Nibelungenbrücke & Bridgehead Buildings, Führerstadt Linz
The Danube bridge and its two stone bridgehead buildings are the only part of Hitler's megalomaniac Führerstadt plan that was ever built. Their granite came from the quarries of Mauthausen, and forced labourers raised them.
Sobre este lugar
Standing at the northern end of the Hauptplatz, you face the one fragment of Hitler's Führerstadt that left the drawing board. On 13 March 1938, the morning after his balcony speech, Hitler promised Linz a new Danube bridge and declared himself the city's patron. The Nibelungenbrücke, 250 metres long and 30 metres wide, was built between September 1938 and the end of 1940 by prisoners of war and forced labourers, using granite from the concentration camp quarries at Mauthausen and Gusen. The two bridgehead buildings by Roderich Fick, Hitler's Reich Building Councillor for Linz, followed in 1940 to 1943 after eight houses with 274 apartments had been demolished. Four equestrian statues of Nibelung heroes were planned but never carved; plaster models of Siegfried and Kriemhild stood here from 1941 until June 1945. The grand avenue, the Führermuseum for looted art, the Bruckner hall and the bell tower with a crypt for Hitler's parents on the Urfahr bank remained a model that Hitler stared at in his Berlin bunker in February 1945. After the war the bridge became the border between the American and Soviet zones until 1953. Today the bridgehead buildings house the University of Arts, and the bridge still carries no plaque explaining its history.
Datos clave
- 250 metres — Length of the Nibelungenbrücke, built 1938 to 1940 with granite from the Mauthausen and Gusen quarries
- 274 apartments — Demolished in eight houses at the mouth of the Hauptplatz to make room for the bridgehead buildings
- 6.5 metres — Planned height of the four equestrian Nibelung statues that were never carved in stone
📍 Nibelungenbrücke, 4020, Linz