Friendship Bridge (Germany – France)
The Friendship Bridge ( French: Pont de l'amitié ) crosses the Saar south of Saarbrücken and connects the present-day Saarland community of Kleinblittersdorf with Grosbliederstroff in Lorraine .
The idea of a bridge between the two places that had belonged together for centuries arose as early as the 1860s and was not realized until 1880. Destroyed at the beginning of the Second World War, it was rebuilt in 1964. Its current building, a pure pedestrian bridge, was built in 1993.
It impresses neither with its architectural boldness nor with its record-breaking dimensions. On the other hand, its eventful history reveals the development of the Franco-German relationship from “ hereditary enmity ” to close partnership within the European Union , particularly as it emerged since the Élysée Treaty of 1963 came into force . Partly the bridge was a border crossing between France and Germany , in between it always had the character of an inner-German or inner-French building.
The first bridge from 1880
In the Middle Ages and early modern times, Groß- and Kleinblittersdorf were only two parts of the Lorraine town of Bliederstorff, which were first mentioned in a document in 777, on opposite banks of the Saar . The prefixes Groß- and Klein- for the two districts appeared for the first time at the end of the 16th century and were only an indicator for the different number of inhabitants. Separated by the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna since 1815, both districts belonged to the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War from 1871 , albeit to different states (G. to the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine , K. to the Prussian Rhine Province ). From 1919 Großblittersdorf was again a municipality in France, while Kleinblittersdorf was in the League of Nations-administered Saar area as a result of the Versailles Treaty and, from 1935, in the Third Reich . From 1940 to the end of the Second World War, it was again jointly under German rule, followed by a period again until 1956 - as it had been from 1919 to 1935 - in which both places were under French influence: Grosbliederstroff, as it was now called, as a municipality in the department Moselle , Kleinblittersdorf in the semi-autonomous Saarland , which was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany on January 1, 1957 due to the Saar Treaty .
| time | Grosbliederstroff (west bank) |
border | bridge | Kleinblittersdorf (east bank) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1852 | France |  |
.svg){kind=icon} |
Prussia |
| 1871 | German Empire (Alsace-Lorraine) |
German Empire (Rhine Province) |
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| 1880 |
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| 1918 | France | Customs union |
Saar area (League of Nations administration) |
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| 1935 | |
German Empire (Gau Westmark) |
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| 1939 |
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| 1940 | German Empire (Gau Westmark) annexed |
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| 1945 | France | Customs union |
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Saarland (partially autonomous) |
| 1957 | |
Germany | ||
| 1964 |
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| 1985 |
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Apparently there was no structural river crossing in the Middle Ages and early modern times. It can be assumed that the Saar, which was not yet canalized at the time, was initially crossed between the districts with the aid of a ford and later a ferryman with his boat . Until the year 1868, the idea took a bridge at this point shape, and they wanted to take advantage of a pillar on a small river island between the Saar and built the 1862 to 1879, parallel transfer channel (a section of the Saar canal to build) . However, repeated initiatives by the mayor of Grosbliederstroffer were rejected by the prefecture in Metz . It is not known whether there have been any attempts to contact the Prussian authorities responsible on the eastern bank of the Saar . Soon after the war of 1870/71 , however, they began with the concrete planning of the project; The need for another river crossing between Saarbrücken and Saargemünd was apparently great enough because many workers from the places on the left of the Saar found employment in the factories of what is now the southeastern Saarbrücken district of Brebach . In addition, the Saar was no longer a border river, but lay on German territory, so that any fears of German military authorities that such a structure would make it easier for the troops of "hereditary enemy France" to cross into German territory were irrelevant.
In August 1879, the Richart Schmidt company in Luisenthal received the order to build a stone arch bridge with six pillars; on October 1, 1880 - although no handrail had been installed at the time of the inauguration - it was initially released for pedestrians and from January 1881 also for carts . Part of the construction costs should be covered by paying a "bridge penny"; for this purpose, toll booths were built at both bridgeheads . Commuters from the western bank of the Saar now had access to the Kleinblittersdorf train station on the Saarbrücken-Saargemünd railway line, which is important for traffic and which was now much more convenient and faster to reach than the previous ferry service . The new transition offered other residents a welcome opportunity for errands and visits to the other part of the village.
On September 9, 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II , the French military blew up the bridge in order in the event of a German attack between Siegfried and Maginot Line to complicate the Saar crossing. When Germany actually attacked France six months later , members of the Wehrmacht erected a wooden makeshift bridge at this point, which they also destroyed again after the Allied landing in France in the second half of 1944.
The "Friendship Bridge"
After the end of the war, only a small passenger ferry connected the sister towns for many years, and this situation changed little at first, despite the Franco-German rapprochement, which has developed particularly since Jean Monnet 's Declaration of Europe on May 9, 1950 as part of the Western European Integration completed and intensified through practical cooperation in the Council of Europe (accession of the Federal Republic of Germany: 1951), the Coal and Steel Community (from 1952) and the European Economic Community (from 1958). During the reconstruction period , the construction of a new bridge and thus an additional, permanent border crossing - and one that was so close to Saarbrücken - was not on the political agenda either in the prefecture in Metz or in the Saarland governments under Prime Minister Hoffmann and his successors .
The 1964 bridge
This only changed when Federal Chancellor Adenauer and President de Gaulle signed the Franco-German friendship treaty, known as the Élysée Treaty , in January 1963 . This agreement, which, in addition to foreign and security policy, also regulated youth and cultural policy issues, together with the creation of a joint youth organization , facilitated a large number of cross-border initiatives at regional and local level. Kleinblittersdorf and Grosbliederstroff not only entered into an official town twinning early on , but also managed to have a new Saar bridge built between them and a new border crossing opened in 1964. However, this bridge was not entirely new; rather, the bridge body of the "Kummersteg", an approximately 4 meter wide steel arch bridge, which stood in the state capital until the beginning of 1962 and had been replaced by a new building ( Wilhelm-Heinrich-Brücke ), was given a new purpose. Since the bridge was too short, the last section over the Saar Canal, which runs parallel to the Saar, was built on the French side from a wood and steel construction that was only about two meters wide. At this point, another renovation took place in 1981. The increase in the underpassable height enables the passage of larger inland vessels to Sarreguemines through the canal past the Saar, which is otherwise not navigable here .
The bridge has only been officially known as the “Friendship Bridge” or “Pont de l'amitié” since 1968.
The 1993 bridge
Due to the old age of the bridge, further maintenance of the steel arch construction soon proved to be uneconomical. Designed as a pure pedestrian bridge, the Friendship Bridge had only internal significance anyway. Since all border crossings to France that are suitable for road traffic at Rilchingen-Hanweiler and Saarbrücken - Güdingen are far away and also require local transit, the need to facilitate cross-border goods and passenger traffic at this point was recognized as early as the 1970s. The solution was a road bridge at the beginning of the 1980s , which crosses the Saar just a few kilometers south of Auersmacher and the B 51 with the parallel route Nationale 61 and Départementale 31 bis (feeder to the Saarbrücken-Paris motorway near Forbach ) connects. In addition, the recently completed B 51 bypass construction project of the Kleinblittersdorf community with a road below the old bridge required a greater headroom. These were the framework conditions for the necessary renovation of the pedestrian connection between the two town centers. Construction began at the end of 1992, the inauguration took place on September 12, 1993 by the mayors Günther Brettar (Kleinblittersdorf) and Jean Jung (Grosbliederstroff) as well as the Saarland Environment Minister Jo Leinen . The old bridge, only a few meters away, was only demolished afterwards so that the approximately 800 passers-by every day could also use the crossing during the construction period.
The new three-span bridge structure has a width of 3.5 m, a length of 140.2 m and consists of a river and an approach bridge. The river bridge has spans of 58.8 m and 65.9 m. It has a haunched steel composite superstructure with a box girder cross-section, the construction height of which varies between 1.5 m at the abutment and 3.5 m above the river pillar. The approach bridge has a span of 14.2 m and a reinforced concrete superstructure . The construction costs amounted to 4 million DM. The offices Andree from Dillingen and Dincher from Saarbrücken were responsible for the architectural planning, the companies Modernbau (at that time a subsidiary of Bilfinger + Berger ) and Dillinger Stahlbau were responsible for the execution.
The very filigree bridge is an eye-catcher with its burgundy painted metal railing and the historicizing arched light masts with their bell-shaped lamps. This impression is reinforced by two silvery, pointed arch-shaped , non-load-bearing light metal pylons that tower over the sidewalk like two Gothic arches. Further lamps are suspended from a suspension cable between their tips, which are intended to symbolize the unifying character of the building. For legal reasons, the pylon is on the "French bridge half" on the inside of the railing, while the one on the German side is attached on the outside. The power supply is provided by the French company EDF at Grosbliederstroff's expense .
The celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first post-war bridge construction was celebrated on May 5, 2004 by several hundred official representatives from 77 communities and municipal associations in the greater Saarbrücken / Moselle -Est area: They signed a resolution in the middle of the bridge in which they set goals the further, cross-border cooperation in this “Eurodistrict” within the European region Saar-Lor-Lux .
The bridge as a cultural place
In 1987, the village of Kleinblittersdorf, on the since Schengen (1985) become superfluous customs clearance facility at the eastern end of the road bridge B51 / N61 on a boulder one of tungsten Huschens created copper sheet - plastic , into the two interlocking, incomplete wheel-shaped body the historical pro and contra to symbolize the neighboring German and French regions. The work is entitled “Border between Germany and France”.
On the occasion of the anniversary of the German liberation on May 8, 2007, the first four stations of the Capital of Culture project hArt were opened at the border between Klein- and Großblittersdorf , until the end of August 2007 the bridge and the former border house were "filled with art". The project includes objects such as the life-size photos of artists in the uniforms of the former customs officers and a performance by Bernd Wegener entitled “Le son du vent” (German: The sound of the wind), for which bells were hung between the similarly shaped bridge lamps .
In 1982, the local carnival society "Greenschnäbel" proclaimed the Saar island, which was just 30 m² in size between the two towns, to be the "Free State of Carnevalis" when the water was low, and since then celebrities - including Willy Millowitsch , Oskar Lafontaine , Ephraim Kishon , Lilo Pulver and Wim Thoelke - have been promoted to Doctorus humoris causa . It was not infrequently necessary for the participants to put on rubber boots while the audience on the bridge could witness the ceremony with dry feet. In 2007 the foolish event took place for the last time because of the aging process of the "greenhorns", the future owners may continue to use the "Free State", which was auctioned on eBay in June and July 2007, to the public.
Further friendship bridges between Saarland and Lorraine
The bridge did not only become a symbol of cooperation between the former enemy nations through the act of May 2004 - and a model for further "bridges of friendship" between Saarland and Lorraine with a similar history:
- Between Großrosseln and Petite-Rosselle , still united as Rosseln in early modern times , there is a building of the same name above the Rossel , where the residents of both places have celebrated a neighborhood festival every year since 1980.
- In 1999 a bridge of friendship was built between Fürweiler and Schwerdorff in France , which also replaced a predecessor that was destroyed in 1944 and connects two places across the Diersdorfer Bach that have been separated by changed borders since 1816.
- Finally, a "European Friendship Bridge" runs between Habkirchen and Frauenberg over the Blies .
Web links
- Page of the community of Kleinblittersdorf (with photo of the bridge). ( Memento of January 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on May 2, 2009).
- Site of the community Grosbliederstroff. ( Memento of May 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on May 2, 2009).
- Historical photos of bridge construction and the surrounding area from the picture archive of the Federal Institute for Hydraulic Engineering (enter “Kleinblittersdorf” in the search field, 10 pictures, accessed on January 22, 2020).
Remarks
- ↑ In the early Middle Ages Blit (t) haria villa , mentioned in the 13th century as Bliederstroff or Bliderstorff .
- ↑ Grossblietersdorff (1594), Blidertorf-le-Grand (1756), Blidestroff-le-Gros (1779).
- ^ Nach fr: Grosbliederstroff # Géographie ; today the situation has been reversed: in 2006 Kleinblittersdorf, which had grown in area due to a local reform, had 12,850 inhabitants, while Grosbliederstroff only had 3,330 (1999), around a fifth of whom are German citizens.
- ↑ a b Article "Inauguration in autumn" in the Saarbrücken weekly chronicle of August 5, 1993.
- ↑ Historical recordings of Saarbrücken. ( Memento from October 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). In: saarlandbilder.net. Picture of the loading of the bridge in Saarbrücken (1962).
- ^ Photo of the jetty from the picture archive of the Federal Institute for Hydraulic Engineering (1964).
- ^ Article "A seam between Germany and France" in the Saarbrücker Zeitung of September 14, 1993.
- ^ Friendship Bridge (Germany – France). In: Structurae .
- ↑ Attractions in Kleinblittersdorf with a photo of the new bridge.
- ↑ Telephone information from the main author by the Kleinblittersdorfer municipal administration, Dept. FD 01, in July 2007.
- ↑ Article "French Marianne and German Michel are getting closer" in the Saarbrücker Zeitung of May 7, 2004, seen on July 19, 2007 on saarland.sz-sb.de ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2007 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. and similarly to Archived Copy ( Memento of August 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), VoltaireOnline.org ( Memento of October 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) and Archive Link. ( Memento of October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Huschens, Wolfram. ( Memento of December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). There is also a photo of the plastic at the bottom.
- ↑ Article “Where the German Leitkultur comes to an end” in the Saarbrücker Zeitung of May 8, 2007, seen on July 19, 2007 on saarland.sz-sb.de. ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ For the project as a whole, see archived copy. ( Memento from September 17, 2017 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Article “A Free State is auctioned” in the Saarbrücker Zeitung from May 18, 2007, seen on July 19, 2007 on saarland.sz-sb.de. ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Klaus Brill , Peter Franz: Saarland Portrait. Éditions Guy Binsfeld, Luxemburg undated ISBN 3-88957-058-5 p. 110.
- ^ Saarbrücker Zeitung , 2009.
- ↑ See Georg Bärsch : Description of the government district Trier , Vol. 2. Lintz, Trier 1846, p. 106; the originally used receipt from dersaargau.de will no longer be available in 2020.
- ↑ Bridge Festival 2019 , Saarbrücker Zeitung.
Coordinates: 49 ° 9 ′ 25 ″ N , 7 ° 1 ′ 56.5 ″ E
