were all made of wood with stone land pillars. This is why the so-called wooden flap bridge was a popular auxiliary tool even in earlier times. The Adalbert Bridge was the only one to be preserved in its original form until the 20th century. Ultimately, the 9.2 meter wide bridge with three pairs of wooden flaps and the 7.5 meter wide central opening for shipping was no longer sufficient for the increased volume of traffic. An otherwise double-track tram only drove over the bridge on a single track from the bridge ramp. Due to the narrow bridge and the need for repairs, the new construction of the Adalbert Bridge was requested by the city council. On March 6, 1902, the Berlin city council decided to implement the plans submitted by Ludwig Hoffmann for a replacement building, which was approved by the state police on September 30, 1902. Upstream of the old wooden flap bridge, construction work began on a 12 meter wide auxiliary bridge for motorized and pedestrian traffic just one month later.
New building
Between 1903 and 1904 the wooden structure was dismantled and, based on the Amsterdam model, a stone arch bridge with an overhead carriageway and cladding made of Kudowa sandstone was built using the “German stone carving method”. The bridge cut the watercourse at an angle of 73 °. The forehead width was 18.8 meters and decreased to 18.2 meters between the inner edges of the railings. Continuing along Adalbertstrasse, the width of the road was 11.8 meters and that of the sidewalk 3.2 meters. The vault had a span of 20 meters; the apex of it was 3.30 meters above the water level. The crown thickness was 50 cm and the fighter thickness 90 cm. The abutment consisted of Birkenwerder - clinker in cement mortar, and between the sheet piles to the existing concrete foundation was. The pavement and the 8 gas lamps did not have any architecture that was specially tailored to the bridge. The attention of the architect and town planner Hoffmann was directed towards the design of the railing made of 20 relief stones with depictions of fish motifs.
Against the original draft of the sculptural work on the railing by Ernst Westphal , there was a conflict over the motif of a drunk ship. Westphal submitted the design in March 1903 and Hoffmann accepted the trial models in May. Although the sea mermaids and other freshwater animals could be transferred to the Kudowa sandstone by the stonemason Höfner from September of the same year, the new town planning officer for civil engineering Friedrich Krause disliked the motif of the ship when they visited it again in October and requested a new design. The building file can be found in:
“The sculptor Westphal had chosen a fish-loaf motif as a new design for a later date, which City Planning Officer Hoffmann could not agree to; another, namely a fish-head motif, was approved by building councilors Hoffmann and Krause. "
As a result of the conflict, after Krause's assumption of office in 1897 by Hoffmann, although he had already taken on the design of numerous bridges, only the Lessing Bridge and the Insel Bridge followed in addition to the Adalbert Bridge .
But that wasn't enough, Kaiser Wilhelm II also objected to the original design of the railing in 1904. Although the state transferred the road and bridge area to the state police in 1876, the emperor had a say. Wilhelm II had to approve all changes on Berlin's streets and squares and generally approved the designs. At the Adalbert Bridge, he criticized the railing posts as follows:
"... to equip the parapet of the bridge in the way that Allerhöchstihnen independently indicated with blue pencil on sheet C with round pillars and to leave out the square pillars projected in between."
The streets required a connection to the bridge with a gradient of 1:40 or 1:60, for this purpose the embankment wall had to be increased and reinforced to a length of 100 meters. First, the road was paved with stones, which was later replaced by a wooden pavement.
cancellation
Since the canal was hardly used by shipping and due to the unpleasant smell caused by the insufficient water gradient, the Berlin magistrate decided on January 16, 1926 to give up the Luisenstadt shipping canal. However, this was only filled up to the height of the water level and redesigned into a green area by the city gardening director Erwin Barth, following the idea of greenery close to the home of the landscape architect and town planner Peter Joseph Lenné, who once provided the design for the canal. The bridge was demolished after June 1929 at the earliest, as the Berliner Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft asked the district office in Mitte that “after the demolition of the Adalbertbrücke [...], the stone pavement that was already on the bridge ramps in the track zone and [...] that To replace wooden pavement [on the bridge] with stone paving. "
With the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the border between East and West Berlin ran on this section of the canal until 1990. Between 1991 and 2009, the destroyed gardens were reconstructed in sections - the site of the former Adalbertbrücke can only be seen today through the embankment that, like the bridge, connects the two parts of Adalbertstrasse.
Events
- On the embankment of the canal, a commemorative plaque installed in 2008 commemorates the machine attackers who crashed a steam engine into the canal bed in October 1848 while the canal was being built. The protest led to deadly riots with the Berlin vigilante group .
- During the Kapp Putsch on March 17, 1920, angry people threw several soldiers from Kottbusser Damm and Adalbertbrücke into the canal. An officer drowned at the Adalbertbrücke.
literature
- The road bridges of the city of Berlin. First volume . Julius Springer, Berlin 1902, pp. 27, 48, 214
- Report on the municipal administration of the city of Berlin in the administrative years 1901 to 1905. First part . Carl Heymanns, Berlin 1907, p. 201 f.
- Eckhard Thiemann, Dieter Deszyk, Horstpeter Metzing: Berlin and his bridges , Jaron Verlag, Berlin 2003, p. 178; ISBN 3-89773-073-1
References and comments
- ↑ a b F. Krause, F. Hedde: The bridge buildings of the city of Berlin from 1897 to the end of 1920 . “Der Zirkel” - Architekturverlag, Berlin 1922, p. 174
- ↑ Martina Weinland: Wasserbrücken in Berlin - On the history of their decor . Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1994, p. 110. Cat. No. 2 Weinland Quoted from the building files in the State Archives: Rep. 010-01 / 2, No. 21
- ^ Dörte Döhl: Ludwig Hoffmann: Building for Berlin 1896-1924 . Wasmuth Ernst Verlag, 2004, p. 33 f.
- ↑ In the same year, further evidence of the Emperor's criticism of Hoffmann's designs can be found with the Achenbach Bridge and the Insel Bridge (Hoffmann did not continue the project Achenbach Bridge. Today: Wullenwebersteg )
- ^ Dörte Döhl: Ludwig Hoffmann: Building for Berlin 1896-1924 . Wasmuth Ernst Verlag, 2004, p. 130. Dörte Döhl refers to a letter from the head of the civil cabinet to the Minister of Public Works and the Royal Minister of State of September 2, 1902. In: GStA PK I. HA, Rep. 89, No. 29179, BL. 102.
- ↑ The Berliner Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft in a letter to the district office in Mitte on June 8, 1929, building files in the state archive: Rep. 010-01-02, No. 33
- ↑ March 17th (year 1920) in daily facts of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (at the DHM ).
- ↑ Moving days in Greater Berlin - Chronicle of local events . In: Lokal-Anzeiger , March 24, 1920. p. 3
Web links
- Dörte Döhl: List of buildings by Ludwig Hoffmann (Wvz. Nr. 50). (pdf, 284 KB) 2004, archived from the original on August 16, 2010 ; Retrieved March 20, 2013 .