Great Weser Bridge
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In the history of the city of Bremen, numerous bridges since the 13th century that spanned the Weser river at almost the same point have been referred to as the Great Weser Bridge . Contrary to its written structure, the name did not mean "large bridge over the Weser", but always "bridge over the great Weser". The buildings all started from the right bank of the Weser between the Schlachte and the Tiefer in the eastern part of the old town and connected it to the slender northwestern extension of the Stadtwerder , where the Teerhof was built soon after the first bridge was built. None of these Weser bridges reached in one piece to the bank of the Neustadt on the left . All of them only spanned the main stream, while the Kleine Weser , a left tributary, was crossed by the offset Kleiner Weserbrücke. Only since 1903 have the Small and Large Weser Bridges been on one axis. The current Great Weser Bridge is called Wilhelm-Kaisen -brücke and was inaugurated in 1960.
The first bridges
First documents about the bridge
The first mention of a bridge over the Weser in Bremen is in a document from 1244 about the sale of a plot of land in the New Land by the Hude monastery to the Teutonic Order . In the so-called “Schiffsmüllerprivileg” of 1250 over the berths of the Bremer Schiffsmühlen and the associated obligations, the area of Herrlichkeit (and Teerhof ) is referred to as an “island on both sides of the bridge”. This is to be seen as an indication that this first bridge already reached as far as the left bank of the Little Weser . The source reveals nothing about the exact positional relationship between the bridge over the Great Weser and the one over the Small Weser. From their (new) berths on the bank of this island facing the Great Weser, the ship millers had to guard and maintain the Schlachte, which was mentioned for the first time in this context, on the opposite right bank of the main stream. With the possibility of locating the mills on the other side of the main river and monitoring the Schlachteufer from there, the bridge enabled a decisive step in the development of the Bremen ports . When in 1390 the Vieland (Upper and Lower Vieland together) was militarily secured by a Landwehr ditch, largely an extension of the Ochtum, the farmers of this area had to provide armaments.
Connection
From the south corner of the market, opposite the buildings around the Willehadikirche, the Wachtstrasse led to this bridge. South of the row of houses on the market crossed the Wachtstraße the bellows . The banks of the Weser were built on with houses on both sides. The street fronts of the houses on the banks were downstream on Martinistraße, upstream on the Tiefer, which only met the banks of the Weser at the wooden gate . The old town side of the bridge was secured by the bridge gate. On the south bank of the (Great) Weser, the bridge ended on the glory , part of the Stadtwerder . The Schiffsmüller privilege there mentions an “island on both sides of the bridge” without any indication of its size or shape. The wording suggests that the bridge over the great Weser had a continuation over the little Weser from the beginning, possibly straight at first; it doesn't mean “island between the bridges”. Representations have only been available since the late 16th century, that is, after the glory kennel “bride” was built there in 1522 , both as a fortress and as a powder tower. The glory was now a bulwark , Propugnaculum Pontis . Defensive ditches called Piepen , which connected the Weser and Kleine Weser , separated it from the Stadtwerder upstream and the Teerhof downstream , so that Herrlichkeit and Teerhof became artificially islands. From the glory, drawbridges led parallel to the Weser to the Stadtwerder and the Teerhof.
The bridge over the Kleine Weser started from the Teerhof from the 16th to the 19th century.
Sponsorship
The economic sponsor of the (Great) Weser Bridge was not the city-state of Bremen. It was built with compulsory labor from the near and far surrounding area, not least from the county of Neubruchhausen , which also collected the bridge toll, and 102 towns, largely on the left bank of the Weser, had to raise the maintenance costs for the bridge.
Construction
The successive copies of the Weser Bridge, which for many centuries was the only fixed connection across the river in the Hanseatic city, were wooden constructions with numerous supporting yokes in the substructure for six centuries. The number ranged from eight to fourteen. As a rule, the building material quickly deteriorated, so that new buildings were repeatedly necessary. Since the greatest danger for the bridge was when there was ice, a number of ice bucks were placed across the river at the two places where the Bremen moat met the Weser.
Bridge gates
The access to the Great Weser Bridge from the old town side was formed by two gates over the centuries. These could be closed if necessary and thus protected the old town from enemy attacks from the other side of the Weser. The first of them was built between 1552 and 1554 and had a pointed stepped gable with which it towered over the surrounding houses. It was demolished in 1688 in favor of a new building. This was designed according to the drafts of the French architect Jean Baptiste Broëbes (1660-1720), who continued to excel in Bremen as the builder of the old stock exchange . The new Weser Bridge Gate was bulkier and, despite a wide passage, looked more like a house than a gate. It was also torn down in 1839.
Water wheels
At the first bridge mentioned, ship mills were chained between the yokes on pontoons . These were used to grind grain with the help of water power. From 1394 there was also a water wheel with a diameter of about twelve meters on the old town side - the so-called "water art". The wheel drew water into a wooden pipe system to which around 200 users could be connected. These were mostly members of the higher society that financed the construction. In 1710 the water wheel was clad with wood and a triangular gable to make the access to the city center more representative. The Bremen coat of arms as well as numerous decorations and figures could be seen on the panel . The wheel was replaced by pumps in 1823.
18th and early 19th centuries
The Weser Bridge from 1738, which was built entirely from wood, was built in just seven months for 26,000 thalers under the direction of the master builder Hermann Ficke. It was 7.75 m wide. On the Neustadt side it had a ferry gate, a folding device similar to a drawbridge , which allowed ships to pass through. Watermills were fastened again between the 14 pile yokes of the bridge over which the carriageway ran. Only one year after completion, however, the bridge was destroyed on the night of September 22nd, 1739, when a lightning strike caused the bride to explode. This accident resulted in extensive devastation of the inner city buildings and claimed 32 lives. However, the Great Weser Bridge was quickly repaired.
More expensive bridge repairs followed, especially those from 1815 to 1817 by the city master builder Poppe and those from 1822. Now it was given a second footpath. The millers' sack storage facilities, each of which had a water mill attached to 11 pile yokes, hindered the increasing traffic and was therefore removed. In 1829 the wooden bridge over the Kleine Weser was replaced by a 9.45 m wide new building. This bridge remained until 1916.
The first Great Weser Bridge from 1841 to 1895
After the bridge from 1738 had become dilapidated over time, the Bremen council decided in 1838, one hundred years after its construction, to build an at least partly stone bridge that should be more independent of climatic influences. The technical management during the construction phase from 1839 to 1841 was taken over by Friedrich Moritz Stamm (1793–1843), who came from the Rhine province and who was appointed city planning director, who had already carried out several work in Bremen. His preference for a simple, classicist style was also reflected in the appearance of the new bridge.
It had six stone pillars on which a wooden substructure rested. This breach was 10.75 m wide with a carriageway of 5.35 m wide and two footpaths. The previously existing ferry gate was not reinstalled, but the bridge had a greater height, which enabled the majority of the ships of the time to pass under. The watermills were also abandoned, the operation of which was no longer in any reasonable proportion to their use. On each side the bridge was lined with four cast iron lanterns that were placed on the railing. The inauguration of the bridge, which cost 214,000 thalers, took place on New Year's Eve 1841.
Twenty years after the inauguration, in 1861 the wooden deck girder with a block paving was replaced by an iron one, and the bridge surface was paved. While the lane in the middle, widened to 7.17 m, was designed for carriages with darker stones, the footpaths on both sides, which should also invite strolling across the river, were given friendlier colors with light sandstone.
A little later, two more bridges across the Weser were built downstream. The railway bridge built in 1865/66 could not be used by pedestrians. From 1872 to 1875, the Kaiserbrücke , today Mayor Smidt Bridge , was built for the large, new street from the main train station to Neustadt .
The second Great Weser Bridge from 1895 to 1961
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In the course of the Weser correction , which represented a deepening and straightening of the river, the necessity of a new bridge arose because the old one could not be adjusted to the banks to be changed and a demolition was necessary. The six strong bridge piers also hindered the flow of water too considerably during the floods of 1880/81.
Those responsible in the municipal committees came to an agreement on the basis of the construction plans of the chief building director Ludwig Franzius for the submitted artistic design by the Karlsruhe architect Hermann Billing .
Positional relationships
Like its predecessors, the bridge on the old town side was connected to the long southern end of the market square by Wachtstrasse . Since the Wachtstrasse led straight to the stock exchange , which was built on the market in 1861–1864 , the bridge was also known as the " Stock Exchange Bridge". On the left bank of the Weser, the bridge still ended at the Teerhof . In the last nine years, before the road was continued straight over the Kleine Weser in 1903, there was a privately built and operated pedestrian bridge as a shortcut that reached the banks of the Neustadt near the St. Pauli Church . It was called the Pfennig Bridge after the user fee to be paid.
Building
Construction began in 1893. Billing, who took on the artistic design, was assisted by two other renowned architects: August Thiersch in Munich and Franz Schwechten in Berlin. In a two-year construction period, a 137-meter-long, two-lane cantilever bridge with half-timbered tanner girders and a suspension harness was built, resting on two sandstone-clad piers. These formed a stream opening 64 meters wide, and a sandstone lion's head was attached to each of their narrow sides - two heads each looked towards the old town and the new town. Both approaches to the bridge were flanked by two four-meter-high obelisks , on which a bronze lion's head was attached halfway up, facing the land side. These obelisks also marked the beginning of the cast iron braces, which were the bridge's most distinctive architectural feature. They started at the obelisks and formed two roofed portals as they crossed the Weser, each bearing a small roof turret and a flagpole. The nine-meter-wide carriageway ran between the cast iron structure and the footpaths separated from it on the outside of the bridge. The Great Weser Bridge was opened in 1895. Because of its construction, the bridge was very popular with the population and soon became one of the city's landmarks. It was considered the most beautiful and famous of the numerous Bremen Weser bridges.
In 1903 the St. Pauli Bridge , an iron arch bridge with a tension belt and a suspended lane, was built over the Kleine Weser . This continued the route from the Great Weser Bridge over the Teerhof with the building yard and the breakthrough to Brückenstraße (today Friedrich-Ebert-Straße ) in the Neustadt. Nearby since 1894 was the small, private, so-called penny bridge whose crossing cost a penny. This bridge disappeared in 1903.
During static investigations in 1929 it was found that the river bed had deepened by six meters and that there was a serious risk with regard to the stability of the bridge piers. To secure the bridge, stone pouring was carried out on the pillar foundations and sinkholes.
On April 1, 1933, just under a month after the National Socialists came to power in Bremen , the bridge was christened the Adolf Hitler Bridge in a public event elaborately staged by Nazi propaganda . A little more than six years later, on July 1, 1939, the newly built West Bridge (today's Stephanibrücke ) was given this name and the Great Weser Bridge was renamed "Lüderitz Bridge" in memory of the merchant and colonial lord Adolf Lüderitz from Bremen .
At the end of the Second World War , the National Socialist rulers in Bremen decided to blow up all Weser bridges, including the “Lüderitz Bridge”, in order to prevent the Allies advancing from the south from penetrating the old town. The demolition took place on April 25, 1945. The central part of the bridge was destroyed and fell into the river. Two days later the Allies, who had found other routes up the Weser in Achim over an undamaged bridge , captured the city and ended the Nazi regime.
As a replacement for the "Lüderitzbrücke", the hastily erected and extremely provisional "Memorial Bridge" served from June 15, 1945. However, the military government of the American Zone of Occupation endeavored to rebuild the bridge in its old state as quickly as possible. The Americans saw it as an important traffic axis for the movement of goods to and from the ports. A reliable crossing of the Weser in the city was of fundamental importance for the economic development of Bremen, as the Americans set great store by establishing a stable economy quickly in the three western zones in competition with the Soviet occupation zone . Reconstruction of the building began in August 1945. It was very difficult and lengthy, among other things due to the severe winter of 1946/47 and the scarcity of raw materials in the post-war period . In addition, the already well advanced construction site was damaged by the ice drift on the Weser during the Bremen bridge disaster on March 18, 1947. Three days later, wooden planks were laid over the resulting gaps so that at least pedestrians could use the crossing again to a limited extent. In the summer of 1947 it was possible to completely close the middle section of the bridge with girders and the ceremonial reopening took place on November 29 of the same year. The name “Lüderitzbrücke” came from the urging of the Americans, who did not want the former German colonies to be glorified . Instead, the bridge was now called "Great Weser Bridge" again.
From an architectural point of view, it was actually a replica that was almost true to the original. Only the roof turrets on the cast-iron gates had not been reconstructed, otherwise the appearance and dimensions matched. However, it soon turned out that the bridge was no longer able to cope with the increasing volume of traffic in the 1950s. It was therefore replaced by the modern, newly built Wilhelm Kaisen Bridge from 1960 and demolished a year later.
In 1998, two of the four sandstone lion heads were found by chance from the river pillars that had fallen into the Weser during the blast in 1945. In the course of the renovation of the bank on the old town side by the port authority, they were recovered by a dredger . Today they stand on steel steles under the north end of the Wilhelm-Kaisen-Brücke on the Weser promenade.
The Wilhelm Kaisen Bridge since 1960
On May 2, 1957, for the reasons mentioned, but also with a view to the future and even higher passage numbers foreseeable at that time, the construction of the Great Weser Bridge was completely rebuilt. The decision paper stated:
- "The future traffic development in Bremen requires the construction of both the Great Weser Bridge and the East Bridge within a decade."
On July 26th of the same year, the public tender for the construction work began. By autumn 22 companies had submitted their offers, and on November 29th the company Dyckerhoff & Widmann was awarded the contract, which planned a simple three-span prestressed concrete box girder bridge with a variable construction height. While in earlier centuries and decades the main traffic arteries of the city, including the bridges, were always oriented towards the center, i.e. the market square , the new building was supposed to direct the traffic past it. To do this, it was necessary to build the new bridge about 40 meters up the Weser from the old one, so that it no longer served as an extension of the Wachtstrasse on the old town side, but was accessed via Balgebrückstrasse, for which a row of houses had to be broken. The design engineer was called Finsterwalder, and Kurp was the site manager.
The foundation stone was laid on August 1, 1958 at the abutment on the old town side. Since the flow conditions of the Weser did not allow large scaffolding to be built in the river, most of the work was carried out on land. The reinforced concrete caissons with a floor area of 280 square meters were concreted in a dry dock on the Elbe near Hamburg . The eight-meter high structures with superstructures were towed across the lake to Bremen, where they were lowered onto the previously leveled river bed. There were brief delays in leveling because numerous boulders had to be recovered on the Neustadt side . The roadways were constructed using cantilever , a method that had never before been used in northern Germany and that attracted large numbers of spectators. Four front wagons were mounted on each of the pier heads, from which the superstructure was concreted in both directions. Every week the bridge grew six meters. In order to rule out deviations between the two construction phases, the engineers leveled every three meters from four fixed points on the outermost part of the bridge towards the bank. In the event of non-compliance, the front-end wagons were raised or lowered by the difference. On December 11, 1959, an approximately 30 centimeter wide joint was inserted into the joint, the space between the two construction sections, and the bridge was closed for the first time. This joint offers the bridge halves a good three centimeters of freedom of movement.
The estimated costs for the construction amounted to 17,500,000 German marks , of which the federal government took over 5,000,000 DM, since at that time the federal highway 75 led over the bridge to be built at short notice . In the course of the construction of the new Great Weser Bridge, there was also a major change in the flow of traffic and the cityscape in that area, as the bridge reached far into existing streets. The busy Leibnizplatz on the Neustadt side as well as the Altenwallkreuzung and the Dechanatstraße on the old town side had to be redesigned and the Martinistraße, also on the right side of the Weser, had to be extended with a direct connection to the new bridge. Added to this was the widening of Osterstraße to the left of the Weser, the aforementioned breakthrough to Balgebrückstraße and the construction of several underpasses, some of which were reserved for pedestrians. The construction of the bridge was difficult because it was carried out with traffic. This means that the old Great Weser Bridge had to remain open during the months of the construction phase, which led to some delays in the work, but also to improvisations on the part of the construction management. For example, a makeshift bridge made of wooden planks had to be stretched over a very deep and long excavation pit on Martinistrasse to enable the tram to pass through.
Originally, the bridge was designed for two lanes with three lanes each, which were to be flanked by 2.35 meters wide cycle paths. The two middle lanes have now been converted into a tram area. For this reason, the foot-bike path combination is now followed by a 5.9 meter wide two-lane carriageway on both sides. The lanes are separated from the 5.8 meter wide area of the tram, which has one track in each direction. The bridge has a total width of 30.4 meters. The length of the construction, which has two hollow boxes, is 151 meters with a stream opening between the two river pillars of 86 meters. The trumpet-shaped fillets on the bridge abutments are particularly striking .
On December 22nd, 1960, Wilhelm Kaisen , the mayor and president of the Senate, cut a white ribbon with golden hedge trimmers at 2:15 p.m. in the presence of other high-ranking politicians . In his subsequent speech he emphasized:
- “I call it the Great Weser Bridge. The transition has carried it for decades, and it should stay that way. The bridge has been given a new name twice over the years, but neither of them has become popular. "
A few hours later the Great Weser Bridge was opened to traffic.
On January 1, 1980 it was named Wilhelm-Kaisen-Brücke in memory of Kaisen, who had died two weeks earlier. Kaisen was President of the Bremen Senate from 1945 to 1965 and thus Mayor of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen . His tenure of twenty years is the longest since the mid-19th century. Today, the Wilhelm-Kaisen-Brücke, located in the Altstadt district , is one of the most important and most frequented crossings of the Weser below Minden . It is passed by vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians and public transport and is the “southern gate” for most tourists and locals to the city center ” . Three trams run over the bridge with lines 4, 6 and 8 and a bus line with number 24 of the Bremer Straßenbahn AG . The Wilhelm-Kaisen-Brücke stop served by all these lines is located on the Teerhof .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manfred Rech, Found Past - Archeology of the Middle Ages in Bremen , Bremer Archäologische Blätter, supplement 3/2004, ISBN 3-7749-3233-6 , chap .: The ports of Balge and Schlachte → Phase 4 , p. 109.
- ↑ State and University Library Bremen: Digital Collections> Bremisches Urkundenbuch> certificates for 1381 - 1410> No. 127 (1390 November 25): "Regulation ... because of Umgrabung and fixing the Vīlandes ..." (p 160 /. 161 /162) last accessed on April 14, 2014
- ↑ a b Office for Roads and Bridge Construction Bremen (Ed.): Bridge construction over the Great and Small Weser 1960 . Weser-Kurier, Bremen 1960.
- ↑ The Great Bremen Lexicon . Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X
- ↑ Ernst Grohne: The former ship mills and their names. In: Niederdeutsche Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 20, 1942, pp. 68–75; Heinz Schecker, Schiffsmüller and Tarbrenner. In: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch 1938, pp. 32–37
- ↑ According to the sources for the Bremen railway bridge , the decision was made after much back and forth in favor of a double-track version without a pedestrian walkway. One of these only existed after the damage caused by the Second World War, when the bridge could not be used by trains at first, then only on a single track.
- ↑ http://www.bremen-history.de/woher-die-pfennigbruecke-ihren-namen-hatte/
- ↑ Weser Bridge will open again from tomorrow. In: Weser-Kurier of November 28, 1947, page 1.
- ↑ Weser-Kurier , No. 300, December 23, 1960, page 12: "The bridge swings elegantly from bank to bank"
- ↑ Weser-Kurier , No. 300, December 23, 1960, page 1: "Bremen has a new Great Weser Bridge"
- ↑ Weser-Kurier , No. 300, December 23, 1960, page 11: "A bridge for 100 years"
literature
- Harry Schwarzwälder : The Weser Bridges in Bremen. Destiny 1939 to 1948 . Schünemann Verlag, Bremen 1968.
- Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 23 " N , 8 ° 48 ′ 18" E