Marschallbrücke

The Marschallbrücke carries the Luisenstraße across the Spree into the Wilhelmstraße in Berlin's Mitte district. You cross on 57 metres of prestressed concrete, a frame bridge resting on masonry piers and abutments at the banks. The roadway takes fifteen of the nineteen metres, and walkers keep two-metre paths along both edges. The bridge holds the status of a protected monument.

A crossing has served this stretch of the Spree since the seventeenth century. A wooden footbridge joined the newly founded Dorotheenstadt to the northern bank, some 200 metres upstream. The banker Veitel Heine Ephraim had it renewed in 1740, and it became known as the Judenbrücke or Ephraimbrücke. Demolition came in 1795, and another wooden footbridge took its place. David Gilly drew up plans in 1804, but war halted the work. After the Wars of Liberation, Karl Friedrich Schinkel designed a cast-iron bridge, simplified for cost and finished in 1820. It took a name honouring Field Marshal Blücher, successful in those wars. In 1881 and 1882 Paul Gottheiner gave the river a new iron and steel bridge. Three wrought-iron two-hinged truss arches spanned the water, framed by ornate railings and metal reliefs. The Second World War battered it badly, and quick repairs followed. Rising traffic brought major renovation in the late twentieth century.

Sixteen prefabricated composite girders, 36 and 21 metres long, form the superstructure you stand on. Within it survives the northern field, a riveted steel arch from the late twentieth century. Its wrought-iron railing was renewed completely from historical designs, while the new section carries a metal lattice railing. Lamps sit on the masonry piers, and cyclists have their own lanes across the river.