Sternbrücke (Hamburg)

Sternbrücke seen from Max-Brauer-Allee towards the north

Star bridge; seen on Stresemannstrasse in west direction

Astra room in the northeastern abutment

The Sternbrücke is a railway bridge running diagonally across the intersection of Max-Brauer-Allee / Stresemannstraße in the Hamburg districts of Altona-Altstadt and Sternschanze . It was built in 1893 as part of the routing of the Hamburg-Altona city and suburban railway and has existed in its current form as a steel girder bridge since 1925/1926. Two tracks each of the long-distance railway and the Hamburg S-Bahn run above it . It is a cultural monument with the number 43773.

Construction and function

The bridge is not star-shaped, but takes its name from the traffic from seven directions converging here in a star shape: Except for the railway lines, Stresemannstraße running east-west and Max-Brauer-Allee running from south-west to north-east, the one from the south ends Coming Wohlers Allee in this busy place. Its confluence is built over by a pedestrian path and closed to car traffic.

Bridge elements and double pillars on the roadway

Raised and elevated steel support, also on the roadway

The building is a 75 meter long and 17 meter wide steel girder bridge, divided into two bridge elements with two tracks each, the fields of which are delimited by three continuous solid wall girders. High- strength steel St 48 was used . The superstructures have a height of 2.80 meters and a total weight of 888 tons. The bridge rests on four single and two double steel pillars in the street area as well as two clinkered abutments with shops and toilets. To increase the clearance height to four meters, the street level was lowered around 1970 and the steel supports were raised by up to 50 centimeters. Commercial premises are housed in the abutments and bridge vaults.

history

The star-shaped crossing area was created between 1846 and 1848 with the construction of the avenue , which was later renamed Max-Brauer-Allee . Behind the fields of the so-called Lammerskamps it crossed the country road to Bahrenfeld , today Stresemannstrasse , at the point where Wohlers Allee had flowed since 1836 . With the opening of the railway line between Hamburg and Altona in 1866, the railway line of this connecting line , coming at ground level from the former shoulder blade station, was led diagonally across the intersection, so that the five-pointed star became a seven-pointed star.

Barred level crossings regulated the right of way for passenger and goods traffic by rail, but by the end of the 19th century the increase in both rail and road traffic led to long traffic jams in front of the increasingly closed barriers. Altona and Hamburg finally agreed, parallel to the necessary four-lane expansion of the railway line, to put the entire route of the connecting railway on a railway embankment and to bridge the intersecting streets, especially the Stern .

In 1893 the first iron star bridge was built, a full-walled beam and truss arch bridge with a richly decorated railing. Even then, businesses were housed in the bridge vaults. A restaurant opened on Stresemannstrasse (at today's house number 116), where officers from the nearby Viktoria barracks stopped.

After a few decades, the bridge could no longer bear the increasing traffic loads, so that a new building was necessary in 1925/1926. Louis Eilers Stahlbau GmbH & Co from Hanover carried out the construction under the supervision of the Altona Railway Directorate and their Reichsbahnoberrat Kilian and Reichsbahnrat Blunck . The project was considered bold due to the limited space due to the residential development and, in particular, the maintenance of rail traffic with 300 long-distance and 400 light rail trains daily, road traffic and the numerous supply lines.

The increasing traffic load since the post-war period, in particular the expansion of Stresemannstrasse to a main traffic axis with at the same time close residential development, makes the Sternbrückenkreuzung still a neuralgic traffic junction. An elevated expressway over Stresemannstrasse and Sternbrücke that was planned in the Hamburg general transport plan from the end of the 1960s was not implemented.

Deutsche Bahn has been planning to rebuild the bridge since around 2005 . The project was delayed due to various problems, and construction is now scheduled to start in 2023. Costs of 125 million euros are expected, which will be shared between the federal government and the city. The heritage-protected bridge is to be replaced by a 108-meter-long arched bridge without supports in the street area below. The casemates will be filled in for this, and some neighboring buildings will have to be demolished.

traffic

Around 1000 local and long-distance trains run on the four tracks of the bridge every day, and freight trains at night as well. The intersection under the bridge is passed by around 48,000 vehicles every day. The otherwise four-lane Stresemannstraße, used by long-distance truck traffic as a connection between the federal highways 7 and 24 , is narrowed here to three lanes by the bridge piers and thus becomes a bottleneck .

At the intersection there is also the Sternbrücke bus stop with HVV lines 3 on Stresemannstraße and 15 on Max-Brauer-Allee. The situation for pedestrians and cyclists is confusing and is considered dangerous. Transport solutions have been sought for years, but should not be implemented until the new bridge is built.

Infrastructure and culture

Casemates behind the bridge camp

The abutments, bridge vaults and casemates of the Sternbrücke, which belonged to the properties of the former Deutsche Bundesbahn or today's Deutsche Bahn , have always been used commercially. For decades there has been a shop for tobacco products and magazines in the southwestern abutment. Until the 1990s, the Bundesbahn's lost property office was housed in the adjoining casemates, where lost property was regularly auctioned. Since around 1998 , trendy clubs such as Astrastube , Fundbureau and Waagenbau have been establishing themselves here (since March 2003, previously Altonaer Waagenbau Artz & Richter had been here since 1933 ), but their existence is limited due to the planned new construction of the bridge. Most recently, the clubs' leases were extended to the end of 2015.

A total of around twenty shops and businesses were grouped at the intersection, in addition to the pubs and music clubs, these are mainly kiosks and snack bars with different cuisines. Longstanding retail and specialty stores, such as a hairdresser, a photo shop, a cheese shop, a flower shop and a pharmacy have closed and are temporarily empty.

The Sternbrücke is shown on the cover of the 2009 album Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Soul by Jan Delay . Some scenes from Fatih Akın's film Soul Kitchen were filmed under the bridge and in the Astrastube . The bridge is along with road junction and adjacent buildings also faithfully depicted the scene in the comic Rast (h) of by Wolfgang Sperzel from the year 1991st