Hercules Bridge
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 21 ″ N , 13 ° 21 ′ 7 ″ E
| Hercules Bridge | ||
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| use | Road traffic | |
| Crossing of | Landwehr Canal | |
| place | Zoo | |
| construction | Reinforced concrete , prestressed concrete | |
| overall length | 32 m / 41 m | |
| width | 27 m / 30 m | |
| Clear height | 4.0 m | |
| completion | 1950, amendment 1964 | |
| location | ||
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Hercules Bridge is a name with which two Berlin bridges at different locations have been named one after the other . The name is derived from the sculptures that served as bridge decorations . The existing Hercules Bridge in the Tiergarten district connects the Klingelhöferstrasse street across the Landwehr Canal at kilometer 3.00 to the south with Lützowplatz and the connected separate carriageways of Schillstrasse.
The bridge over the royal moat
The Königsgraben was part of the Berlin fortifications, which had already become militarily pointless at the beginning of the 18th century and were gradually removed from 1735. It flowed into the Spree near the western tip of today's Museum Island . At this point, a wooden bridge, the Neue Friedrichsbrücke or Monbijoubrücke , connected the core area of Berlin across the Königsgraben with the Monbijou Castle and with the Spandauer Vorstadt (also: Spandauer Viertel ) outside the old city limits since 1749 . After the fortress moat was narrowed and the old wooden bridge was torn down, a stone vaulted bridge was built in place of the wooden bridge in 1787/88, roughly at the same time as several other decorative bridges in the Berlin urban area. This structure was 26 m long and 11.50 m wide, the design came from the architect Carl Gotthard Langhans . After the artistic decoration by the sculptors Johann Gottfried Schadow and Conrad Nicolas Boy in 1791, the bridge was sometimes called the Simson Bridge , but mostly the Old Friedrichsbrücke or Hercules Bridge. The main elements of the plastic jewelry were two larger than life- size sandstone sculptures based on motifs from Greek mythology , which were placed on both sides over the central pillars of the bridge - Hercules fighting a centaur , designed and executed by Schadow, and Hercules fighting the Nemean lion , based on one Designed by Schadow and executed by Conrad Nicolas Boy (1753–1793). Four sphinxes with putti and lanterns at the outer ends of the bridge as well as reliefs depicting the fur of Cerberus and a lion's skin completed the bridge decoration. In 1875 the construction of the Berlin light rail between today's Ostbahnhof and Charlottenburg began . The land of the former fortifications could be used inexpensively for the course of the route . The royal moat was filled in, the associated bridges disappeared. The Herkulesbrücke was demolished in 1890 when the Börse S-Bahn station (today Hackescher Markt ) was already in operation. The bridge decorations were used for the new Hercules Bridge over the Landwehr Canal.
The bridge over the Landwehr Canal
An old, wooden bascule bridge over the Landwehr Canal from 1850, which was first called Moritzhof and later Albrechtshofbrücke , was replaced by a stone vault in 1889/90. After Schadow's damaged figures had been repaired and placed here in 1891, the new bridge was given the name Hercules Bridge . She crossed the canal north of Lützowplatz in the course of a street that leads south from the Großer Stern (today: Hofjägerallee, Klingelhöferstrasse, Schillstrasse, An der Urania). In 1934 the condition of the sculptures became so critical that they were taken to the depot of the Deutsches Museum and had to be replaced by copies in 1935. The bridge was blown up during the Second World War , most of the sculptures were destroyed. The original of the group Hercules fighting the Centaurs has been lost since the end of the war. The group with the Nemean lion suffered damage, but was preserved, was restored and has been in the Köllnischer Park behind the Märkisches Museum since the 1990s .
The destroyed bridge was replaced in 1950 by a three-lane reinforced concrete bridge. In 1962/64, a prestressed concrete structure was built just a few meters next to it as a three-lane drive-on opposite lane . As before, the completely unadorned new building complex is called Herkulesbrücke. The bronze sculpture Hercules and the Erymanthian Boar by Louis Tuaillon is located directly on Lützowplatz . This motif creates a mental connection to the earlier bridge decorations, but also to a Hercules fountain that no longer exists at this point.
literature
- Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin , magazine of the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin foundation and the friends and sponsors of the DTMB e. V., 4/2006.
- Eckhard Thiemann, Dieter Deszyk, Horstpeter Metzing: Berlin and its bridges . Jaron Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89773-073-1 , p. 176
- Borrmann: The Hercules Bridge in Berlin . In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , Volume 40 (1890), Sp. 1–6, Plate 1. Digital copy in the holdings of the Central and State Library in Berlin .
- Kathrin Chod, Herbert Schwenk, Hainer Weisspflug: Hercules Bridge . In: Hans-Jürgen Mende , Kurt Wernicke (ed.): Berliner Bezirkslexikon, Mitte . Luisenstadt educational association . Haude and Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89542-111-1 ( luise-berlin.de - as of October 7, 2009).
Web links
- Items. (PDF; 2.2 MB) In: Journal of the German Museum of Technology Berlin , issue 04/2006
Individual evidence
- ↑ Richard Borrmann: The architectural and art monuments of Berlin . Julius Springer, Berlin 1893, p. 383.
- ↑ Burgstrasse . In: Karl Neander von Petersheiden: Illustrative tables , 1799, street representations, p. 2.
- ↑ Interesting facts about the city of Berlin . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1936, part 3, p. 166 (free-standing pictures; district 2).
- ^ Image and brief description of the Hercules from Lützowplatz , accessed on November 17, 2009.