1914Pontoon Bridge
Bridge Command at the Novi Sad to Petrovaradin Crossing
Seven men stand on the cobbles outside a low guardhouse with a deep tiled roof at the Danube crossing. Most are Austro-Hungarian soldiers in greatcoats and field caps, one keeps watch at the left with his rifle, and a civilian in a dark fur cap stands at the right. A painted board above them reads BRÜCKENKOMMANDO, bridge command, beneath a smaller line naming the fortress command, and printed notices are pasted on the wall and on the door frame beside it. A long wooden bench and a trestle table run across the front of the building. The road crossing between the two towns was still the pontoon bridge at this date: the Franz Joseph bridge of 1883 carried the railway, and the first permanent road bridge did not open until 1928.
Photographed by Eduard Frankl
About this place
Before any permanent bridge stood here, Novi Sad and Petrovaradin were joined by a wooden pontoon bridge laid across the Danube on oak floats. Crossings of this kind were used from the late seventeenth century, and the first standing bridge dates from 1788; it was known as Hagen's bridge after the officer, Baron von Hagen, who designed it on the model of one at Mannheim. It was laid each spring by the pontonier unit stationed at Petrovaradin and taken up again before the first ice, and its middle section could be drawn aside to let river traffic through. Carts paid a toll while anything carried by hand went free, residents of the two towns crossed without charge, and the season opened every year with a handshake between the mayor of Novi Sad and the commandant of the fortress. The bridge was removed for the last time in 1918, when work began on the permanent crossing that became the Prince Tomislav bridge.
On the card
K.u.K. FESTUNGSKOMMANDO / BRÜCKENKOMMANDO / Brückenkommando an der Brücke, die von Neusatz nach Peterwardein hinüberführt.
Imperial and Royal Fortress Command / Bridge Command / Bridge command at the bridge leading over from Neusatz to Peterwardein.
- Date
- 1914
- Coordinates
- 45.25463, 19.85729
- Source
- Public online source
- Credit
- Eduard Frankl
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 1600 × 1175 px
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