A bare stone bridge pier, stripped of its span, stands alone in the Danube. Petrovaradin Fortress rises on the hill behind it, its clock tower visible at the left, with salvage equipment moored along the riverbank below. The source dates the photograph to 1942 and identifies the pier as part of the railway bridge that was blown up.
About this place
The Emperor Franz Joseph bridge was the first permanent crossing of the Danube at Novi Sad and it carried the railway, not the road. It went up in 1883, the year the line from Subotica reached the town in March and the stretch onward to Zemun opened in December, and it stood for fifty-eight years. After 1918 it was renamed for Prince Andrej of the Yugoslav royal house. The Yugoslav army blew it up in April 1941 to slow the German advance southward, and the occupiers put up a replacement railway bridge that they in turn destroyed as they withdrew in 1944. This archive's catalogue gives the length as 432 metres and credits the design to Karl Baumann, who is said also to have driven the tunnel under the Petrovaradin fortress.
- Date
- 1942
- Coordinates
- 45.25017, 19.85890
- Source
- Fortepan
- Credit
- Fortepan / Zagyva Tiborné
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Size
- 4051 × 2750 px
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