Fehmarn Sound Bridge:the heart of the Vogelfluglinie

It is considered the "bridge of peace" to Scandinavia and created the basis for the Vogelfluglinie. It has been a listed building since 1999 and is to be preserved for slow traffic even after the construction of the Fehmarnbelt tunnel.

by Christoph Heinzle, NDR Info

Federal Transport Minister Hans-Christoph Seebohm and his Danish colleague Kai Lindberg are present on January 4, 1960, when construction of the Fehmarnsund Bridge begins with the official groundbreaking ceremony. Great hopes rest on the construction project, which is not only intended to connect the island of Fehmarn with the mainland:the bridge over the Fehmarn Sound creates the basis for a faster connection to Denmark and thus the Vogelfluglinie between Germany and Scandinavia. The construction work lasted three years until the combined road and railway line was inaugurated on April 30, 1963. "This morning the future began for the island of Fehmarn," commented an NDR reporter on the ceremony with pathetic words. Federal Transport Minister Seebohm describes the ambitious structure as a "bridge of peace between Germany and the Nordic countries of Europe."

Federal President Lübke opens new ferry port

Two weeks later - on May 14, 1963 - the ship connection between Puttgarden and Rødby is put into operation. It is a big day of celebration, which NDR chief reporter Hermann Rockmann reported at the time:"In bright sunshine, the ferry 'Theodor Heuss' left the new Puttgarden ferry port over the Toppen, flagged with Federal President Dr. Lübke and almost 400 guests of honour, for the first official trip across the Fehmarnbelt to the Danish ferry port Rødby." Heinrich Lübke opens the Vogelfluglinie with great, pathetically formulated expectations. Vogelfluglinie will "promote the development of good human, cultural, economic and political relations between our two countries again". The Federal President raises his glass "to European unification, the realization of which we all wish with all our hearts". Denmark's King Frederik IX. joins the toast and expresses the wish "that the new transport link will help to consolidate this positive development for the benefit of our two countries and to promote European cooperation."

VIDEO: The Vogelfluglinie from Sweden to Hamburg (May 14, 1963) (111 min)

Bird flight line:symbol of rapprochement after the war

So much unity was anything but a matter of course at the time - 18 years after the Second World War, in which Hitler's Germany occupied Denmark. With the post-war reconstruction, the new Federal Republic is also reaching out to the former enemies and victims of the Nazi regime. That's why Vogelfluglinie is more than an economic project, according to Tobias Etzold, Northern Europe expert at the Northern European Politics Forum in Berlin:"The exchange of goods and people certainly has important political significance - especially between countries that were previously at loggerheads bring the countries closer together." According to Etzold, this was particularly true during this period of advancing European integration.

The Vogelfluglinie becomes a pioneer and symbol for open borders and a new form of cooperation in Europe - an idea that is partly taken ad absurdum by the reintroduced Danish border controls. Etzold says that the border controls reintroduced by Denmark in 2016 massively contradict the idea of ​​free movement of goods, goods and people at the European internal borders and emphasizes:"We must therefore do everything to maintain the original symbols of a free Europe."

Keyword Vogelfluglinie

Since the 1960s, Vogelfluglinie has been the direct transport link between the greater Hamburg and Copenhagen areas via Fehmarn. The name is derived from the migration of cranes and other waterfowl that follows the same route. The migratory birds fly on this route from Scandinavia to Central Europe and vice versa. This way they only have to travel a short distance across the open sea.

There are already plans in the 19th century

However, there were plans for a connection between Germany and Denmark via Fehmarn much earlier:since the 19th century, great hopes have been placed in a ferry connection between Fehmarn and Lolland. In 1864 the German engineer Gustav Kröhnke planned the ferry line and tried to make it attractive first to Denmark and then to Prussia. But his plan fails - due to lack of money, political resistance and the German-Danish war. Denmark was very interested in a fast route to Central and Southern Europe. "One thing was always in the foreground for Denmark:the development of western and southern markets. Above all, England was an important trading partner, but so was Germany," explains chronicler Carsten Watsack.

At the beginning of the 1940s, the plans were revised. The Nazis push the project and plan a Reichsautobahn from Hamburg to occupied Copenhagen. Work is already underway on bridges and roads on the Danish side. But the war stopped the construction because all the men had to go to the front. Only 20 years later the plans are actually realized and connect Fehmarn with the mainland.

Bridge building towards Denmark

While politicians celebrate the bridging towards Denmark in the 1960s as historic, many Fehmarans are skeptical. "In ideal areas, our Fehmarnland will change a lot. We will get a whole new culture. The untouched is over. We have been discovered," says local researcher Peter Wilpert at the time. "The people of Fehmar have always viewed their island as a continent," explains Carsten Watsack, longtime ferry captain and chronicler of Vogelfluglinie. But the Vogelfluglinie could only be realized with the Fehmarnsund Bridge, "because if you had to continue to cross the Fehmarnsund with ferries, all the time gained, the advantage of the Vogelfluglinie, would have been gone."

Strengthening tourism

The new connection increases trade between the two countries Denmark and Germany and strengthens tourism on the previously isolated island of Fehmarn, as Jan Wedemeier from the Hamburg World Economic Institute emphasizes. Beyond that, however, there were no significant economic advantages or impulses for the region - Ostholstein with Fehmarn on the German side and Lolland on the Danish side. Even if local researcher Wilpert prophesied at the opening of the Vogelfluglinie that Puttgarden on Fehmarn would become "a really big city" - the place has remained the small, quiet, remote village of yesteryear, the traffic from the big wide world just rushes past it.

Scandlines ferries as a floating bridge

Until now, Scandlines' ferries have formed the floating bridge between Puttgarden and Rødby. With more than seven million passengers a year, Vogelfluglinie is a success story, said former Scandlines supervisory board chairman Søren Poulsgaard Jensen a few years ago. He doubts, however, that the vision of southern Denmark and northern Germany growing together has been realized with the bridge. According to the head of the supervisory board, this is not due to a lack of road and rail connections. "Rather, this problem is due to the language difference, the level of economic activity and various political decisions affecting VAT, other taxes and duties and the pension system."

Next stage:The Fehmarnbelt tunnel

The Baltic Sea tunnel has been under construction as a fixed Fehmarnbelt link since 2021. Work is going on both on the Danish and on the German side. Planning for a tunnel through the Fehmarnbelt is currently in full swing:The approximately 18-kilometer-long railway and road tunnel is expected to connect the German island of Fehmarn with Denmark by 2029. But while all political groups in the neighboring country are behind the million-dollar project, the project is controversial in Germany. Among others, the nature conservation association NABU, the city of Bad Schwartau, the city of Burg auf Fehmarn and the "action alliance against a fixed Fehmarnbelt link" have filed lawsuits against the planning approval decision issued at the end of 2018.

The district of Ostholstein expects the project to have both positive and negative effects. For example, the travel time to and from Scandinavia will be significantly faster, which will attract more short vacationers and day tourists from Scandinavia to Fehmarn. However, years of construction work and a long outage of the Fehmarn rail link would mean that the increasing transit traffic would not bring any economic benefits for East Holstein. Jan Wedemeier from the Hamburg World Economics Institute also predicts that the tunnel will not bring any major economic effects for the region. On the other hand, the metropolitan regions of Hamburg and Copenhagen/Malmö as well as Lübeck could benefit. "However, the costs are immense and cost increases are to be expected in the coming years."

"hanger" stays the slow traffic

The aging Fehmarnsund Bridge, which has been a listed building since 1999 and which the people of Fehmar affectionately call their "coat hanger" because of its shape, is unlikely to be able to cope with the expected volume of traffic in the course of the Fehmarnbelt crossing. Therefore, an immersed tunnel between the mainland and the Baltic Sea island is to be built parallel to the old bridge. The upgraded Fehmarn Sound Bridge should then continue to be available for pedestrians, cyclists and slow-moving traffic such as tractors or cars with trailers. run.