- 1 The article is based on a conference paper « Le pont d´Eiffel d´Ivančice en Moravie » - “The Ivanči (...)
- 2 The geopolitical terms used in this article are well-established in Czech historiography but may be (...)
1The purpose of this paper1 is to present the construction and use of a technically unique railway viaduct, which was built in the second half of the 19th century and whose current torso is located near the town of Ivančice in Moravia, now in the Czech Republic2. From the point of view of History of Science and Technology, we can look at this technical structure from three different perspectives:
2i) As an important part of transport infrastructure of Austria-Hungary and later Czechoslovakia;
ii) As a construction that was related to the transfer of technical and cultural knowledge from the West to the Czech lands, which was to some extent associated with the name of the world-famous French engineer Gustav Eiffel. Related to this is the question of the readiness of the Austrian (Czech) system of education of engineers, their ability to use foreign knowledge in practice, and the limitations of domestic production (for the industrialization and urbanization of the Czech lands) of such complicated technical structures at the time of the bridge's construction, i.e. at the turn of the 1860s and 1870s;
iii) Finally, in the context of saving the viaduct after its closure, we can look at it as a monument and a part of cultural and technical heritage.
3In terms of geographical location, the Ivančice railway viaduct is situated in the Czech lands in Moravia, south-west of Brno, on the Jihlava river, between the town of Ivančice and the village of Moravská Bránice.
Fig.1. Location of the bridge within the present-day Czech Republic
Author´s property
- 3 The term Ivančice bridge/viaduct is also used in this paper.
4In terms of the viaduct's naming, it should be noted that in the original German-language documents, the bridge was referred to by the river whose bed it spans as the Iglawa viaduct (Nohel, online, cited 9.10.2003), in Czech sources as the Bránický bridge (Bránický most) (Kratochvíl 1904). The railway connection with the town of Ivančice was not built until 1912, when a railway branch line to Oslavany was built, linking the local coal mines and later the steam power plant. Since the 1920s, the bridge has been referred to as the Ivančice Bridge3, although paradoxically, the town of Ivančice is not on the main line that runs through it.
5With the development of industrialization in the Czech lands (based mainly on the food and textile industries), a railway network began to be built as early as the late 1820s (the horse-drawn railway of František Josef Gerstner, professor and director of the Estate Engineering School (Stavovská inženýrská škola) in Prague, from Linz to České Budějovice, 1827-1832) and steam traction (promoted by the son of F. J. Gerstner's František Antonín, a railway builder also in France and Russia) was used from the mid-1840s, when the primary connection was established between Vienna, the center of the monarchy and Prague, the capital of the Czech lands.
6However, the political and economic consequences of the revolution of 1848 led the state to abandon further railway development. This task was transferred to private companies by the so-called Concession Act. In the 1850s and 1860s, further construction was driven by the coal mining companies, whose lines naturally led to mining sites and essential industrial regions. The actual railway boom came after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. For example, the Prague railway junction and the other railway lines were built, which were connected mainly with sugar, brewing, textiles, metallurgy, large-scale mining activities in many regions of the Czech lands, and engineering and chemical production. At that time, a number of important bridge constructions were built, including the Ivančice viaduct. This boom ended with the crash of the Vienna Stock Exchange in 1873. Nevertheless, between c. 1845 and 1875, a fairly extensive railway network was established, initially focused mainly on freight transport (Krejčiřík 1991).
7Initially, wooden and brick bridge structures were built on the railway lines; iron began to be used on these constructions in the mid-1850s. In 1854, the wooden bridge over the Bečva River near Přerov was replaced with Emperor Ferdinand's Northern Railway an iron bridge made by the Rothschild Ironworks in Vítkovice. After successful tests, another 43 wooden bridges on this line were subsequently replaced (Zeithammer, Skála, Palík 2015). The technology of industrial production of iron, first in coke blast furnaces (mid-18th century), puddling furnaces (1880s), to the production of steel in converters (from the mid-19th century), then, due to the ever-improving mechanical properties of steel, its higher production and decreasing price, also brought about the design and production of bridge structures.
- 4 Baesed on: (Stančík, Ryjáček, Pospíšil 2019).
8The rolling of steel plates, which followed much earlier processes of rolling soft metal plates, began with the assembly of rolling lines (1760), which, with the advent of railways, switched to rolling profiles, first rail profiles (1820s), later angle irons, T-profiles and finally, structural I and U profiles. The joining technologies of bolting, riveting and forge-fire welding were known from antiquity and were only adopted and technologically improved for bridge construction. Electric arc welding was not introduced until the 1920s4.
- 5 Six brothers of the Klein family participated in the industrial development of the Czech lands and (...)
9In 1853, the Austrian engineer Rudolf Schifkorn (1817-1882), (ÖBL 1994) patented a bridge system bearing his name. It consisted of prefabricated parts that could be produced in bulk. Schifkorn's structures were made of straight-band trusses, which were up to 57 m long. The girders were assembled from sections, the compressed parts of which, for economic reasons, were of cast iron, H-section, while the tensile parts were of flat, wrought iron. The wrought-iron girders had bolts and nuts at the ends to adjust their stresses. The necessary load-bearing capacity of the bridge was achieved by joining two to four girders side by side. In the Czech lands they were produced by the ironworks of the Klein brothers in Sobotín in Moravia5.
10Schifkorn’s bridges dominated railway construction in the Habsburg Monarchy for the next decade, but after the collapse of such a bridge over the Prut River (Galicia, present-day Ukraine, then part of the Habsburg Monarchy) in 1868, they ceased to be used for safety reasons. They were replaced by riveted truss bridge structures, the production of which, however, was not mastered by the domestic industry until the early 1870s. At the turn of the 19th century, the progressive industrialization and urbanization of the Czech lands led to the emergence of a well-established group of manufacturers of iron bridge structures, that was able to fully satisfy the requirements of both local and foreign customers with its own production.
Fig.2. Development of the railway network in the Czech lands as of 1840, 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1875
Dodatky k vývinu železnic v Rakousku, Zprávy spolku Architektů a inženýru v Království českém, vol. XII., No. 4, 1877, p. 25-28
11Due to this uneven development, the Czech lands lagged Western Europe in the progress of industrialization by about 15 to 20 years. Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century, they formed the most industrialized part of the Habsburg monarchy and, except for the area around Vienna, they also had the densest railway network. In addition to its raw material base, they were able to draw on a well-developed system of technical schools, whose graduates formed the professional base of the growing industry.
12The beginning of construction of the Ivančice Bridge dates to 1854, when the Austrian state administration decided not to continue with further development of state railways. Subsequently, the private Austrian State Railway Company (K. k. privilegierte österreichische-ungarische Staatseisenbahn-Gesellschaft), abbreviated StEG, (Strach 1898) was formed. It took over the management of two railway systems, one to the north-west of Brno, the other to the south-east of Vienna. In the stretch between the two cities, they were connected by, the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway, the oldest steam railway in Austria (Krejčiřík 1991).
13Nevertheless, due to organizational and financial reasons, there were conflicts between the two companies and the management of StEG decided to build its own connecting line. However, the new railway was not allowed to run adjacent to the existing one on the grounds of an imperial privilege from 1836, which authorized the Northern Railway to build a line between Vienna and Brno. The route of the new StEG railway, later known as the Hrušovany nad Jeviškou - Brno line, thus led through complex and rugged terrain, where several watercourses had to be crossed. The future Ivančice bridge was designed to span the deepest and widest valley of the Jihlava River. The speed of construction played a crucial role in the choice of the type of bridge structure. Thus, the all-iron variant was chosen instead of the stone or mixed versions that were common at that time.
Fig.3. Karl Ruppert
ÖNB Digital
- 6 Karl Ruppert, (13.3.1813 Neckarelz, Baden-Wurttemberg-17.2.1881 Vienna). After graduating from Karl (...)
- 7 Fives-Lille was the name of a factory for engineering structures (mainly bridges), for industrial e (...)
14The author of the project was the StEG´s construction director Karl von Ruppert (1813-1881)6. His design was inspired by the bridges of the French engineer Wilhelm Nördling (née Nordlinger, 1821-1908), which were used on the newly opened Orléans Railway (Compagnie du Chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans). (Hannoti 2019) Ruppert made a study trip to the Orléans Railway for this purpose. The project documentation was completed in 1868, and construction began the following year. (Svoboda, Bažant 1978) As there were no industrial capacities to produce such a large-scale construction in Austria-Hungary at that time, the French firm Société Jean-François Cail et Cie was entrusted with the production of the bridge structure itself (founded 1850), specifically its bridge factory in Fives-Lille (Fives Lille-Cail)7.
15As for the bridge structure itself, it rested on each bank in masonry stone abutments, faced with jointed stone blocks. Between these abutments were five truss piers, the first four on the Brno side 27.35 m high, the last, fifth 22.40 m high. The truss pillars, in the shape of a frustum with a base of 2.70 m, had four stands each, placed at the corners. The stands consisted of butt-jointed, concrete-filled cast-iron pipes. (Svoboda, Bažant 1978) They were made by centrifugal casting by the Fives-Lille ironworks. Their wall thickness was 35 to 45 mm. It was the inconsistent wall thickness that later became the cause of the bridge's most serious structural defect, which eventually led to the replacement of the piers. The lower cast-iron tubes were attached to the stone foundations with 4 m long anchor bolts which were 70 mm diameter. For inspection and maintenance, the lower parts of the bolts were accessible through service cavities in the foundation structure. Each pillar had one more cast-iron stand in the middle, which formed the axis of the spindle inspection ladder. The bridge structure further consisted of two 5,60 m high truss girders with a 3,60 m wide bridge deck with rails between them (Krejčiřík 1991).
- 8 The production of wrought iron was discovered in 1784 by the Englishman Henri Cort. Raw iron and sc (...)
- 9 The Austrian Gulden/Austrian-Hungarian Gulden was a decimal unit of currency (100 kreuzers - 1 Guld (...)
16The spacing of the transverse elements of the bridge structure was dimensioned so that in the event of a train derailment, the train could not slide or fall over. Apart from the cast-iron uprights, the entire structure was made of wrought iron8, a material typical at the time, such as that used for the Eiffel Tower. When completed, the bridge had six spans with five piers and was 373,5 m long. Its construction consumed 1 273 t of wrought iron and 296 t of cast iron. (Svoboda, Bažant 1978) The cost amounted to 702 000 Austrian guldens9. The bridge held several firsts within the Habsburg Monarchy. It was the first all-metal railway bridge and dynamite was used for the first time in the landscaping of the surrounding terrain. The foundation, through which the railway is led to the bridge structure on the Brno bank, is made up of a granite massif into which several cuts had to be placed.
- 10 The dynamite used in the construction came from Alfred Nobel’s factory in Krümell near Hamburg, whi (...)
17The dynamite used in removing the stone was fired by electric detonators designed by engineer Abegg from Bystřice nad Úhlavou10. It was a technological novelty at that time, which was initially unreliable and expensive and thus not popular among dynamite manufacturers (Jandek 2022). From today's point of view, the speed and method of construction was also unique. The individual parts of the bridge deck were brought in smaller parts and assembled on the Hrušovany (west) bank. They were then hoisted onto the already standing piers by means of winches and pulleys. Only 30 workers were needed to carry out this operation.
Fig. 4. The process of extending the bridge structure of the Ivančice viaduct
Světozor, 1870, vol. 4, No. 17, p. 8
18Soon after its commissioning, the first defects appeared on the bridge structure. The abutment on the Hrušovany bank was slightly slumped, and the masonry of the first pillar showed signs of dampness during regular inspections. Both problems were caused by waterlogged subsoil and were solved by constructing a 60-metre-long drainage tunnel in 1879. Cracking of the cast iron parts of the piers, discovered in the early 1880s, proved to be much more severe. It was temporarily resolved by installing contracting iron rings on the cast iron pipes and limiting the operating speed to 25 km/h for passenger trains and 15 km/h for freight trains. This restriction significantly slowed down traffic on an important rail line.
Fig. 5 Ivančice viaduct after the replacement of cast-iron pillars with iron ones in 1892
Metainformační systém (MIS) © Národní památkový ústav
19It should be remembered that the railway between Vienna and Brno, which passed over the Ivančice Bridge, together with the original Emperor Ferdinand's Northern Railway was one of the most important north-south links of the monarchy. Emperor Ferdinand's Northern Railway ran from Vienna via Hodonín to the industrially important region of Ostrava and then via Kraków and Lviv to the Russian border. The StEG line ran from Vienna to Brno and then via Prague and Ústí nad Labem to the German border, where it connected with the German Dresden-Berlin line. However, widening cracks forced the railway administration to replace the entire damaged structure. In 1892, the cast-iron pillars were replaced by new ones made of welded steel, with only minimal traffic restrictions on the otherwise very frequented line (Holaň 1978).
- 11 It was a modernization of the originally Austro-Hungarian locomotives of the 170 series, which were (...)
20The first consideration of replacing the reconstructed viaduct with a completely new structure appeared at the beginning of the 20th century but such changes were prevented by political and economic changes over the following 60 years. After the Second World War, the traffic situation on the bridge was becoming unbearable. For example, the Brno depot had to keep old types of steam locomotives running whose lighter weight allowed them to run safely on the viaduct. These were locomotives of the 432.211 series, whose weight was reduced by installing overflow pipes in the water reservoir, limiting the amount of water carried (Svítil 1978).
Fig. 6. Old and New Ivančice viaduct side by side
Metainformační systém (MIS) © Národní památkový ústav
21The design of the new bridge was drawn up in 1969, and the Vítkovice Ironworks produced structure was put into service nine years later. At the same time, traffic on the old bridge was definitively stopped (Holaň 1978). Upon the completion of the new bridge, an average of 20 passenger and 6 freight trains a day were running on the line, and its commissioning reduced the journey time of freight trains between Brno and Hrušovany from 114 to 95 minutes and increased the permissible weight of a train set by 30 t (Svítil 1978).
22The alleged Eiffel authorship of the Ivančice Bridge is widely circulated among the wider Czech public. This information can also be found in popular literature and publications promoting tourism. However, this attribution of authorship is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back to the late 1970s. (Kuba 1978) At the time of the bridge’s design and construction, Eiffel was an unknown engineer in the Czech lands. Although he worked with Cail et Cie, which built the bridge, his name does not appear on the surviving drawings. (Svoboda, Bažant 1978) He came to the attention of the broader public in this country only after the phenomenal success of his tower at the 10th World Exposition in Paris (Exposition universelle de 1889), held in 1889.
23This event was visited by travellers from Bohemia and Moravia in large numbers. The Czech Tourist Club organized mass tours and even opened information offices in Paris and Prague for the duration of the event (Horská 1996). The Eiffel Tower inspired the representatives of the Czech Tourist Club so much that they decided to build a scaled-down copy of it at the occasion of the Jubilee Exhibition held in Prague in 1891 (Hlavačka 1991). The construction of the Petřín tower also demonstrates the pace of development of bridge-building in the Czech lands. The Ivančice viaduct had to be supplied by a foreign company. Petřín tower has similar technological characteristics of a riveted all-iron structure made of welded steel. It was designed, manufactured, and assembled in record time by the bridge works of the First Czech-Moravian Machine Factory in Prague-Libeň (První Českomoravská továrna na stroje v Praze-Libni) under the direction of engineer Prášil in 1891.
24At the turn of the 19th century, Gustave Eiffel was one of the most famous builders not only in the Czech lands but the entire world. Nevertheless, when Augustín Kratochvíl published his book Vlastivěda Moravská in 1904, where he devoted several passages to the Ivančice bridge, he did not mention Eiffel’s authorship. The connection with Eiffel appeared in the daily press in the late 1970s and subsequently in the 1990s, whenever the public became interested in the further fate of the bridge in connection with the efforts to save it. One possible explanation is that this was a deliberate effort to enhance the cultural and historical value of the structure and thus prevent its demolition. However, we do not currently have the data to confirm this hypothesis. Eiffel’s authorship is either not mentioned in the specialist literature or explicitly refuted, but it is nevertheless mentioned in the popular or tourist literature. Even among the locals, the viaduct is still referred to as the “Eiffel Bridge”. A cursory online search also shows this dichotomy: when the term “Eiffel Ivančice” is entered into the Google search engine, the first link redirects us to the Wikipedia article, which denies the authorship of the French engineer, and the second to the popularisation article of the Idnes.cz news service, which attributes the bridge to him.
Fig. 7. Internet search results for “Eiffel Ivančice”
Google.com search engine in neutral mode, search performed 10.6.2023
25According to the original plans, the old structure was to be disposed of after the completion of the new bridge by dismantling the outermost spans, then blasting off the remaining mass, and finally landscaping the rest of the structure (Holaň 1978). Ultimately, this did not happen, and in 1978, the bridge was entered into the list of technical monuments12, and its management was taken over by the Technical Museum in Brno (Krejčiřík 1991). However, it did not have sufficient funds for its maintenance, so the bridge, whose technical condition had continued to deteriorate rapidly in the meantime, was placed back under the ownership of Czechoslovak Railways in 1987. At their request, the monument protection of the building was subsequently cancelled. After the change of political regime in 1989, it was reinstated, but at the same time, one of the abutments collapsed, and the first bridge span had to be dismantled for safety reasons (Nohel, online, cited 9.10.2003).
- 13 The monument protection of the rest of the structure began on 9.9.1998. Rozhodnutí o zrušení/upuště (...)
- 14 Konec Ivančického viaduktu, Ivančický zpravodaj, 1999, vol. 28, No. 9.
26The debate about the further fate and at least partial salvation of the Ivančice viaduct was sparked among the professional and general public. Two proposals were considered the most realistic: transferring the structure to a new location (Dvořák, Dvořáková 1991) or converting it into a lookout tower (Nový 1999). The new owner of the bridge was the town of Ivančice, but even it did not have the funds for its maintenance. In 1998, the monument protection was reduced to the abutment, the first pillar, and the intermediate bridge span13. The catastrophic condition of the rest of the structure began to be a significant safety risk. Therefore, the town of Ivančice opted for the radical but the only feasible solution. The bridge, except for the protected part, was sold to the company Schwarzmuler & Sohn14, which dismantled it in pieces, cut it up and sold it as secondary raw material. Plans to adapt the bridge torso into a viewing platform remain unrealized.
Fig. 8. Preserved remains of the railway bridge near Ivančice
Licence : neurčena-ochranu díla stanovuje obecně autorský zákon (https://www.zakonyprolidi.cz/cs/2000-121)
27The de facto destruction of a technically valuable bridge structure fits into the broader context of the approach to the monument protection of industrial cultural heritage in the Czech Republic. Between 1998 and 2008, 131 technical and industrial structures of cultural and historical importance were demolished or otherwise irretrievably lost (Fragner, Zikmund 2005). The leading causes of this dismal situation are systematic neglect of maintenance of technical buildings before 1989 and frequent and opaque changes in ownership structures after 1989. This can be clearly demonstrated in the case of the Ivančice bridge: the last coat of paint on the entire structure was applied in 1956 (Nohel, online, cited 9.10.2003), between 1978 and 1999, the bridge changed hands five times, and its torso is now owned by three legal entities/institutions.
28The Ivančice viaduct is, or rather was, a unique construction for many reasons. In its time, it was an extremely complex technical metal engineering structure. Its origins can be placed in the broader context of the railway network development in the Habsburg monarchy or the Czech lands, in the second half of the 19th century and the associated construction of bridge structures. The Ivančice viaduct was built at a period of economic boom, which followed the rapid recovery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the defeat of the Austro-Prussian War. The main railway axes of the Czech lands, the Northern Railway of Emperor Ferdinand, and the former Northern State Railway, owned at that time by StEG, had already been completed. The first phase of the densification of this network, represented in particular by the so-called coal railways, had also already taken place.
29The construction of other lines was in the hands of private companies in the 1860s and 1870s. It was necessary to increase the transport capacity of the connection between the capital of the monarchy and the Czech lands. This was not only for the economic development of the Czech lands but also for the transit towards Germany and other Western countries. The economic pressure, which forced StEG to carry out its construction in the shortest possible time, led to the choice of a modern, all-metal structure, the first of its kind in the Czech lands. The limitations of the local industry meant that although the bridge’s design was of domestic provenance, its construction was contracted to a French firm. The possible contract for the construction of the Ivančice viaduct came at a time of transition between two types of bridge structures. The Schifkorn girders, of which, for example, only the Sobotín bridgeworks delivered 163 pieces in ten years of production, (Zeithammer, Skála, Palík 2015) were taken out of production after a series of railway accidents.
30Domestic production of technologically new riveted truss bridges made of welded steel had not yet taken off. Similarly, for example, the construction of the Vyšehrad railway bridge in 1871, which formed part of the emerging Prague railway junction, had to be undertaken by a bridge works in Duisburg, Germany. However, the domestic railway industry developed in the following years to such an extent that from the end of the 1870s, new bridge constructions in the Czech lands were of domestic origin. Apart from the problematic cast-iron components of the piers, the Ivančice viaduct itself was fully proven and served the intensive railway traffic for 108 years.
31Its French origin also led to claims of Gustave Eiffel’s alleged authorship. This claim has now been amply refuted in the literature but raises the broader question of technology transfer. The author of the viaduct, the engineer Ruppert, was inspired by French bridge constructions and made a study trip to Gustave Eiffel’s homeland. Such trips were part of the construction of the railway network in the Czech lands from its beginning, the designer of the first of them, František Antonín Gerstner (the son of František Josef Gerstner, the promoter of railways in the Czech lands), travelled to England for a similar purpose. However, study tours were not the only way of exchanging information from the more industrially advanced parts of Europe. Industrial exhibitions were another prevalent option. Especially those in Paris were much sought after by visitors from the Czech lands. The most significant response in the Czech environment was evoked by the 10th World Exhibition of 1889, which, among other things, popularised the name of Gustav Eiffel in the Czech lands. The members of the Czech Tourist Club were so enthusiastic about his tower that they built a scaled-down copy of it as part of the Jubilee Industrial Exhibition in Prague in 1891.
32However, neither the technical uniqueness of the Ivančice bridge nor the alleged connection with one of the most famous engineers could save the bridge from destruction. Its de facto demolition fits into the broader context of the approach to the (un)protection of technical cultural monuments in the Czech Republic. The unclear and frequently changing ownership structure and the almost complete absence of maintenance before 1989 contributed to this problem, especially in the 1990s. In the past, steel riveted bridges, not only railway bridges, were viewed in a predominantly utilitarian manner. They were, therefore, primarily seen as a functional part of the transport infrastructure, and their cultural and historical value remained on the periphery of interest.
- 15 The original railway bridge in Prague under Vyšehrad was replaced in 1901 by a truss bridge made of (...)
33This view has recently begun to change. Given their age, most of these bridges have outlived their function and have exceeded the service life for which they were originally designed. Aesthetically, however, they complement the environment in which they were built to the extent that society prefers to preserve and restore them. They are also a tangible testimony to the industrial maturity of the Czech lands. Recently, these facts have resonated in the public debate in the Czech Republic in Prague over the planned replacement of the Vyšehrad railway bridge (built 1872)15. It remains a sad fact that the Ivančice viaduct has not been preserved in its entirety and thus cannot form a valuable part of the industrial, technical and cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the circumstances of its creation, operation and disputes over authorship also illustrate the economic and industrial development of the Czech lands in the second half of the 19th century.
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