Thuringian tip
The Thuringian Zipfel is a headland in the border area between Hesse and Thuringia . It is part of the municipality of Gerstungen in the Wartburg district and gained traffic-related importance during the division of Germany , as it was crossed west of the Wartha / Herleshausen border crossing by both the Halle – Bebra railway line and the federal motorway 4 without its own border clearance. The resulting restrictions persisted until the border was opened .
Autobahn 4
According to the GDR , border controls for the transit route to West Berlin were only planned east of Herleshausen . The motorway section between Obersuhl and Eisenach crossed the inner-German border twice to the west: at Obersuhl and at Wommen . The section in between through the Thuringian tip, only partially completed at the end of the war, remained closed during the division of Germany and fell into disrepair. As a road connection to Herleshausen, the federal road 400 was set up on the Hessian side from the Obersuhl junction , which bypassed the tip. The (again Hessian) motorway section from Wommen to Herleshausen was initially also closed, but was put into operation in 1978 to relieve Herleshausen of through traffic.
After the opening of the border, the two sections were completely expanded by 1994. Among other things, the Weihetalbrücke was built and the Wommen viaduct was completed and put into operation.
Halle – Bebra railway line
The Halle – Bebra railway crossed the inner-German border four times to the west of Herleshausen: twice parallel to the autobahn and twice on the western foothills of the tip between Obersuhl and Hönebach .
The border clearance was initially in the Wartha (Werra) station , the railway section between Herleshausen and Wommen, which is located to the west and mostly in Hesse, was operated by the Deutsche Reichsbahn (DR) (the only rail connection to Gerstungen in Thuringia ). Passenger trains passed through here locked to prevent the republic from escaping by jumping into Hesse.
In order to connect Gerstungen to the DR rail network without crossing the border, a single-track line over the Dietrichsberg to Förtha and Eisenach was built in 1961/62 , the Förtha – Gerstungen line . In 1963, border clearance was relocated from Wartha station to Gerstungen station, where cross-border trains had to stop for up to 50 minutes without getting on or off the train.
After the opening of the border, the entire route between Bebra and Eisenach via Herleshausen was restored as part of the German Unity No. 7 traffic project ; the connection line was closed and later dismantled.
Web links
- Florian-Michael Bortfeldt, Ludwig Corr: Old A4. In: Grenzerinnerungen.de. Archived from the original on March 19, 2016 (pictures from 1982).
- Wolfgang Jäger: A 4 “Thuringian Zipfel” completion after over 50 years. In: autobahngeschichte.de. April 28, 2016 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Henning Maruhn: The A 4 between Bad Hersfeld and Eisenach. In: autobahn-online.de. December 25, 1999, accessed December 27, 2016 .
- ↑ rottenplaces.de: Grenzbahnhof Gerstungen , accessed on 23 August 2020
- ^ Bernd Kuhlmann: Station in West Thuringia. The DR border station Gerstungen. In: German-German border stations. The "outposts" of the Federal Railroad and Reichsbahn (= Bahn extra . Vol. 27, No. 5 = No. 144). GeraMond, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-86245-216-3 , pp. 34–43.
Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 56 ″ N , 10 ° 4 ′ 15 ″ E