A8 (Germany)

The A8 in Germany is one of the most important East-West connections in Central Europe and stretches from the Luxembourg border to the Austrian border.

History

As early as the Weimar Republic, the HaFraBa eV association planned a network of trunk roads exclusively for motor vehicle traffic. The HaFraBa was the association for the preparation of the Hanseatic cities-Frankfurt-Basel motorway. It was founded in 1926 by civil engineer Ehlert Robert Friedrich Otzen, the inventor of the word "autobahn", and managed by traffic planner Willy Hof. Initially, a road network was planned that would lead from Hamburg via Frankfurt to Basel and through Switzerland to Italy.

Although the government initially rejected the plans, the Nazi government that came to power in 1933 decided to implement HaFraBa's autobahn plans after all - not least in order to reduce the problem of widespread unemployment at the beginning of the 1930s. The National Socialists presented the construction of the "Reichsautobahn" as a world first and took the example of the Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, who opened the first autobahn in Italy in 1924.

The HaFraBa planning included routes from Karlsruhe via Stuttgart to Munich and from Munich to Salzburg. A connection from Saarbrücken via Landau was also planned. The section between Karlsruhe and Salzburg on the Austrian border was completed by the beginning of the Second World War.

The Sections of the A8

The A8 begins its 505-kilometer route in the first section at the Schengen Viaduct on the Luxembourg border. This part leads up from the Moselle valley, along the border with France and further along the Saar. Then the autobahn changes direction to Rhineland-Palatinate and ends just before Pirmasens.

The second section of the A8 begins at the Karlsruher Dreieck, shortly after the Ettlingen junction in the direction of Frankfurt. This route climbs straight into the heights of the northern Black Forest via Grünwettersbach. The Autobahn leads through the Black Forest in the direction of Stuttgart and on to the Swabian Jura. After Ulm and Augsburg, this section ends shortly after Munich West.

The third section of the A8 begins south of Munich. It leads through the Bavarian Alps into the Inn Valley, then climbs further to Chiemsee and Bernau and ends with the Saalach Bridge on the border with Austria.