Vienna Bridge (Berlin)
Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 37 ″ N , 13 ° 26 ′ 37 ″ E
| Vienna Bridge | ||
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| use | Road traffic , tram | |
| Crossing of | Landwehr Canal | |
| place | Berlin-Kreuzberg | |
| construction | Stone arch bridge | |
| Longest span | 22 meters | |
| start of building | 1895 | |
| completion | 1896 | |
| closure | 1945 | |
| location | ||
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The Vienna bridge in Berlin district of Kreuzberg Association from 1896 to Wienerstraße first with the meadow banks and after their application with the road at the Vienna bridge (later Liststraße, then Graetz Street, today Karl-Kunger Street ) in the district of Berlin-Alt-Treptow over the Landwehr Canal . It was blown up by the Wehrmacht in April 1945.
history
In the run-up to the Berlin trade exhibition in 1896, which was designed as a Berlin response to the world exhibitions in Paris and London, the rural community of Treptow , which had been a remote area until then, was opened up for transport. New streets, train stations, tracks for the tram and bridges were built in order to be able to transport a total of seven million guests to the exhibition grounds. The decision to build the Vienna Bridge at a cost of 300,000 marks (around 1.8 million euros after 2008 prices) was taken by the municipal authorities on September 21, 1894.
The Vienna Bridge was designed to relieve the Silesian Bridge with a span of 22 meters. Hermann Rohde and city architect Paul Saminski are named as builders of the bridge . The bridge was adorned with four reliefs (diameter approx. 180 cm) made of red sandstone designed by Wilhelm Wandschneider and Adolf Kürle , which reproduced scenes from the gigantic frieze of the Pergamon Altar (with missing parts added) , and the two keystones of the bridge arch were reproduced from finds from Pergamon . The Pergamon Altar, excavated a few years earlier by German archaeologists under the direction of Carl Humann and secured for Berlin, was recognized as a masterpiece of antiquity after it was reassembled around this time. However, the name "Humannbrücke" proposed by the city council could not prevail.
On the occasion of the Berlin trade exhibition, the second line put into operation by Berliner Elektro Straßenbahnen from April 1896, coming from Wiener Strasse, crossed the bridge in a northeastern direction to the Wiesenufer (parallel to Lohmühlenstrasse ). Karl-Kunger-Strasse on the Treptower side, which today runs along Wiener Strasse, did not yet exist and was laid out around 1899.
On 23/24 In April 1945, the Vienna Bridge was blown up by German Wehrmacht troops in order to hinder the advance of the Red Army . Two of the reliefs survived the demolition of the old bridge in 1945. They were set up in the cemetery in Berlin-Heiligensee , with the scene The dying giant Alkyoneus , defeated by the goddess Athena, is the main part of a memorial that commemorates the victims of the Second World War.
Around 1957, a wooden and steel structure was built only for pedestrians at the same point, which is more important for the flow of traffic. For this, the city administration received a pedestrian bridge from Teltowkanal AG, which previously spanned the Teltowkanal. With the construction of the Berlin Wall on the Treptower side of the bridge in 1961, it belonged to the border area between West and East Berlin . It lost its importance as a connection between Treptow and Kreuzberg, was closed and fell into disrepair, only to be reopened after the fall of the Wall , until it was finally demolished in August 2000.
gallery
Type of tram that crossed the bridge from 1896
The replacement footbridge in 1989
Closed pedestrian bridge in 1989
One of the recovered reliefs: The victims 1939–1945 , Heiligensee cemetery
Web links
- Vienna Bridge . In: District lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
- File: FrisoaltarPergamo.jpg Alkyoneus , defeated by Athena (original, from the Gigantomachy , Pergamonmuseum)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Map with the bridge from 1897 ( memento of the original from January 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , from FA Brockhaus' Geogr.-artist. Institution, Leipzig
- ↑ Berliner Tageblatt , September 22, 1894, p. 5
