Ummigsbach Bridge
Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 11 " N , 7 ° 16 ′ 43" E
| Ummigsbachbrücke (Ummigstalbrücke) |
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| Subjugated | Ummigsbach | |
| place | Seligenthal , Siegburg , North Rhine-Westphalia | |
| construction | Arch bridge | |
| Number of openings | 3 | |
| Longest span | 16 m | |
| start of building | 1925 | |
| opening | July 7, 1927 | |
| Status | destroyed, received a bow | |
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The Ummigsbachbrücke or Ummigstalbrücke was a road bridge in today's Siegburg district of Seligenthal ( North Rhine-Westphalia ). The arch bridge built in the 1920s was destroyed by German troops shortly before the end of World War II. Its striking ruin stands directly below the Wahnbach dam .
The bridge was built from 1925 to 1927 as part of the Wahnbachtalstraße, which connected Siegburg with Much , 20 km away, until the dam was built in the 1950s . There were two larger bridges on the route: the Ummigsbach Bridge and the Derenbach Bridge, located about 800 m to the northeast. In both cases, stamped concrete was used as building material .
The Ummigsbach Bridge had three arches with a span of 16 m each. It bridged the Ummigsbach, which rises in the Lohmarer Wald about 1.6 km northwest of the bridge and flows into the Wahnbach about 100 m southeast of it . It was built using wooden scaffolding that supported the arches until completion. An elevator and a crane were installed in the scaffolding to transport materials.
Like the Nürburgring in the Eifel that was built at the same time , the Wahnbachtalstraße was built by the unemployed as part of so-called “emergency work”. Nominally, this was a job creation measure , in fact the emergency work was primarily aimed at "disciplining the unemployed and [...] relieving the social security funds": If the job offer was rejected, all state benefits were canceled.
A reservoir in the Wahnbachtal was already being planned at the time the road was being built, but with a considerably lower reservoir target than the current dam. The Wahnbachtalstrasse should have run directly on the bank, which made the generous dimensions of the Ummigsbach and Derenbach bridges necessary. Ultimately, however, the reservoir was not created.
On July 7th, 1927 the ceremonial opening of the Wahnbachtalstrasse by the district administrator of the Siegkreis , Eduard Wessel , took place. The traffic importance of the new route was small from the beginning, since the better developed Zeithstraße (today's Bundesstraße 56 ) ran parallel.
On April 8, 1945, the bridge was blown up by Wehrmacht soldiers retreating from American troops; only the eastern arch remained. It was not rebuilt after the war. Instead, a winding bypass was set up that crossed the Ummigsbach about 200 m northwest on a significantly smaller bridge.
With the construction of the dam in 1954-58, a 6.3 km long section of the Wahnbachtalstraße disappeared along with the Derenbachbrücke in the reservoir. The remaining southern part of the street finally lost its traffic importance. The approximately 2 km long section between the L 316 junction at Kaldauen and the dam is now called Talsperrenstrasse and still serves as a feeder for the dam and the residential area “Auf dem Hümmerich”. Part of the old road between Ummigsbachbrücke and Damm serves as a visitor parking lot, while the route that was no longer used after the war has become overgrown. Access to the former roadway is blocked by a grille.
Web links
- Entry by Franz-Josef Knöchel on the ruins of the Ummigstal Bridge (2016) in the " KuLaDig " database of the Rhineland Regional Association , accessed on January 20, 2019.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Dieter Siebert-Gasper: The Wahnbachtalstraße between Siegburg and Much in the Bergisches Land. In: Archive for Autobahn and Road History, May 2017, accessed on January 20, 2019.
- ^ Nadine Quadt: Ruins of the Ummigsbach Bridge in Siegburg. A relic of unfulfilled expectations. In: General-Anzeiger online, August 10, 2015, accessed on January 20, 2019.