Inselbrücke

The Inselbrücke crosses the western arm of the Spree on the Spree Island, the first bridge in the direction of the current. It is a protected stone arch bridge near the historic Berlin harbour. Closed to regular road traffic since its last reconstruction, the crossing is yours to walk.

The first bridge here was wooden, about five metres wide, built in 1693 with a drawbridge section for passing ships. A 1709 directory recorded it as the bridge from the Cölln sausage yard over the canal to Neu-Cölln. It served for around two hundred years, until shipping shifted to the northern arm of the Spree. Ludwig Hoffmann, fresh from the nearby Roßstraßenbrücke, planned the wider stone replacement with Stadtbaurat Krause. Construction began in September 1912, and the three brick vaults span eleven, eighteen and eleven metres. Hinges at the abutments and the crown let the vaults settle before they were closed and clad in Kirchheim shell limestone. The northern pier needed deep pile foundations, and the U-Bahn tunnel below forced special construction measures. Coats of arms and animal reliefs by Christian Daniel Rauch never received imperial approval, so four obelisks flanked by putti went up.

The Second World War left the bridge badly damaged by shellfire and Wehrmacht demolition charges. Between 1946 and 1948 a hole in the deck over the northern arch served a humbler purpose. Household waste went through the hole and out of the city by barge. Repairs in the 1960s, tied to new Fischerinsel housing, restored full function, but the destroyed figures stayed lost. During renovations in 1999 and 2000, divers searching the silt found twenty well-preserved stone blocks. Among them were parts of the putti and obelisks, and a Spandau workshop reworked every piece. The figures over the central piers today came up out of the mud of the Spree.