Oberbaum Bridge
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The Oberbaum Bridge (
The lower deck of the bridge carries a roadway, which connects Oberbaum Straße to the south of the river with Warschauer Straße to the north. The upper deck of the bridge carries Berlin U-Bahn lines U1 and U3, between Schlesisches Tor and Warschauer Straße stations.
The bridge appears prominently in the films Run Lola Run and Unknown as well as the TV series Berlin Station.
History
The bridge is built on the former boundary of the municipal area with its rural environs, where an excise wall was built in 1732. A wooden drawbridge was built as part of the wall; it served as a gate to the city. The name Oberbaumbrücke stemmed from the heavy tree trunk, covered in metal spikes, that was used as a boom to block the river at night to prevent smuggling. (Baum means tree or wooden beam in German; thus the name means something like "Upper [Upstream] Tree Bridge"; there was another tree-trunk barrier at the western end of the contemporary city limits, close to today's Unterbaumstraße (lit. in English: Lower [Downstream] Tree Street.)
By 1879 the wooden bridge had been modified greatly. At 154 meters it was Berlin's longest, but was no longer adequate to the amount of traffic crossing it. Plans began to be drawn up for a new stone construction. The
The new bridge opened in 1896 after two years of construction, in time for the
In 1902 the first segment of the U-Bahn opened. Its inaugural journey, carrying 19 passengers, ran from
After Berlin absorbed several other municipalities in 1920, the Oberbaum Bridge became the crossing between the new boroughs of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. In April 1945 the Wehrmacht blew up the middle section of the bridge in an attempt to stop the Red Army from crossing it. After the war ended, Berlin was divided into four sectors. The Oberbaum Bridge crossed between the American and Soviet sectors. Until the mid-1950s, pedestrians, motor vehicles, and the city tramway could cross the bridge without difficulty.
Border crossing
When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 the bridge became part of
Three brief openings of the bridge occurred by the summer of 1966. A permanent opening for pedestrians came with the 1972 Four Power Agreement for Berlin. A building for the East Berlin control authorities was built directly on the eastern bank of the Spree, across the street from the Oberbaumbrücke. The part of the subway viaduct crossing the Stralauer Allee at the bridge was completely demolished. The towers were demolished in the 1970s. Since the border on the Kreuzberg shore (Gröbenufer) ran along the Spree, several children from Kreuzberg drowned on the Oberbaum bridge because rescue personnel from west side could not reach them, and this was prohibited from the east side. Responding to this an agreement on rescue operations if accidents in Berlin's border waters was signed on October 29, 1975. In 1976, an emergency call column was installed on the southern bridgehead, after whose activation drowning help was provided.
The coat of arms of the district Friedrichshain–Kreuzberg with the Oberbaumbrücke The Oberbaum Bridge, which formed part of the Friedrichshain coat of arms since 1991, was also included in the coat of arms of the new Berlin district of Friedrichshain–Kreuzberg after the district merger.
Post-Berlin Wall
After the removal of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and German reunification the following year, the bridge was rebuilt and restored to the former appearance, albeit with a new steel middle section designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Reconstruction began in January 1992, with the war-damaged parts of the bridge rebuilt. It opened to pedestrians and traffic on 9 November 1994, the fifth anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The U-Bahn line to Warschauer Straße station was reopened a year later.
Since 1997, a
Since the creation of the unified Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough in 2001, the Oberbaum Bridge no longer crosses a jurisdictional boundary.
In April 2019 the Oberbaum Bridge was blockaded as part of an international series of protests organised by Extinction Rebellion.[3]
The bridge was used as the location for the defection of Karla to George Smiley and British intelligence in the book and mini series, Smiley's People.
See also
- Media related to Bridges in Berlin at Wikimedia Commons
- List of bridges in Germany
- List of road-rail bridges
References
- ^ "Europe's most beautiful bridges". Deutsche Welle. 8 April 2019. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
- ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
- ^ Leister, Annika (15 April 2019). "Extinction Rebellion: Klima-Aktivisten legten mit Sitzblockade die Oberbaumbrücke lahm". Berliner Zeitung (in German). Berliner Zeitung. Retrieved 17 April 2019.