Prussian milestones (Middle Rhine)

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Prussian milestone in the Middle Rhine Valley near Brey

The Prussian milestones on the Middle Rhine are milestones along the Middle Rhine Valley between Cologne and Bingerbrück (from 1969 a district of Bingen am Rhein ), which were set up by Prussia in the 19th century to display distances.

From 1815, after the Grand Duchy of Lower Rhine Province (from 1822 Rhine Province ) had been added as a Prussian area, the Prussian state launched a major road construction program to improve infrastructure and economy. There was only one finished section between Bingen am Rhein and Koblenz , which was previously built by the French from Boppard . Now a new continuous embankment road has been created along the Rhine , which today is largely identical to the course of the old B 9 (without bypasses). With the establishment of milestones, a measuring system was adopted that had been in use in the Rhineland since the 18th century . The stones were created according to sample designs from Berlin ; an obelisk with a flattened tip and two side benches made of basalt lava . On the road side, the distances between Mainz, Koblenz and Cologne are in Prussian miles (1 mile = 7.532 km).

All eight Prussian milestones have been preserved between Bingen and Koblenz. It can be found just behind the Drusus Bridge in Bingerbrück (this stone also bears the Prussian eagle because it stood just behind the border with the Grand Duchy of Hesse ), south of Niederheimbach and Oberwesel , near St. Goar-Fellen , south and north of Boppard, south from Brey and in the south of Koblenz. The sections in between are not really a mile everywhere. There are shorter and longer spaces in between. Sometimes more emphasis was placed on proximity than on accuracy.

The Prussian milestones in the Bingen-Koblenz section have been part of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002 .

Web links

Commons : Prussian milestones  - collection of images

literature

  • Christian Schüler-Beigang (Ed.): The Rhine Valley from Bingen and Rüdesheim to Koblenz - A European cultural landscape. The central work (documentation for the UNESCO application). Verlag Philipp von Zabern , Mainz 2002, ISBN 3-8053-2753-6 .
  • Thomas Trumpp: Roman and Prussian milestones between Koblenz and Bingen. - In: Jahrbuch für Westdeutsche Landesgeschichte, 35 (2009), pp. 7–23. ISSN  0170-2025