Rhine connection barracks

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Floor plan (around 1918)

The Rhine connection barracks was a barracks complex in the southern suburb of Koblenz , the oldest part of which was completed in 1827.

history

Rhine connection barracks Koblenz.jpg
Bridge access casemates (left) and south wing (right)
Koblenz, Königshalle (2015-08-12 45) .JPG
Front side of the Rhine wing (2015)

The Prussian city fortifications of the Koblenz fortress ran in a quarter arc from the Rhine (in place of today's Pfaffendorfer bridge ) to the Moselle (roughly in place of today's Europe bridge ). The most endangered points were the connections or connections to the two rivers. A fortress with great firepower (43 casemate guns) was therefore built at the Rhine connection. Both the shipping on the Rhine and both riverside roads could be covered with barrage from there. The two-story casemate corps consisted of an approximately 100 meter long south wing with 15 and an approximately 17 meter long north or Rhine wing with 7 casemates. At its end towards the Rhine there was a Poternentor with a drawbridge that led over a moat .

The plastered building with cuboid structure in the classical style was completed in 1827 on part of the departmental tree nursery established in 1809 by the French prefect Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia .

At the beginning of the 1860s, plans began to extend the railway on the left bank of the Rhine to the right bank of the Rhine as far as Lahnstein. In order to be able to lead the necessary bridge over the Rhine as right-angled as possible and since there was little space between the electoral palace and the city wall, the bridge approach had to be leaned directly against the Rhine wing of the casemate corps. As a result, the back of the upper floor was partially built over. The ground floor, on the other hand, was extended by eight casemates under the bridge ramp, completed in 1866. In 1874 a half-timbered barracks for two companies was built between the south wing and the Mainzer Tor . A riding hall had already been built beforehand.

To commemorate the 25-year relationship (March 17, 1850 to March 17, 1875) of the then Prince and later imperial couple Wilhelm I and Augusta to the Koblenz garrison, eight terracotta reliefs were attached to the front wall of the Rhine wing in 1875. In the upper row three reliefs: on the left shows an A for Augusta with the year 1850, next to it the Reich coat of arms and on the right a W for Wilhelm with the year 1875. In the lower row five reliefs (the one on the right has not been preserved): Three (outside in the middle) showed a laurel pendulum held by two Prussian eagles, the middle one with an additional laurel wreath. In between two reliefs with a laurel wreath each. See also the Königshalle in the Koblenz Rhine plants.

In 1890 the city fortifications of Koblenz were abandoned, and about ten years later the ramparts and gates were largely leveled. " As an ugly remnant of the time of the fortress " only the Rhine barracks remained. Although the casemate corps had lost its function as a gun emplacement, the Prussian military continued to use the entire facility to accommodate troops and in 1897 even had an additional floor installed on the south wing. In 1902 an attempt initiated by Julius Wegeler to persuade the military to give up the barracks failed .

garrison

The troop occupancy before 1851 has not yet been established.

  • 1851–1860 Fusilier battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 30
  • 1860–1864 1st Battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 68
  • 1866–1869 1st Battalion of the Guards Grenadier Regiment No. 4
  • 1869–1870 2nd Battalion of the Guards Grenadier Regiment No. 4
  • 1871–1877 Fusilier battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 29
  • 1877–1887 Parts of the 2nd Battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 68
  • 1887–1893 6th and 8th companies of the Guards Grenadier Regiment No. 4
  • 1893–1902 10th Company of Infantry Regiment No. 68
  • 1902–1914 a company of the 1st Battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 68

In addition, there were:

  • 1892–1914 parts of the field artillery regiment (2nd Rheinische) No. 23
  • since 1857 temporarily parts of the train battalion (1st Rheinische) No. 8 (e.g. the bakery department)

The Americans followed as Allied occupation troops in 1919 and the French in 1923, who renamed the barracks to Quartier Carnot and stayed there until 1929. During this time the riding arena burned down.

Civil use

From 1931 to 1937 there was a fire brigade school in the Rhine barracks, which then moved into a new building in Schillerstraße on Oberwerth. In addition, a Catholic special school and a private construction school were temporarily housed on the site. In 1933 the city of Koblenz acquired the entire facility. In the same year, the Pfaffendorfer railway or tram bridge was converted for car traffic and the width was increased from around 10 to 16 meters and the access ramp was rebuilt on the Koblenz side. Parts of the Rhine wing had to be demolished for this.

destruction

During the Second World War , the south wing of the casemate corps received several direct hits in the heavy air raid on November 6, 1944, and all of the barracks' extensions were completely destroyed. As early as July 1945, the city designated the former barracks as a rubble dump. For example, the area between the bridge ramp and the largely demolished south wing was filled with the remains of the former fortress Schirrhof on Clemensplatz and an embankment was built on the Rhine side, on which the Koblenz Mayor Josef Schnorbach had a small wing built for the wine village under construction . When the Rhein-Mosel-Halle was built in 1960, a piece of the south wing was exposed again and then blown up. There is only one upper floor casemates located directly at the bridge driveway and three ground floor casemates located below the vineyard. The Rhine wing, on the other hand, was still used as part of the foundation for the driveway during the reconstruction of the Pfaffendorfer Bridge and was therefore largely retained in its pre-war form. A public toilet was housed in the former gate system until the Federal Garden Show . The building is a protected cultural monument according to the Monument Protection Act (DSchG) and is entered in the list of monuments of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate . The structure has also been part of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002 .

Sources and literature

  • Archives: DB 8 military. Existing structure: 01 City wall with bridges: Saillant I with casemate corps connecting the Rhine. City archive Koblenz.
  • Klaus Weber: The Prussian fortifications of Koblenz (1815-1834) (=  art and cultural research . Volume 1 ). 2003, ISBN 3-89739-340-9 , pp. 212-214, 220-223 .
  • Rüdiger Wischemann: The Koblenz Fortress. From the Roman fort and Prussia's strongest fortress to the largest garrison of the Bundeswehr . Koblenz 1978, p. 124–125, with four illustrations .

Web links

Commons : Rheinschlusskaserne  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weber, pp. 213-214.
  2. ^ Wilhelm Becker: The royal palace at Coblenz . Koblenz 1886, p. 185-186 ( dilibri.de ).
  3. ↑ Max Bär: From the history of the city of Koblenz 1814/1914 . Koblenz 1922, p. 171 ( dilibri.de ).
  4. ^ Address books of the city of Koblenz; Regimental histories of the units mentioned.
  5. ^ Helmut Schnatz: The aerial warfare in the Koblenz area 1944/45 . Boppard 1981, p. 205 . Comparison of the aerial photographs from October 20, 1944 and those from February 14, 1945 (Landesvermessungsamt Rheinland-Pfalz ud Stadt Koblenz (Hrsg.): 2000 years Koblenz. A city atlas . Neuwied 1992, p. 29-30 . )
  6. ↑ Peter Brommer: Between Destruction and Reconstruction. Koblenz from 1945 to 1949 . In: Cultural Department of the City of Koblenz (ed.): 1945–1949: End of the war and a new beginning in Koblenz (=  Koblenz contributions to history and culture . Volume 6 ). Koblenz 1996, p. 63-107, here p. 84 .
  7. ↑ WDR -Digitalarchiv (ed.): The Rhein-Mosel-Halle (video of the construction of Koblenz Rhein-Mosel-Halle here: Bursting the southern casemates Corps) . ( wdr.de - introduce time code to 4:40 minutes).
  8. ^ Weber, p. 223.
  9. ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - district-free city of Koblenz . Koblenz 2013, p. 39 ( gdke-rlp.de [PDF]).

Coordinates: 50 ° 21 ′ 13.3 ″  N , 7 ° 36 ′ 8 ″  E