Castle Bridge (Schwerin)
The Schwerin Castle Bridge is a 48-meter-long, arched bridge that spans the northern of the two water connections between Lake Schwerin and Lake Burgsee and connects Schwerin Castle on the castle island with the city of Schwerin .
history
Initially, the castle building was connected to the city by a wooden bridge structure , the planking of which could be quickly removed and which also included a drawbridge . With the start of the new palace construction, a new massive palace bridge was built according to plans by the court architect Georg Adolph Demmler , which the Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II approved at the beginning of January 1844. While Demmler was doing architectural studies with Hermann Willebrand on a long study trip to France, construction of the five-span brick vaulted bridge began in the spring of 1844 . The building, which was required as an access road for the new construction work on the castle, was inaugurated on April 13, 1845. At first the bridge only had simple railings. The horse tamers sculptures by sculptor Christian Genschow were only erected as a bridge portal in 1876.
The foundation of the abutments and pillars was carried out on wooden piles up to 23 m long, which were only rammed in perpendicularly and were therefore not sufficiently stable to carry the horizontal forces of the fighters of the vault end fields. As a result of this design flaw, the abutments were displaced horizontally, which at the beginning of 1949 on the lock side and in 1981 on the other end of the bridge led to shell-like flaking of the vaults.
The first repair took place in 1949, whereby the candelabra and sentry box were lost. Since there was no longer sufficient stability after the damage in 1981 , the bridge was partially replaced by a new reinforced concrete structure between 1982 and 1984 . The bridge superstructure and the abutment on the city side were demolished and replaced. Original stones were used to cover the new reinforced concrete superstructure. On May 10, 1985 the building was again handed over to traffic. The construction costs amounted to 1.5 million marks .
construction
The first bridge from 1844 was a masonry structure with five flat brick vaults , which consisted of two layers of stone. The spans of the 47.09 m long structure were 9.25 m for the two end spans and 9.0 m for each of the three inner spans, with a width of 16.95 m.
For the second bridge from 1984, a five-span reinforced concrete slab with a curved soffit and the continuous girder as a structural system was used as a new superstructure . This means that the pillars and abutments only have to transfer low horizontal forces. The new abutment on the city side was founded on large bored piles . The spans of the now 48.1 m long structure remained unchanged like the masonry piers. The width was reduced to 16.27 m. The bridge has the load-bearing capacity of bridge class 60/30 .
gallery
Schwerin Castle with Castle Bridge
Entrance portal with sculptures
Sea horse sculpture at the castle end of the bridge (a hippocampus )
Lanterns on the castle bridge
One of the two "Pegasus" obotite horses on the castle bridge
literature
- Dietmar Greßmann: Schwerin Castle Bridge. In: Stone bridges in Germany. Verlag Bau + Technik, 1999, ISBN 3-7640-0389-8 , pp. 82-87.
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 37 ′ 31 ″ N , 11 ° 25 ′ 3 ″ E