Bridge Office

A bridge office was to the 19th century, an administration of a bridge and the depth of these funds. Only in the 20th century, after several decades of interruption, was this used as an official title or part of an official title for offices in a city administration.

Historically, bridge offices can be traced back to the Middle Ages and the early modern period. They were formed because a river crossing could not easily be assigned to the law of a city or a sovereign.

The bridge offices that had existed until then (e.g. in Dresden or Erfurt ) were dissolved at the beginning of the 19th century and assigned to the respective city administrations.

Designations of this kind that exist today were created in the 20th century, e.g. B. in Salzburg or Hamburg , and have no tradition that ties in with the functions of the Middle Ages. The technical classification of bridges is not connected with this.

Most comparable to this medieval function of the bridge office are currently toll bridges and the bodies responsible for their financial accounting, although they neither possess nor are allowed to possess the comprehensive rights customary at the time.

literature

• Alexandra-Kathrin Stanislaw-Kemenah: The Dresden Bridge Office in the Middle Ages . In: Dresdner Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): Dresdner Elbbrücken in eight centuries (= Dresdner Hefte - Contributions to the cultural history. No. 94, 2/2008). Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-910055-90-2 , pp. 15-24.

Web links

• Definition in the German legal dictionary