The caption is set twice, in Serbian Latin letters and in German with no Hungarian, and both versions place the bridge at the fortress rather than at the town. The spans run straight into a tunnel mouth driven through the bluff under the fortress at their far end. The long barrack range stands on the plateau above with trees planted along its terrace, and a low structure walled in reed matting sits at the water's edge with a horse harnessed to a tow line beside it.
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.
On the card
Petrovaradin-Grad: Željeznički most / Peterwardein-Festung: Eisenbahnbrücke
- Date
- 1910s
- Coordinates
- 45.25017, 19.85890
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain (historical photograph)
- Size
- 1200 × 800 px
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