1914Pontoon Bridge
Guards at the Bridge Command, Novi Sad to Petrovaradin
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. The painted board above them reads K.u.K. FESTUNGSKOMMANDO over BRÜCKENKOMMANDO, the fortress command's bridge post. Printed notices are pasted on the wall and the door frame, and a long bench and trestle table run across the front of the building.
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
Imperial and Royal Fortress Command / Bridge Command
- Date
- 1914
- Coordinates
- 45.25463, 19.85729
- Source
- Wisconsin Historical Society
- Credit
- Wisconsin Historical Society / Eduard Frankl
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 3993 × 2998 px
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