Ship Bridge (Koblenz)

Coordinates: 50 ° 21 ′ 33 "  N , 7 ° 36 ′ 26"  E

Koblenz ship bridge
Ship bridge over the Rhine around 1896
use	Road bridge
Crossing of	Rhine
place	Koblenz ↔ Ehrenbreitstein
construction	Pontoon bridge
overall length	325 m
start of building	1818
completion	1819
opening	April 18, 1819
Status	destroyed
closure	1945
location

A ship bridge spanned the Rhine between Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein from 1819 until it was destroyed in the Second World War in 1945 . In the Rheinanlagen the two bridge houses and left-bank bridgehead have been preserved to this day.

history

The first Prussian ship bridge in Koblenz was built in July 1792 under the direction of the pontoon officer Johann Gottfried Linde at the level of the electoral palace with 63 pontoons and 42 barges. The approximately 42,000-strong army corps of the Duke of Braunschweig crossed the Rhine with their help and then moved into their field quarters between Metternich and Rübenach .

With the construction of the large Prussian fortress , permanent fortifications were also laid on the left bank of the Rhine for the first time in Koblenz's history. The responsible fortress brigadier, Major General Ernst Ludwig Aster , therefore pleaded as early as 1817 for the construction of a permanent connection between the two banks of the Rhine in order to bring troops from Ehrenbreitstein and Pfaffendorfer Höhe to the other side to the Karthaus and Petersberg in the event of a defense . But even in peacetime, such a bridge was of great importance, because the planned large military training area on the Karthaus had to be accessible to all units of the fortress. The existing yaw ferry - known as the flying bridge - was no longer suitable for these requirements, so the Prussian Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg approved the construction of a curved ship bridge in 1818. Under the direction of the engineer officer August Wilhelm Linde, the bridge was built by the brothers Hermann and Mathias Stinnes from Ruhrort for around 36,000 thalers and opened on April 18, 1819. To protect the bridge from ice and flooding , a security harbor was also built on the right bank of the Rhine.

Initially, the ship's bridge consisted of 38 wooden barges, over which an approximately 7.30 meter wide and 346 meter long, arched deck made of wooden boards led. Twelve movable yokes made it possible to open the ship for passage. A hurricane damaged the bridge considerably on July 18, 1841. As a result, it was rebuilt in a straight shape with 36 barges, a flying bridge was again used during the construction phase.

In 1877, the Koblenz-based mechanical engineering company Schaubach & Grämer installed a mechanical drive, which was used for the first time on Rhenish ship bridges, to drive two yokes. The moving parts of the ship's bridge were anchored with chains, to open them they were previously allowed to drift away by the current, to close they had to be pulled back on the chains with hand-operated reels, which, depending on the water level and current, took a long time and required considerable personnel. The new steam drive enabled quick opening and closing by day using a steam engine installed in one of the barges, and compressed air was also stored in containers, which enabled the drive to operate at night when the machine's boiler was not fired. After 1900, the drive was modernized and the wooden boats were replaced by 37 iron ones.

The bridge fee to be paid for the crossing was collected from two bridge houses on the Koblenz side. The military was exempt from this. From 1907 to 1947 the " Wahrschaustation" ( seaman's language : true to see = to warn, to instruct) in Pfaffendorf regulated shipping traffic on the Rhine. When the ship bridge in Koblenz was open, it gave the ships passage with a flag.

Towards the end of the Second World War, the German troops destroyed all bridges on the Rhine during their retreat in March 1945, including the ship bridge in Koblenz. American pioneers were still building a new pontoon bridge in the same place in 1945 . After the handover to the French military administration, a flood failed to loosen the anchorage according to the rising water, and the ship bridge sank in the Rhine. The French army repeated the construction, but abandoned the pontoon bridge in 1947. With the completion of the reconstruction of the Pfaffendorfer Bridge in 1953, the ship's bridge was finally dispensable, and even before the war it was considered an obstacle to the increasing shipping traffic, which in turn caused long waiting times when passing the bridge, as it had to be extended very often and due to the short distance between the approaching ones Ships also often stayed open late.

Today the Schängel passenger ferry operates at the same point . On the Koblenz side, the two bridge houses and the remains of the bridge anchoring in the Rhine facilities still bear witness to the existence of the ship bridge.

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  The Rhine between Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein, between the ship bridge, around 1900

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  Return of German troops from the front after the armistice on the ship bridge in Koblenz in November 1918

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  Passers-by wait in front of closed barriers while the ship bridge is open to shipping, around 1932.

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  To make the Rhine passable for shipping, segments of the ship bridge were extended, around 1932.

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  Towing convoy passing downstream; left one of the two extended bridge segments, around 1932.

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  Vehicle and passenger traffic, around 1932.

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  A memorial plaque in the Rheinanlagen commemorates the ship bridge

Bridge houses and bridgehead

Remains of the anchorage of the ship bridge (left) and the two bridge houses (right) 2011

In the Koblenzer Rheinanlagen in front of the Koblenzer Hof stand the two mirror-symmetrical bridge houses with porches resting on pillars and swinging roofs. They date from before 1914 and were built according to plans by Friedrich Neumann, the city councilor.

The bridgehead on the left bank of the Rhine is also preserved. The interconnected, pillar-like components were built from basalt lava .

Next to the bridge houses a memorial plaque reminds of the ship bridge. It reads here:

Koblenz – Ehrenbreitstein ship bridge

1819-1945

It spanned the 325 m wide Rhine on 36 wooden, later iron pontoons. Two or three yokes were extended when ships approached. Built in 1819 for 40,000 thalers, destroyed in 1945.

Monument protection

The bridge houses and the bridge head of the former ship bridge on the left bank of the Rhine are protected cultural monuments under the Monument Protection Act (DSchG) and entered in the list of monuments of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate . They are located in Koblenz's old town on the Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer .

Since 2002 the bridge houses and the bridge head of the former ship bridge on the left bank of the Rhine have been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley .

See also

• List of crossings over the Rhine and Moselle in Koblenz
• List of Rhine bridges

literature

• Herbert Dellwing (editor): Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Volume 3.2: City of Koblenz. Downtown. Werner, Worms 2004. p. 158. ISBN 3-88462-198-X
• Erich Franke: History of the Koblenz bridges , in: Koblenz city of bridges. Documentation for the inauguration of the Koblenz Balduin Bridge. Koblenz: Stadt Koblenz 1975, pp. 14–63, here pp. 47–52 (Documentations of the City of Koblenz, 4).
• Klemens Mersmann: History of the Royal Prussian Guard Pioneer Battalion . 2nd Edition. Berlin 1910.
• Koblenz City Archives (ed.): 200 years ago: The ship's bridge opened on April 18, 1819 . April 17, 2019 ( https://stadtarchivkoblenz.wordpress.com/2019/04/17/vor-200-jahren-eroeffnung-der-schiffbruecke-am-18-april-1819/ retrieval = 2019-07-01).

Web links

Commons : Schiffbrücke Koblenz  - Collection of images

• The ship bridge at brueckenweb.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ * July 10, 1737 in Zehden ; † January 17, 1816 in Berlin, 1756 entry into the Prussian artillery corps, last major in the pontooner corps, adopted in 1810 (Mersmann, p. 296 f.).
2. ^ The fortresses of Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein before the Prussian occupation . In: Archives for the officers of the Royal Prussian Artillery and Engineer Corps . tape 18 , 1845, p. 162-184, here p. 203 f . ( google.de ).
3. ^ A son of the aforementioned Major Linde, * around 1783 in Berlin; † November 2, 1858 in Ehrenbreitstein, 1797 entry into the Prussian pontooner corps, finally major and inspector of the 3rd Pioneer Inspection in Koblenz, adopted in 1839 (Mersmann, p. 300 f.).
4. ↑ Koblenz City Archives (ed.): 200 years ago: The ship bridge opened on April 18, 1819 . April 17, 2019 ( https://stadtarchivkoblenz.wordpress.com/2019/04/17/vor-200-jahren-eroeffnung-der-schiffbruecke-am-18-april-1819/ retrieval = 2019-07-01).
5. ^ Koblenz City Archives
6. ↑ Friedrich Victor: The hurricane on July 18, 1841 in its origin, its progress and its effects . Siegen 1841, p. 14 ( google.de ).
7. ↑ Protocol [No. 12] of the Electricity Commission [of September 21, 1874] . In: Protocols of the Rheinische Strombefahrungs-Commission from 1874 . Mannheim 1875 ( google.de ). ; Max Schaubach: Extension device for the Coblenz ship bridge . In: Weekly of the Association of German Engineers . Berlin 1878, p. 122-123 ( google.de ).
8. ↑ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - district-free city of Koblenz (PDF; 1.5 MB), Koblenz 2013

The next bridge upstream: Pfaffendorfer Bridge

Bridges over the Rhine

The next bridge down the river: Bendorfer Bridge