Rhine bridge in Wintersdorf
Coordinates: 48 ° 50 ′ 50 ″ N , 8 ° 6 ′ 54 ″ E
| Rhine bridge Wintersdorf / Pont de Beinheim | ||
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| use | Road bridge | |
| Crossing of | Rhine , km 335.7 | |
| place | Iffezheim , Beinheim | |
| construction | Steel truss bridge | |
| overall length | over 500 m | |
| Longest span | over 150 m | |
| completion | 1895/1975 | |
| location | ||
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The Rheinbrücke Wintersdorf is a former railway bridge used by road traffic that crosses the Rhine between the Rastatt district of Wintersdorf and Beinheim and thus the border between Germany and France .
Geographical location
The structure is located at Rhine kilometer 335.7 and spans the state road 78b and the department road 87 with two lanes. Until 1999 it was also part of the Rastatt – Rœschwoog railway line .
The bridge is located in the Iffezheim district , but is named after the nearby town of Wintersdorf. In France it is called "Pont de Beinheim".
When it was built, the bridge was the only fixed Rhine crossing between Strasbourg and the Germersheim Rhine Bridge .
Bridge from 1895
requirements
The Grand Duchy of Baden - as the owner of the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways - and the German Empire - as the owner of the Reichseisenbahnen in the realm of Alsace-Lorraine - signed a state treaty on 23 May 1892 for a 37.6-kilometer double-track railway line from Rastatt on the Rheinbahn to Haguenau on the existing line from Strasbourg to Modern . A new bridge over the Rhine was also agreed. In particular, strategic considerations for an efficient Rhine crossing between Baden and Alsace north of Strasbourg led to this investment.
construction
Construction of the bridge began in 1893. Both the foundation work and the construction of the superstructure were carried out by the stock corporation for the iron industry and bridge construction (Harkort). The bridge was 555.7 m long, had three main openings with spans of 92 m, as well as four flood openings on the western bank and five on the eastern bank, each with a span of 31 m. The three long river bridges were iron constructions in the form of semi-parabolic truss beams with a diamond-shaped, postless strut truss and a roadway below. The flood bridges used truss beams with parallel girders with a postless strut truss and an overhead carriageway. Establishing the piers were caissons used. The bridge was double- tracked from the start .
A pair of massive, compact defensive towers flanked each of the two ends of the bridge. In addition, a pair of tall, narrow towers covered with baroque hoods marked the transitions from the flood bridges to the main girders.
The bridge was opened on May 1st, 1895. Colloquially it was called the Roppenheimer Brück at that time .
use
In the summer of 1914, the last peace plan before the First World War , took daily six pairs of trains in regional passenger bridge and beyond a Fernzugpaar Munich - Luxembourg and the D-train -pair Strasbourg -Munich. During the First World War there was intensive military train traffic to the western front across the bridge.
In 1919 the entire length of the bridge became the property of France due to the Treaty of Versailles . Only after the commissioning of the joint border station in Wintersdorf, which was expanded with a large freight station in particular, was train operations resumed on December 17, 1922. In 1934, five pairs of passenger trains ran across the bridge every day.
The bridge was very popular as a postcard motif because of its imposing shape. On French postcards it was also referred to as the “Pont de Rastatt” (Rastatt Bridge).
Second World War
On October 12, 1939, French troops blew up the western pier and three foreland bridges. In March 1941, the reconstruction of the bridge began in its original form. On May 3, 1942, the first track was put back into operation, and on February 3, 1943, the second track. The bridge was used daily by two pairs of express trains and eight pairs of passenger trains. On December 12, 1944, German troops blew up all the bridge piers as they retreated across the Rhine, causing all of the main girders to fall into the river.
Bridge from 1949
At the end of 1947, the French military government arranged for the bridge to be rebuilt so that another Rhine crossing could be used for its supply lines. It went into operation in May 1949. Except for the middle superstructure of the river bridge, which had to be replaced by a new building, the old superstructures could be lifted and repaired. The structure was again equipped with two tracks, but one side of the bridge was prepared with planks for road traffic. In the years that followed, the bridge was primarily used for military traffic; there was no resumption of cross-border passenger traffic. On October 7, 1950, the passenger train service between Rastatt and Wintersdorf was stopped. The entire railway line was only operated as a single track as a branch line.
From 1954, the maintenance of the German part of the Rhine Bridge was financed by the Federal Ministry of Defense due to strategic interests of NATO . To do this, the bridge and the subsequent line had to be passable on two tracks within 48 hours. In 1960 the bridge received grooved rails and a new asphalt deck for use as a two-lane road bridge . The last train service took place from May 4 to 18, 1966, when the trains between Germany and Strasbourg were diverted over the Wintersdorf Rhine bridge due to the raising of the Kehl Rhine Bridge.
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In 1974 a customs post was built on the German side. This housed a bank branch until the mid-1990s. In 2000 it was approved for use as an office building. In 2002 the federal government sold the building and the numerous surrounding parking spaces to a private individual. It was last used from 2005 to 2007 by a craftsman placement service. Since the land use plan identifies the property as a forest area, such commercial use was no longer possible. The municipality of Iffezheim does not intend to draw up a development plan, which is why the building has been falling into disrepair since then.
In 1975 the bridge was rebuilt with the Iffezheim barrage due to the expansion of the Rhine . For the new shipping channel, the five small foreshore bridges on the Baden side were replaced by a new superstructure with a span of over 150 m. This superstructure, a postless strut frame construction made of steel, was equipped with two tracks for rail traffic. In the current area, a clearance height of 9.26 m is maintained at the highest navigable water level.
Since the beginning of 1998 NATO has no longer had any interest in the railway line and the Rhine bridge. Since then, maintenance has been the responsibility of the Baden-Württemberg Road Administration . In particular, since the abolition of border controls in 1995, the bridge has served the increasing border and local traffic (commuters) between Alsace and Baden for vehicles up to 7.5 t and cyclists. According to a traffic count, in 2003 almost 7,000 vehicles used the Wintersdorfer bridge at the two northernmost fixed border crossings in Baden and around 14,000 vehicles used the Iffezheim barrage, which is also usable for trucks, to cross the Rhine. Since the introduction of the truck toll in Germany in 2005, a further increase in truck traffic has been observed at the Iffezheim barrage, combined with increased passenger car traffic on the Wintersdorf bridge.
A renewed use as a railway bridge, for example in the context of the Franco-German express connections, is under discussion; Corresponding considerations had already been given in the past. Since the bridge and access routes are still publicly owned, a connection between the French and German high-speed routes would be conceivable. Studies have shown time savings of up to an hour if the Palatinate and Strasbourg can be bypassed. The reactivation of the railway bridge to connect to the LGV Est-Européenne was registered by the state of Baden-Württemberg for inclusion in the 2015 Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan. The reactivation of Rastatt to Haguenau, if possible, to improve cross-border public transport is demanded by German and French environmental associations.
Due to the state of construction of the bridge, which is more than 100 years old in some areas, the future of the structure is uncertain. The maximum permissible vehicle weight for the bridge has already been reduced to 7.5 t.
View from the northwest
West portal on the French bank of the Rhine
Interface between the old and the new bridge
New bridge
Access to the bridge on the German side of the Rhine
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The bridge as a location
The Südwestrundfunk uses the Rhine bridge winter village repeatedly as a location for TV movies. Due to the proximity to the Baden-Baden production site and the relatively low traffic density, the bridge is used in particular as a backdrop for Tatort productions with Ludwigshafen commissioners Odenthal and Kopper ( Ulrike Folkerts and Andreas Hoppe ) instead of the busy bridges between Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. The Rhine bridge in Wintersdorf was seen in particular in the Tatort episodes Schrott and Manslaughter and Kopper .
literature
- Ulrich Boeyng: The Baden Rhine bridges - the end of the Second World War 75 years ago . Part 1: The destruction of the Rhine bridges between Neienburg and Wintersdorf , In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg 2020/2, pp. 87-94 (92ff).
- Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: Railway Rhine bridges in Germany. EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2003, ISBN 3-88255-689-7 .
- Martin Walter: 100 years of the Rhine bridge in Wintersdorf . In: Heimatbuch Landkreis Rastatt 1996, p. 245 ff.
Web links
- Karl Gotsch: Wintersdorf Bridge
- Viaduc de Roppenheim , film about the reconstruction of the bridge in the Médiathéque of the SNCF, 24 minutes
- Historical photos of the bridge at cparama.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Badisches Tagblatt, “'Pont de Rastatt' only with French people”, March 21, 2009
- ↑ Bridge at structurae
- ↑ Boeyng, p. 92.
- ^ Reichs-Kursbuch from July 1914, timetable table 224.
- ↑ Boeyng, p. 92.
- ↑ Boeyng, p. 92.
- ↑ Boeyng, pp. 92f.
- ^ Badisches Tagblatt, Former customs post remains in a deep slumber, October 30, 2014
- ↑ Marco Müller: For the common spirit on both sides of the Rhine - On the history of the Rhine crossings in the Rastatt district. In: Landkreis Rastatt (ed.): Heimatbuch 1961–2011. Rastatt 2011, p. 166.
- ↑ List of places, ports, bridges, ferries and locks, 1st Rhine and Danube regions ( Memento from July 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ 2003 road traffic censuses in the Upper Rhine region, Freiburg Regional Council (PDF; 35 kB)
- ^ Sven Andersen: A European solution for linking the LGV Est-Européenne with Germany. Eisenbahn-Revue International, Luzern 8–9 / 2004, p. 378 ff.
- ↑ In three and a half hours with TGV or ICE from Stuttgart to Paris? Press release No. 15/2005. VCD Landesverband Baden-Württemberg, May 25, 2005, accessed on December 9, 2013 .
- ↑ Agreement between the Federal Minister of Transport of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Minister of Equipment, Housing and Transport of the French Republic on the Paris – Eastern France – Southwest Germany high-speed rail link
- ↑ Registration of the State of Baden-Württemberg for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2015 (BVWP 2015) ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 48 kB)
- ↑ U. a. Pro Bahn press release from March 20, 2013 and press releases from the Franco-German alliance Trans-Pamina
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