Baranya fought for the Danube bridge in Mohács for more than a hundred years

Even though the ferry was running, it could not always handle so much freight

As later reported in several contemporary newspapers, the latter move created some 5,000 acres of high-quality farmland on the other side of the Danube. It is no wonder that in the first half of the 20th century, the developing areas on the other side of the Danube were already home to thousands of people, and the agricultural trade on the ferry was pushing the limits of capacity. "During the harvest, the city-owned steamship ferry runs from 4am to 10pm. Even so, it may not be able to complete the crossing," the Pécs Napló quoted István Fehérváry, technical advisor of Mohács, as saying in 1942. In addition, it was argued that in winter the ferry would not run for three months because of ice.

His words were confirmed three years later, after the wartime blowing up of the bridges at Baja and Dunaföldvár, by a news report of the Hungarian Telegraphic Office, which supported the need for the Mohács bridge with data from the Ministry of Industry. According to this, from spring to autumn, the Mohács ferry crossing carries half a million people a year, 100,000 horse-drawn carriages, 15,000 cars, 30,000 small animals and 5,000 large animals from one bank to the other.

If not for the World War, a railway and road bridge would have been built

The Mohács bridge lobby, however, had been in high gear for decades before the councillor's statement, and had been keeping the crossing on the agenda virtually non-stop. This article would not even be enough to describe all the twists and turns, but it is worth taking a look at this historic process by picking out the most important details and linking them to the twists and turns in domestic bridge building.

The closest the settlement of 14,000 had come to building a bridge by the turn of the century was probably in the closing years of dualism. In the early 1900s, several newspapers of the time reported widespread rallies and petitions for the bridge.

As a result, in September 1906, Count Móricz Benyovszky, the chief bailiff of Baranya County, presented a memorandum on the bridge to the Minister of Trade, Ferenc Kossuth of Mohács. The lobby was successful, and the minister backed the cause.

According to an article in the National Newspaper in 1942, 1909, the first plans for the Mohács Bridge were drawn up with the support of the Minister of Trade, but the realisation of these plans could not start due to the outbreak of the World War in 1914.

Hungary's bridge building has taken off: four new Danube bridges in four years!

As a background to the lobbying efforts, it is worth looking at the contemporary developments in domestic bridge building. From the perspective of Mohács, an important step south of Budapest was the opening of the first Hungarian Danube bridge in 1883 in Novi Sad, where an iron railway bridge was built. In the 19th century, after the Chain Bridge, opened in 1849, the Margit Bridge (1876), the Southern Link Railway Bridge (1877), the Komárom Bridge (1892) and the Esztergom Bridge (1895) were built over the Danube.

The momentum of the projects was enhanced by the fact that the latter, which provided a link with the Highlands, were our first Danube bridges built by Hungarian contractors with state funding, based on Hungarian plans - as the book Duna-hídjaink (Our Danube Bridges) edited by Dr. Ernő Tóth describes. It was also a sign of the strength of the Hungarian economy at the turn of the century that three more bridges were built in Budapest at the turn of the century: the Liberty Bridge (then known as the Ferenc József Bridge) and the Northern Railway Bridge were opened in 1896, followed by the Elizabeth Bridge in 1903.

Including the two bridges in the Highlands, this meant that four Danube bridges were opened in Hungary between 1892 and 1896, and a slightly longer distance between 1893 and 1903, a total of five bridges were opened.

After the Great Depression, the bridge was swept away by the Great Depression

In the light of the above, the newspapers of Mohács and Baranya understandably wrote more and more about the future Mohács bridge. This mood was further heightened by the fact that the railway bridge over the Danube to the south of Baja was opened 1908, also before the war, and was later made suitable for road traffic in 1935. In addition, in 1910, in the southern part of the region of Osijek - not far from the then southern border of Baranya - Gombos was given a Danube railway bridge for wagons and freight traffic.

The shock of the World War and the loss of the country at Trianon understandably put a damper on domestic bridge building. Mohács suffered a double loss: with the Trianon borders, it became a border settlement, losing many important inland connections, while the Danube was not even crossable, and the Baranja region was threatened with isolation. At the same time, in 1926, new plans were drawn up for the Mohács bridge. According to press reports at the time, the development would have cost 40 billion paper crowns;

A Mohács newspaper also reported that it will rest on three piers and two coastal bridge piers, with 100-metre bridge spans.

The economic crisis of 1929, however, swept the project away again, and in vain attempts to revive the fire, the Mohács bridge was cancelled from the 1938 investment programme, as it did not fit into the budget of the time. Meanwhile, the construction of bridges in Hungary did not stand still during the Horthy era: a Danube bridge was opened at Dunaföldvár in the northern tip of Tolna in 1930, while the Danube bridge connecting the returned Highland areas to Győr was built at Vámosszabadin in 1942. The former project brought another region south of Budapest to the finishing line.

In winter, the island population reached Mohács via Baja by a 65 km detour

However, more recent historical storms seem to have brought the Mohács bridge closer to becoming a reality: after the return of the Southern Triangle in 1941, Mohács found itself in a new strategic position. On 15 March 1942, the National Newspaper summarized the argumentation thus: "The Mohács bridge will connect the returned South Hungary with the Lower Danube region, which remained Hungarian even during the Trianon years."

It is also worth looking at what the mayor of Mohács said in an interview with the Esti Újság in August 1944. In the article entitled "Mohács's fight for the Danube bridge", Alajos Szőnyi stresses,

5 km of quayside, the second largest harbour in the country, the city has several schools and a modern public hospital; the coal mines of Pécs store their coal stock of 10 thousand wagons here.

Turning to the geographical arguments, he explained that Mohács Island is one of the most abundantly productive areas in the country, but the island's population reaches Mohács in winter only 65 km bypassing Baja. In addition, the Baja bridge is essentially a railway bridge, which is only temporarily opened to road traffic. At the same time, transport from Mohács to Bácska is also blocked in winter: the flow of coal, cement and quarry products from Baranya is also blocked by ice.

The bells of Mohács controlled the traffic on the military bridge

The new lightning-fast turn of history finally swept this lobby era off the table, but nevertheless the town did have a bridge towards the end of the Second World War, which was commemorated in a lengthy article in the Mohács Journal in 1971.

The Soviet army, which was advancing in 1944, built a pontoon bridge on the Danube after the capture of Mohács to provide supplies. The various troops and vehicles crossed the bridge on horseback, according to the author, who recalled the situation as an eyewitness, but there was also traffic in the opposite direction.

If they wanted to cross the island from the town, they would ring the bell of the church in the centre of Mohács, and traffic from the east would stop.

More than a million people crossed the bridges of Mohács, which influenced the course of the war

A few days later, the crossing was marred by tragedy: an armoured team crossing the Danube was cut in two by a pontoon bridge, and a tank was lost forever in the Danube. Rescue was out of the question due to a lack of equipment and divers," the article said.

The bridge was finally ripped apart by the ice at Christmas, and in January, after the Danube had completely frozen over, iron-hooked decks were laid on the ice and reinforced with ice frozen on top. The crossing was carried out day and night, with more than 1 million people crossing the two bridges, which played a major role in the Soviet advance across the Danube.

Another heroic era in bridge building

After the terrible devastation of the Second World War, the bridge profession devoted all its attention and capacity to reconstruction: the rebuilt bridge was opened in Baja in 1950 and in Dunaföldvár in 1951. Without going into further details, Hungarian bridge-building lived through another heroic period: of the 11 Danube bridges destroyed in the war, nine were back in operation by 1955 (the Erzsébet Bridge in Budapest and the bridge at Esztergom were still waiting to be rebuilt for various reasons), and the newly built Árpád Bridge was opened in 1950.

Subsequently, no new Danube bridge was built until the change of regime, with the exception of the rebuilt Elizabeth Bridge, which was opened in 1964. But it was also a busy period for the profession, with many achievements. The expansion, renovation - sometimes final post-war reconstruction - and strengthening of earlier bridges marked this era. Among the tasks, it is enough to point out that adapting to the increased traffic loads on the Danube bridges presented many challenges.

Lobbying flares up again, Baja bridge a half-solution

The above period was completed in 1990 with the opening of the Hárosi bridge on the M0 motorway, the first domestic motorway bridge. At the same time, the political turnaround that brought about the change of regime also brought the issue of the Mohács bridge back to the surface: one of the main steps was the creation of the Mohács Danube Bridge Foundation (MDHA) in 1992, which claimed that the bridge would make Mohács the southern gateway to the EU and would create a commercial hub with relatively little investment. Among their arguments was the long-standing desire of people living in the area to replace the ferry, which is 28 kilometres away as the crow flies, and the Baja bridge, which is therefore a significant detour.

However, it also includes,

for decades, the Baja bridge was not a real solution for the region: by 1950, it was built as a single-track railway bridge to replace the blown-up crossing, and it was also used to carry road traffic - but this was only possible intermittently.

In addition, heavy road traffic was causing the reinforced concrete trackbed to deteriorate, and to solve this problem, by 1999 the cantilevers were reinforced, thus allowing road traffic to pass separately on both sides of the railway.

The cities along the Danube started at the same time

In the 1990s, however, not only the Mohács area was launched, but the regions south of Budapest - which at that time had only two (!) bridges - along the Danube began to work towards similar goals: in Szekszárd, Dunaújváros and Dombóvár, work was also being done in this direction.

The Mohács people, who by then had a century-long history of lobbying, were not bothered by the competition: the MDHA's consistent work is shown by the fact that, among other things, in 1993 it prepared an impact study on the bridge and then organised several national conferences on the construction of the bridge.

At the fifth such conference in 1999, an agreement was signed for the construction of the new Danube bridges in Dunaújváros and Mohács.

In addition, the organisation prepared the plans for the planning permission in principle for the Mohács bridge, and in 1999 the study plan was prepared, which analysed in detail the economic development impacts of the planned M6 and M56 motorways and the three new Danube bridges connecting them - Mohács, Szekszárd and Dunaújváros.

New Danube bridge opened in the region after more than seven decades

Szekszárd was the first of the above-mentioned settlements to reach the finish line: the inauguration of the Szent László Bridge in 2003 was a national milestone, as it was the first new bridge on the Danube south of Budapest in 73 years. But the next such crossing was not a fraction of that: the Pentele Bridge in Dunaújváros was opened in 2007. The balance sheet of the 2000s is also enriched by the inauguration of the reconstructed Mária Valéria bridge in Esztergom in 2001.

However, the efforts of the people of Mohács were not without results: in 2008, the parliament passed a new spatial planning law, which included the Mohács bridge, but it was not implemented.

The Mohács bridge could be a key element of the motorway between Pécs and Szeged

Before the subsequent elections in 2010, several politicians included the construction of the Mohács bridge in their campaigns, for which a new feasibility study (2014) followed by an environmental impact study (2016), before the government ordered the preparation of plans for the Mohács Danube bridge in a resolution in 2017. This was echoed in Viktor Orbán's speech at the 2017 opening of the Mohács slaughterhouse – which our newspaper also reported on – as the Prime Minister has set the four-lane road between Pécs and Szeged as a definite goal, as well as the necessary bridge in Mohács.

It is worth mentioning that Hungarian bridge construction reached another milestone in 2020: a new road bridge over the Danube was opened in Komárom, next to the railway bridge, which is the highest bridge over the river in Hungary. The cream of the bridge-building profession did not remain idle for long, as the construction of another Danube bridge began in Paks in 2021 with the general construction of Duna Aszfalt Zrt., resulting in the Tomori Pál Bridge was inaugurated in 2024.

For a while, history seemed to repeat itself, then...

At the same time, the people of Mohács have now reached the threshold of fulfilling their centuries-old plan for the umpteenth time: By the end of 2022, the SPECIÁLTERV Kft. will be completed with the implementation plans – the major subcontractors involved in the project were FŐMTERV Zrt. (river bridge) and UVATERV Zrt. (independent statics). For a while, it seemed that history was repeating itself yet again: the government's 2022 investment freeze put the construction of the Mohács bridge on hold.