1976: Collapse of the Imperial Bridge

The second Viennese Imperial Bridge, which replaced an older predecessor construction, was erected as a self-anchored chain bridge in the years 1934 to 1937 according to the plans of architects Hans Jaksch and Siegfried Theiss. The construction was planned by the authoritarian government as a job-creation scheme and was subsequently also exploited for propaganda purposes. During the Second World War, the Imperial Bridge was the only Viennese bridge over the Danube that remained intact, suffering only minimal damages. In the morning hours of August 1, 1976, the structure collapsed without any warning, killing one man and causing substantial property damage in the vicinity. The fact that at the time of the collapse there were only very few vehicles on the bridge, which typically had heavy daytime traffic, meant that a major disaster was prevented. As a cause of collapse, an inquiry commission determined that the yielding of a bridge pillar could be traced back to a design flaw, construction defects and damage as a result of time. On a political level, this incident led to severe attacks by the opposition against Vienna’s Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) municipal government. As a result of the debate, the City Councillor for Planning, Fritz Hofmann, had to resign even though no misconduct could be attributed to him.