I love the fairy effect of Lomochrome Purple film - it gives the Devil’s Bridge a truly magical feeling. The surreal colors make the old stone arches look like something out of a fantasy story. Maybe I’ll visit the bridge again in winter, when the swampy ground is more walkable thanks to the cold, and try to get some shots from below.

The bridge itself has an interesting history. It arches over the “Teufelsgraben” and isn’t far from the old firing ranges in Katharinenholz. The surrounding area was once swampy, and when it rained heavily, Lake Bornstedt would often overflow. The drain, or “Teufelsgraben,” was built in 1786 to direct the excess water into the Golmer Luch.

The bridge over the drain was originally built for purely practical reasons. Soldiers from the Potsdam garrison often marched from the castle to the fields of Bornstedt, and the bridge served as a shortcut. It was constructed in 1844 from Rüdersdorf limestone1. At that time, King Wilhelm IV wanted to create another park between the Crown Estate and Lindstedt Palace, and he commissioned Peter Joseph Lenné for the landscape planning. The king’s favorite architect, Ludwig Persius, designed the bridge as a five-arched Roman viaduct. Interestingly, six years earlier, another “Devil’s Bridge” was built for Wilhelm’s brother at Schloss Glienicke.

Although the bridge was planned for practical reasons, it fit perfectly into Wilhelm IV’s larger vision for a grand landscape park in the style of an English garden. It also seems he didn’t want to see the military during his rides - what better way than to guide soldiers through the forest, out of public view? The plans for the nearby “Ruinenberg”2 also show that the military was repeatedly moved off the hill to keep the panorama free of military buildings (which is also why the firing ranges in Katharinenholz were expanded - they had previously been on the Ruinenberg).3

However, the park was never laid out as planned, and Wilhelm IV died in 1861, never seeing the results. The Teufelsgraben also lost its purpose, as the water from Lake Bornstedt has flowed into the Lindstedt drainage through an underground clay pipe since 1891.

It’s fascinating how a bridge built for soldiers and drainage now stands as a quiet, almost enchanted spot - especially when seen on a picture made with Lomochrome Purple.

  1. Brandenburger Tor, Sanssouci Palace and many other familiar buildings were built with the rock mined here. ↩︎

  2. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruinenberg ↩︎

  3. There is an interesting text about that history in “Gartenkunst in Bornstedt” by Clemes Alexander Wimmer in the book “Krongut Bornstedt - Eine Bau-und Nutzungsgeschichte”. ↩︎