Deutsches Eck

Deutsches Eck ("German Corner") is the name of a headland in Koblenz where the Moselle joins the Rhine. The Teutonic Knights were given this area for their Deutschherrenhaus Bailiwick.

Imperial iconography

In 1897, nine years after the death of the German Emperor William I, the former emperor was honoured with a giant equestrian statue bearing an inscription quoting a German poem: "Nimmer wird das Reich zerstöret, wenn ihr einig seid und treu" (Never will the Empire be destroyed, so long as you are united and loyal). Another inscription could be found at the statue dedicating it to “Wilhelm der Große” (William the Great).

In 1945, the statue was badly damaged by an American artillery shell. Soon afterwards it was completely taken down. The French military government planned to replace the old memorial with a monument for peace and understanding among nations, but this concept was never realized.

After the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic in 1949, the country was divided into a capitalist west and a communist east. In order to express the deep wish for a united Germany, President Theodor Heuss turned the German Corner into a monument to German unity. As a result, the coats of arms of all German Länder (states), including those of former German territories such as Silesia, East Prussia and Pomerania, were installed. Replacing the destroyed equestrian statue, a German flag flew over the plaza.

Deutsches Eck (transport link)

The Deutsches Eck ("German Corner") is the name given to the shortest and most convenient road and railway link between the Austrian metropolitan region of Salzburg and the Tyrolean Unterland with the state capital Innsbruck.

Due to the mountainous landscape and the irregular course of the border, the main transport routes to the western Austrian states of Tyrol and Vorarlberg pass through the territory of the German federal state of Bavaria. While an alternative, albeit longer, all-Austrian Salzburg-Tyrol Railway exists, there is no continuous, intra-Austrian motorway route between the states of Salzburg and Tyrol.

Großes Deutsches Eck

A larger railway and autobahn (motorway) link runs from Salzburg westwards along the northern rim of the Chiemgau Alps to the Bavarian town of Rosenheim, then turns south through the Inn valley to reach the Tyrolean border at Kufstein.

Since the conclusion of an 1851 treaty between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Bavaria, so-called "corridor-trains" of the Austrian Railways (ÖBB) use the Rosenheim–Salzburg and Rosenheim–Kufstein railway lines maintained by the German Deutsche Bahn company against payment of a regular fee. At the Rosenheim rail junction a direct connection (the Rosenheimer Kurve) was erected in 1982 to allow express trains pass quickly without a stop at Rosenheim station.