Göringen river barrage
Coordinates: 50 ° 59 ′ 57 ″ N , 10 ° 11 ′ 18 ″ E
| Göringen river barrage | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Convicted | Werra | |
| place | Goeringen | |
| Entertained by | City of Eisenach | |
| toll | donation | |
| location | ||
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The Göringen river barrage is a pedestrian bridge and former part of the fortification of the inner-German border in the Göringen district of the city of Eisenach in Thuringia .
location
The building spans the Werra north of Göringen on the boundary between the Thuringian towns of Göringen and Wartha and the Hessian Herleshausen , which is also the state border between Thuringia and Hesse and was the border between the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR from 1949 to 1990 . In its current function, it connects the town of Göringen to the Werra Valley Cycle Path , which runs north of the Werra in this section, and offers the shortest walking distance from Herleshausen train station to Göringen and Göringer Stein .
Building history
After the Second World War , Göringen in Thuringia was in the Soviet zone and Herleshausen in Hesse was in the American zone of occupation . With the establishment of the two German states, the GDR increasingly cordoned off and fortified the border. From the point of view of the GDR regime, there were repeated refugees from the GDR through the course of the Werra, the middle of which formed the border south of Wommen and Herleshausen and that between Hesse and Thuringia several times between Vacha and Großburschla Changed country. In the course of expanding the border fortifications, from 1980 the GDR government had barricades built at the places where the Werra crossed the inner-German border , including at Göringen. The structures were declared and financed as water management systems, the construction costs for the 1981 bridge near Göringen amounted to 904,000 GDR marks .
construction
The bridge is constructed as a steel lattice bridge, rests on both sides on pounded and concreted abutments. During its function as a barrier structure, a grid was attached to the lower edge, which reached down to the bottom of the water and thus made swimming and diving through impossible. A rope hoist was installed on the bridge with which floating debris could be removed from the water. The bridge was permanently guarded by soldiers from the border troops , for whom there was a guard hut on the southern bridgehead.
After the opening of the border
While most of the river barriers were demolished after the reunification of Germany with the dismantling of the border fortifications between Hesse and Thuringia, the structure near Göringen remained on the initiative of the municipality of Wartha-Göringen . After dismantling the cable winch and the barrier in the drainage profile, it served as a pedestrian bridge for a connecting route from Göringen to Herleshausen. Citizens of Göring did voluntary work to prepare the structure for its new purpose, for example expanded metal parts of the former border fence were attached to delimit the railing and the bridge was professionally painted. It was given its current blue color scheme, which earned it the nickname “Blue Wonder” (alluding to the Blue Wonder in Dresden ). On both sides of the bridge there is a cash register that calls for payment of a voluntary bridge toll as a donation to preserve the structure. Today the bridge is owned by the city of Eisenach, but is still maintained by Göring citizens.
On the occasion of the Open Monument Day 2013, an information board on the history of the building was financed by the Werra Valley Association / South Ringgau Branch Association and placed on the bridge on September 7, 2013. The association is committed to providing the bridge as an important example of the history of the division under monument protection to let make. On April 12, 2014, the remains of the guard hut, which had been prepared as a refuge after 1990, were removed because the stability was no longer guaranteed as a result of the weather and vandalism . A new, now blue refuge was built in May 2014 at the same location.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Blue Wonder" with information board . Thuringian national newspaper , regional edition Eisenach from September 13, 2013
- ↑ Warthaer and Göringer information sheet, May 2014 edition, page 1