Route 46
Route 46 describes an almost 70 km long unfinished motorway section in Germany that runs parallel to today's A 7 between Fulda and Würzburg .
The construction of this planned Reichsautobahn began in 1937 and stopped in 1939. A total of around 30 km of continuous stretch was built. The withdrawal of labor and materials for war purposes and the introduction of new standards after construction began made the work more difficult. After the end of the Second World War , the planning was discarded. Instead, a route was chosen that leads past Schweinfurt and has larger curve radii. According to documents from local motorway maintenance companies, this was also due to the changed political geography: due to the inner German border, the eastern western German areas of the Rhön and the Spessart without the hinterland connection ( Meiningen , Bad Salzungen , Eisenach ) had become relatively poorly accessible zone border areas. In addition, networking with route 85, which had begun in Thuringia, was now obsolete.
Numerous fragments of the almost completed motorway are still in the landscape, such as sections of road, bridges and bridge piers. They have been a listed building since 2003 . On the old route there are almost a dozen unfinished structures, most of them in the forest. In Rupboden , a district road crosses the tree-covered route, which is clearly visible from above. In the Schulruh district between Burgsinn and Gräfendorf , a large bridge structure spans the MSP17 (cross connection Sinntal – Franconian Saale Valley) at a ridge height of 395 m above sea level without any filled foundation slopes . In Gräfendorf, the larger of the two unfinished pillars of the planned Saale overpass serves alpinists as a climbing rock (180 m above sea level).
Entries in the list of monuments
See also
- Route 24
- Route 77
- Route 85
- Reichsautobahn Vienna – Breslau
- Federal motorway 46
- Reichsautobahn Berlin – Königsberg
- Unfinished structures
literature
- Dieter Stockmann: Route 46. The forgotten motorway . 3rd revised and expanded edition. Stockmann, Veitshöchheim, ISBN 978-3-9811192-0-6 .
Web links
- Information page for route 46
- OpenStreetMap - route with ancillary facilities
- Spiegel-Online, The forgotten Reichsautobahn
- RP-Online - The Forgotten Nazi Highway (September 16, 2009)
- Elbruz - Interactive map of route 46
- This is how magnificent Hitler's autobahn through the Spessart should be
Coordinates: 50 ° 9 ′ 38.7 " N , 9 ° 41 ′ 2.2" E