Neckar Bridge (Lauffen am Neckar)
Coordinates: 49 ° 4 ′ 30 ″ N , 9 ° 9 ′ 26 ″ E
| Neckar Bridge | ||
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| use | Municipal road | |
| Crossing of | Neckar | |
| place | Lauffen am Neckar | |
| Entertained by | City of Lauffen am Neckar | |
| construction | Arch bridge | |
| width | 8.30 meters (support), 6.20 meters (substructure) | |
| Load capacity | Bridge class 30 (DIN 1072) | |
| start of building | 1532 | |
| location | ||
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The Neckar Bridge in Lauffen am Neckar is a stone arch bridge over the Neckar , whose origins go back to the 14th century. It connects the Lauffener district of Dorf or Dörfle southwest of the Neckar with the so-called city on the opposite side of the Neckar. The core of today's bridge dates from 1532 and originally consisted of eleven arches with clear widths of up to 15.80 meters and massive pillars, made of ashlar masonry made of sandstone . It had an original length of around 225 meters. As a result of the Neckar canal in 1950/52 and the construction of a riverside road, the bridge has lost five arches, so that today it only has six arches. The bridge was given its present form in 1980 when an 8.30 meter wide reinforced concrete road surface was laid.
history
History of the location
Already in Roman times there was a ford through the Neckar near Lauffen . In the Middle Ages, after Lauffen Castle was built and the city was founded, there was a ferry service run by the clergy and carers of the Regiswindiskirche . There was often a dispute about the ferry operation because the owners of Lauffen hindered the ferry operation or claimed rights to it, or because the ferry landing stages were used to prevent rafting on the Neckar. In 1343 the downstream town of Heilbronn paid the knight Albrecht Hofwart von Kirchheim money for the unhindered rafting in Lauffen.
Construction of the first Neckar bridge in Lauffen
After Lauffen came to Württemberg in 1361 , Count Ulrich V had a stone bridge built over the Neckar in Lauffen for the first time in 1473. The bridge was subject to duty for travelers. The residents of Lauffen could use the bridge freely for an annual fee. Traders were also able to cross the bridge in Lauffen duty-free to increase trade. In the summer of 1529 the old bridge was destroyed in a flood.
The Neckar Bridge from 1532
The current bridge was built by 1532 to replace the older bridge that was destroyed by flooding. The bridge had eleven arches with clear widths of up to 15.80 meters. The width of the bridge was 6.20 meters and the building had walled parapets , so that the usable width was around 5.00 meters. The maintenance and repairs to the bridge were carried out by forced labor.
The bridge survived the Thirty Years War and the retreat of the French over the bridge in the Palatinate War of Succession in 1688 without major damage.
Interruption by a wooden structure
When defending the French to defend the city in 1693, Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm had one of the stone pillars and the two adjoining arches broken out of the bridge and replaced with a provisional wooden structure. In 1724 a covered hanging bridge was used instead of the wooden structure at the defect. In 1799, during the Napoleonic Wars , Austrian troops broke the suspension bridge when they withdrew. In 1810 the defect was replaced by stone pillars and arches.
Changes due to the expansion of the B 27 and the Neckar Canal
When Reichsstraße 27 was expanded around 1900, the stone parapets of the bridge were demolished and a width of 6.60 meters was achieved through overhanging console stones, of which 4.60 meters on the roadway and 1.50 meters on a one-sided sidewalk and 0.50 meters for a curb on the opposite side of the carriageway.
In the last days of the Second World War , another pillar and the adjacent arches were destroyed by blasting, but were replaced by reinforced concrete parts with sandstone cladding in the old form as early as 1946 as part of the restoration of the old Reichsstraße 27. Plans to widen the bridge, which could not have been realized without a complete redesign, came to nothing.
In the course of the Neckar canalization in 1950/52, the new weir bridge that was built around 300 meters upstream was set up as a road bridge for the B 27 . However, the Neckar canalization also required part of the old Neckar Bridge, as four of the old sandstone arches on the city side had to give way to a steel-concrete composite structure that was adapted to the canal cross-section. On the village side on the left bank of the Neckar, an old arch bridge was sacrificed in favor of a riverside road. Of the original eleven bridge arches, only six have survived today.
Renovation and widening in 1980
In 1980 the structure was completely renovated and the width of the bridge was widened to 8.30 meters by placing a reinforced concrete deck. The carriageway width has been 5.80 meters since then, the pavement and curb are still 1.50 meters and 0.50 meters wide, respectively. A roadway seal under the road surface is intended to secure the existence of the bridge.
future
In the course of the planned expansion of the Neckar Canal, it is planned that another of the remaining six pillars will be demolished to make way for a widened canal.
literature
- Günther Kolbe: Neckar Bridge Lauffen. In: Federal Minister of Transport (Ed.): Stone bridges in Germany. Beton-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-7640-0240-9 .
Web links
| Upstream | Crossing the Neckar | Downstream |
| Barrage Lauffen | Old Neckar Bridge |
Horkheim weir |