Europe Bridge (Kehl)
Coordinates: 48 ° 34 ′ 26 ″ N , 7 ° 48 ′ 7 ″ E
| Europe bridge Pont de l'Europe |
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| Convicted | Bundesstrasse 28 / Route nationale 4 | |
| Subjugated | Rhine , km 293.48 | |
| place | Kehl , Strasbourg | |
| construction | Steel girder bridge | |
| overall length | 245.4 m | |
| width | 18.5 m | |
| Longest span | 122.7 m | |
| Construction height | maximum 4.9 m | |
| Headroom | 6.79 m at HSW | |
| building-costs | 6.5 million DM | |
| completion | 1960 | |
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The Europabrücke is a road bridge that spans the Rhine and the border between Germany and France with four lanes and cycle and footpaths on both sides between Kehl and Strasbourg .
Pontoon bridge from 1815
As early as 1388 there was a bridge over the Rhine near Strasbourg, the so-called Lange Bruck , which was destroyed and rebuilt several times. Until the opening of the first modern road bridge on the Upper Rhine in 1897, there was a 350 m long boat bridge for road traffic, from 1850 after the correction of the Rhine, only 250 m long boat bridge from 1815.
Bridge from 1897
The new fixed Rhine crossing was above the railway bridge from 1861 and was inaugurated on November 24, 1897. The Grand Duchy of Baden and the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine each contributed 630,000 marks of the construction costs of 1.7 million marks . The city of Strasbourg contributed 228 thousand marks, the tram company with 112 thousand marks. A stretch of the Strasbourg tram was extended over the bridge to Kehl.
The parallel -chorded steel truss bridge was 234.9 m long and had three openings with 87.9 m span in the edge fields and 59.1 m in the middle field. The roadway below was 7.8 m wide and was supplemented on both sides by two cantilevered walkways. The foundation of the pillars was carried out at a depth of 17 m under the river bed with caissons .
In his novel Freitagskind , published in 1913, Otto Flake described the bridge from 1897. After the First World War , the Grenzbrücke structure became the property of France for its entire length, in accordance with the Versailles Treaty . In addition, the tram line was discontinued on August 15, 1920. On October 12, 1939, French troops blew up the western pillar of the river. In May 1940, the German troops built a temporary bridge with the old Speyer ship bridge. In October 1940, after three months of construction, a 324 m long wooden temporary bridge followed. For shipping, this had a half-timbered construction with 50 m span and 7 m height. The remaining fields spanned 20 m. In June 1942 the road bridge was finally rebuilt. Due to the severe destruction of the superstructure on the left, an auxiliary pillar had to be erected in order to be able to use the old superstructure, which was shortened to 57 m span. On November 22 or 27, 1944, German troops blew up both pillars of the river and completely destroyed the superstructure. The wooden bridge was set on fire.
French pioneer units first built a pontoon bridge in April 1945 , which was replaced by the rebuilt wooden bridge on October 7, 1946. But after just three years, the wooden bridge showed severe damage, as fresh wood was used without further protective measures. This made it necessary to build a new bridge.
Bridge from 1951
The new bridge was opened to traffic on July 12, 1951. It was a temporary temporary bridge, as a short-term construction of a final bridge was not possible due to unclear boundary conditions such as location and clearance height. The structure was built on the foundations of the old road bridge. As a temporary steel superstructure, designed for two lanes and sidewalks on both sides, a truss bridge of the “Schaper-Krupp-Reichsbahnbrücke” type with unchanged spans of 87.9 m and 59.1 m was used in the eastern bridge section. The western opening was spanned with a structure provided by France with spans of 58.1 m and 29.8 m.
Bridge from 1960
The final road bridge was contractually agreed on April 2, 1951. On January 30, 1953, the Agreement on fixed bridges and ferries across the Rhine on the German-French border followed between the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic . After that, Germany had to bear the construction costs alone.
On September 23, 1960, the building was inaugurated under the sign of European unification with the name Europabrücke. The structure is a two-span, haunched steel beam construction with a length of 245.4 m, with maximum spans of 122.7 m. The construction height is 4.9 m above the pillar and 2.5 m at the abutment. The 18.5 m wide superstructure consists of two closed, 3.0 m wide steel boxes that are arranged at a center distance of 9.15 m. In the river area, a clearance height of 6.79 m is maintained at the highest shipping water level (HSW) . Road traffic censuses from 2003 showed that an average of 31,014 vehicles pass the bridge every day, making the Europabrücke the busiest border crossing between Baden and Alsace .
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Council of Europe , the work of art Ecrire les Frontières - Le Pont de l'Europe, border crossing - The Europe Bridge was inaugurated on April 29, 1999 on the Europe Bridge . The idea for this installation came from the Strasbourg city councilor and artist Michel Krieger. It consists of 40 steles, each with a text by a European author in his own language. Among the authors are three Nobel Prize winners: Seamus Heaney from Ireland, Czesław Miłosz from Poland and Orhan Pamuk from Turkey. Due to damage, the steles were temporarily closed with stainless steel plates in 2012.
literature
- Arthur Lämmlein : Road bridge over the Rhine between Kehl and Strasbourg . In: Der Bauingenieur , Volume 28, Issue 6, 1953, pp. 199–208.
- Karen Denni: Crossing the Rhine Crossing the border: The German-French border and its Rhine bridges (1861-2006) . UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Konstanz 2008, ISBN 978-3-86764-089-3 .
- Arthur Lämmlein, Wilhelm Mechler, Bertold Schlageter, Joseph Wahner: The road bridge over the Rhine between Kehl and Strasbourg. In: Road construction and road traffic technology. Published by the BMV, Issue 8, 1960.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Stefan Woltersdorff: Of book makers and book burners - a literary foray through Kehl on the Rhine. (No longer available online.) Info-router.de, archived from the original on July 24, 2009 ; accessed on December 8, 2017 .
- ↑ Karen Denni: Rhine crossing border crossing , p. 163
- ↑ Structurae: Europe Bridge
- ↑ Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine: Existing bridge clearance heights (PDF; 19 kB) d / R / Reglement_protocoles / TP_sur_site / Site_tirant_air_dispo_06_2012de
- ↑ 2003 road traffic censuses in the Upper Rhine region, Freiburg Regional Council (PDF; 35 kB)
- ↑ http://www.bo.de/lokales/kehl/stelen-auf-europabruecke-modernisiert
- ^ Council of Europe (ed.): Ecrire les Frontières - Le Pont de l'Europe, border override - Die Europabrücke , Strasbourg 1999, ISBN 92-871-3884-2
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
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The next bridge up the river: Passerelle des Deux Rives |
Bridges over the Rhine |
The next bridge downstream: Kehl tram bridge |