Ship Bridge (Mainz)

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Schiffsbrücke and Rheinmühlen in front of Mainz from: Memories of the Rhine: a collection of the most beautiful views of the Rhine between Mainz and Cöln , drawn and engraved by J. J. Tanner
The ship bridge around 1870

A ship bridge spanned the Rhine between Mainz and Kastel from 1661 until it was replaced by a fixed bridge in 1885. It was initially a curved pontoon bridge and was modernized in 1844 with iron pontoons and converted into a straight bridge.

history

After Mainz, with the citadel and forts in front , had a fortress-like character even before the Thirty Years War , Elector Johann Philipp von Schönborn had the city expanded into a coherent fortress . A ship bridge connected the fortifications on both banks of the Rhine. And the bridge toll bridge of boats was used to finance the extended fortification from the Kurfürstendamm, for what purpose the required electorate huge sums of money.

On May 12, 1661, the ship bridge was opened to traffic, the bridge toll was one cruiser per person. This toll was collected by the Rhine bridge master and his servants, all of whom were subordinate to the rent master . The fee schedule for this, in which all classes and persons were treated equally, comes from St. Nicholas' Day 1659, only the mendicant orders were exempt from the toll.

The carriageway spanned the Rhine for a length of 500 meters on 48 wooden barges. In order to allow ships to pass through, two or three zygomatic arches were extended. In 1844 the wooden barges were replaced by iron ones and the manual extension of the yokes replaced by steam engines . During floods and ice drifts , the ship bridge had to be driven to its safety port.

fortification

Gay de Vernon already described in his work Traité élémentaire d'art militaire et de fortification the need for a stronger fortification of the bridgehead. He was able to convince General Custine of the urgency of the expansion, so that eight battalions over four months in the very severe winter of 1792/1793 expanded the fortification of the bridgehead as a bastion.

To protect the north-east side of the ship's bridge, the Grand Duke Fort was built first by the French Genie Directorate , and later, at the behest of the German Confederation, in 1832 the Reduit was built by Austrian pioneers under the leadership of Austrian engineer general Franz Scholl for 326,000 guilders . To ensure independence, it offered space for the customs office and a corresponding garrison . The bastion of Schönborn also protected the bridge on the south-eastern flank and was at the same time the landing stage for the ferry of the Royal Railway Directorate in Frankfurt, which served the traffic between Mainz and the Kastel train station of the Taunus Railway to continue to Frankfurt.

With the construction of the Rhine bridge between 1882 and 1885, the ship bridge became dispensable and sold to Mülheim . It was in operation there until 1927.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ferdinand Scherf , Friedrich Schütz : Mainz - The history of the city . Ed .: Franz Dumont . Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1998 (first edition).
  2. ^ "Traité élémentaire d'art militaire et de fortification, à l'usage des élèves de l'École polytechnique, et des élèves des écoles militaires" 2 vol. in-4 °, libr. Allais, Paris 1805 ( digitized version )
The next bridge upstream:
Südbrücke (Mainz) 		Bridges over the Rhine The next bridge downstream:
Charlemagne's Rhine bridge / Römerbrücke (Mainz) (destroyed)
Theodor-Heuss-Brücke (Mainz)

Coordinates: 50 ° 0 ′ 18.4 ″  N , 8 ° 16 ′ 41.3 ″  E