Hohenzollern Bridge

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Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 29 ″  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 56 ″  E

Hohenzollern Bridge
Hohenzollern Bridge
View from the Kölntriangle to the Hohenzollern Bridge
use Railway and pedestrian bridge
Convicted Railway line Cologne Central Station - Cologne-Deutz
Subjugated Rhine
place Cologne - Altstadt-Nord - Cologne- Deutz
construction Arch bridge
overall length 409.19 m
width 29.50 m
Longest span 167.75 m
vehicles per day over 1200 trains
building-costs 14 million marks
start of building June 1907
completion May 1911
planner Franz Schwechten : stone construction, towers; Friedrich Dircksen , Fritz Beermann (EBD Cologne): steel arches, construction
location
Hohenzollern Bridge (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Hohenzollern Bridge

The Hohenzollern Bridge is a bridge over the Rhine in Cologne at river kilometer  688.5. The original structure, erected from 1907 to 1911, consisted of two railway bridges and one road bridge . After 1945, the reconstruction only took place for two railway bridges, which were later supplemented by a third. As a replacement for the abandoned road bridge, the outer railway bridges were supplemented by footpaths and cycle paths.

The Hohenzollern Bridge and the neighboring main train station are one of the most important junctions in the German and European rail network. The building is an integral part of the cityscape of Cologne and the Cologne Cathedral .

With 1,220 train journeys per day, it is the busiest railway bridge in Germany. The structure, together with Cologne Central Station, is a central bottleneck in rail transport in the Cologne region.

history

The double-track cathedral bridge was built at the same location in 1859 , and at the beginning of the 20th century no longer cope with the increased traffic. The planning work for the new building began under the President of the Cologne Railway Directorate, Paul von Breitenbach , and was handed over to his successor Rudolf Schmidt in 1906 . The management was in the hands of the railway engineer Fritz Beermann, under whose direction Friedrich Dircksen worked out the drafts. The construction of the Hohenzollern Bridge then took place from 1907 to 1911 with significant involvement of the MAN Gustavsburg plant . It was inaugurated on May 22, 1911 by Kaiser Wilhelm II .

The bridge consisted of three side-by-side bridge parts, each with three iron truss arches (passage openings) in the longitudinal direction to accommodate four railway tracks and a road. Although the location of the bridge and the train station was already disputed in the previous structures, the Hohenzollern Bridge took over the alignment of the cathedral bridge with the central axis of the cathedral.

At that time it was customary to embellish such an engineering structure with architecture, bridges mostly with portals. In the opinion of contemporaries, the neighborhood to Cologne Cathedral in particular required architectural decoration. The portals reinforced with high towers (and the smaller towers on the river pillars) of the Hohenzollern Bridge designed the then prominent Berlin architect Franz Schwechten in neo-Romanesque style.

  • King Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
    (Northern ramp on the right bank of the Rhine)

  • Kaiser Wilhelm I.
    (southern ramp on the right bank of the Rhine)

Four equestrian statues of Prussian kings and German emperors of the Hohenzollern family flank the ramps. The cathedral bridge was already adorned by the equestrian statues of Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia by sculptor Gustav Blaeser , now placed on the right bank of the Rhine, and Kaiser Wilhelm I by Friedrich Drake . In addition, on the left bank of the Rhine, the equestrian statues of Emperor Friedrich III. and, already during his lifetime, Wilhelm II , both by the sculptor Louis Tuaillon . They depict the age of Prussian rule in the Rhine Province .

  • Emperor Friedrich III.
    (northern ramp on the left bank of the Rhine)

  • Kaiser Wilhelm II.
    (Southern ramp on the left bank of the Rhine)

The stone figurative jewelry, the representation of important people in the city's history, was created by the Berlin sculptor Gotthold Riegelmann . Much of it has been preserved. The only one of three commemorative plaques that has been preserved is that of Rudolf Schmidt.

Hohenzollern Bridge after being blown up by the Wehrmacht in 1945

Between August 2 and 18, 1914, 2,150 trains (an average of four an hour) brought soldiers and materials to the Western Front .

During the Second World War , the Hohenzollern Bridge was one of the most important and busiest railway bridges in Germany. Although as a strategically important Rhine crossing it became a priority target for Allied air raids, it was slightly damaged by the end of the war, but navigable and thus one of the last intact Rhine crossings. During the advance of American troops into the city center on March 6, 1945, the bridge piers were blown up by pioneers of the retreating German Wehrmacht . Some of the bank-side arches were only slightly damaged so that they could be reused later.

It was made usable again as a makeshift under the direction of chief engineer Alfred Schön from the Krupp Stahlbau Rheinhausen company , and it was opened to traffic on May 8, 1948. During the reconstruction, the (southern) part of the road bridge was left out, so that the bridge now only consisted of six individual bridge superstructures, some of which were rebuilt in the old form.

The completely preserved portal structures and bridge towers were not repaired, but torn down in 1958. A small section of the old road ramp has been preserved on the Deutz side with cobblestones and tram tracks . The rest was removed as part of the construction of the Cologne Triangle and converted into a footpath and bike path. In 1959 the reconstruction of the bridge was completed.

On March 8, 1985, work began on building an additional bridge to integrate Cologne Central Station into the S-Bahn cycle system. The structure erected by a consortium of eight German companies now includes two tracks and a 3.5 m wide footpath and bike path. The construction work was completed in 1989. On the north side, three bridge parts were added for two more railway tracks and the bridge piers were widened in style. The old construction was copied in order not to impair the ensemble as a historical monument (although on closer inspection it can be seen that the extended northern bridge was welded and not riveted). Since then, the Hohenzollern Bridge has almost returned to its original size; for the southern part of the road bridge that has not been rebuilt, the northern third part of the railway bridge has been added. The bridge stretching in continuation of the central axis of the cathedral, which was originally the middle one, is now the southern one.

The three bridges are each 409.19 m long. The spans of the individual superstructures are 118.88 m for the western edge field, 167.75 m for the stream field and 122.56 m for the eastern edge field. The width of the three adjacent bridges together is approximately 29.5 m. The type of construction is a two-hinged truss arch with a drawstring .

180 degree view from the Hohenzollern Bridge over the Rhine
View from the crossing tower of Cologne Cathedral . The alignment of the Hohenzollern Bridge on the central axis of the cathedral can be seen.

  • Bronze plate in memory of Rudolf Schmidt, President of the Cologne Railway Directorate

  • Western driveway of the Hohenzollern Bridge 1930

  • Reconstruction of the "Hohenzollern Bridge" (photo from April 30, 1948)

  • The different construction methods: 1911, 1950s, 1986

Railway engineering

On the two southern bridges, the tracks are not in a ballast bed, but are attached directly to the bridge substructure.

Operationally, there are two routes in one-way operation, i.e. one route is inside and the other is outside. In the adjacent train stations Köln Hbf and Köln Messe / Deutz the direction indicator (Zs2) is used for the outer track "R" and the inner "L". In addition, there is the possibility of driving the inner route with signal Zs6 ( opposite track indicator ) on the main signal against the usual direction of travel, i.e. the middle bridge to the east and the south to the west, which rarely happens. The outer tracks, i.e. the very southern and northern tracks of the middle bridge, can only be used in their normal direction of travel.

To the west a part lies within the boundaries of Cologne Central Station ( entrance signals ), to the east a part lies in the Cologne Messe / Deutz station. In between there is a free stretch . Due to the distance from the distant signal of 400 meters, the permissible speed in the area around Köln Hbf is a maximum of 60 km / h. The entry and exit of Cologne Central Station usually takes place at 20 to 30 km / h.

Trains need an average of four minutes to drive over the bridge instead of the three planned.

The newer bridge for the S-Bahn tracks, the northern bridge train, consists of two tracks in a ballast bed. A maximum speed of 80 km / h applies, from the intermediate signal from Köln Hbf at the western end of the bridge to the west 50 km / h.

Poetry

In the poem Journey over the Cologne Railway Bridge by Night , written in 1913, the Alsatian poet Ernst Stadler (1883–1914) visualized a train journey through the industrialized urban landscape on the right bank of the Rhine and over the Hohenzollern Bridge in expressionist lyrical images.

Trivia

Part of the Hohenzollern Bridge, which was blown up in 1945, was used to rebuild the last Ruhr bridge, the Karl-Lehr Bridge in Duisburg .

Installation on the occasion of DEKT 2007

For the 2007 Kirchentag , the arches of the Hohenzollern Bridge were temporarily covered with red cloth, so that the bridge represented a stylized fish (the symbol of the Kirchentag).

The custom of love locks, which originated in Italy , has been spreading on the bridge since late summer 2008 . The question of weight and number of locks, which occasionally arises in this context, was answered differently, estimates are between two (April 2011) and 15 tonnes (September 2011), with an allegedly 40,000 locks. The railway saw no danger to the bridge statics with either weight specification. In June 2015 the number of locks was estimated at 500,000.

At the eastern bridgehead on the Deutz side, the German Alpine Club has maintained a public climbing facility with around 850 square meters of wall space since 1998.

More pictures

  • West entrance to the bridge from the main train station

  • Full view of the Hohenzollern Bridge from the Deutz Bridge

  • View from the banks of the Rhine in Deutz to Cologne Cathedral and Museum Ludwig , on the right the Hohenzollern Bridge

  • Love locks on the Hohenzollern Bridge

  • decoration

  • Equestrian statue of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. On the northern ramp of the bridge on the right bank of the Rhine

  • People and car traffic on the bridge, taken in the early 1930s.

literature

  • Hermann Maertens: The German statue monuments of the 19th century. Stuttgart 1892, p. 59.
  • Ulrich Naumann: For a closer union . In: Eisenbahngeschichte , 36, October / November 2009, pp. 14–26.
  • Ludwig Rotthowe: Cologne oddities. Special signals. In: LOK Magazin. GeraNova Zeitschriftenverlag, Munich, 33rd volume, issue 248, 2002, ISSN  0458-1822 , pp. 100-103.
  • Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: Railway Rhine bridges in Germany . 1st edition. EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2003, ISBN 978-3-88255-689-6 , p. 220-242 .
  • Dagmar Hänel, Mirko Uhlig: The love locks on the Hohenzollern Bridge . In: Everyday life in the Rhineland 2010. LVR Institute for Regional Studies and Regional History , Bonn 2010, pp. 68–75.
  • Lothar Hammer: Cologne: The Hohenzollern Bridge and the German bridge architecture of the imperial era . In: Stadtspuren - Monuments in Cologne . tape 25 . JP Bachem Verlag, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7616-1300-8 .

Web links

Commons : Hohenzollernbrücke  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ DB Bahn: Cologne Central Station - hub of the west
  2. ↑ Bridges at Deutsche Bahn. In: deutschebahn.com. Retrieved May 29, 2017 .
  3. ^ Nahverkehr Rheinland GmbH , SMA and Partner AG (ed.): Node investigation Cologne . January 24, 2012, “Version 1-00”, p. 13. (derived short version as PDF ( memento of September 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive )).
  4. ↑ Lothar Hammer: Cologne: The Hohenzollern Bridge and the German bridge architecture of the imperial era. Pp. 31,90,97. (Different dates in Helmut Fußbroich : memorial plaques in Cologne with reference to Ulrich Krings : Der Kölner Hauptbahnhof, Landeskonservator Rheinland, Arbeitshefte, Vol. 22, S. 37).
  5. ↑ Helmut Fußbroich : plaques in Cologne . Traces of the city's history. 1st edition. JP Bachem Verlag , Cologne 1985, ISBN 3-7616-0807-1 , Rudolf Schmidt, p. 114 .
  6. ↑ Spiegel special 2/2005: The unlikely coup
  7. ↑ Lothar Hammer: Cologne: The Hohenzollern Bridge and the German bridge architecture of the imperial era . In: City of Cologne, City Conservator (Ed.): Stadtspuren. Monuments in Cologne . tape 25 . JP Bachem, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7616-1300-8 , p. 257-258 .
  8. ↑ Extension of the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne for the S-Bahn . In: Railway technical review . 34, No. 3/4, 1985, p. 356.
  9. ↑ Christian Schlesinger: Lord of the knots . In: Wirtschaftswoche . No. 4 , January 20, 2017, ISSN  0042-8582 , p. 36 .
  10. ↑ Michael Braun: Ernst Stadler: Drive over the Cologne Rhine Bridge at night . Portal literatur-archiv-nrw.de , accessed on November 5, 2012.
  11. ↑ P. Beuker: Why couples hang padlocks on a Cologne bridge. In: Die Welt , March 1, 2009.
  12. ↑ Grace period for love locks on the Hohenzollern Bridge . koeln.de, January 13, 2009.
  13. ↑ a b love locks no danger for Hohenzollern Bridge. koeln.de, April 18, 2011.
  14. ↑ a b Kerstin Bund: The weight of love . In: Die Zeit , No. 38/2011.
  15. ↑ Love locks on the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne kunstundphysik.de, accessed on January 6, 2019.
  16. ↑ Jürgen Heinen: Climbing Guide Hohenzollern Bridge .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF 2.1 MB).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / dl.dropbox.com  
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