It spans the valley of the Göltzsch River between the Reichenbach im Vogtland district of Mylau and the adjacent town of Netzschkau in the German Free State of Saxony.

It was built between 1846 and 1851 as part of the railway between Saxony (Leipzig, Zwickau, and Plauen) and Bavaria (Hof and Nuremberg).

Hoping to find a financially feasible construction plan, the Saxon-Bavarian Railway Company announced a contest on 27 January 1845 in all major German magazines with prize money of 1000 Thalers.

However, none of the 81 submissions could prove by means of structural analysis that it would be able to withstand the stresses of rail traffic on the bridge.

The chairman of the jury, professor Johann Andreas Schubert subsequently designed a bridge himself, making use of his recently attained knowledge of structural analysis, and letting himself be inspired by the submitted designs and the viaduct in Leubnitz (Werdau), which was finished in the summer of 1845,[2] making it the first bridge in the world to be subjected to a full structural analysis.

[5] A museum in the nearby Mylau Castle opened in 1883 that has dedicated a room to the Göltzsch Viaduct, that among others includes a scale model of the scaffolding, copies of the original building plans, a three-dimensional height map of the region, and photographs and paintings made during the construction of the bridge.

This allows tilting trains to use this trajectory, which can reach speeds of up to 160 kilometres per hour (99 mph) even on curved tracks.

The 2002 documentary film Ein Tag mit Folgen: Teuflische Spiele (A Day with Consequences: Diabolical Games) pictures the lives of the families and friends who stayed behind, and their attempts to get to terms with the events.

Between 2006 and 2008, Deutsche Bahn invested 2.2 million Euro in a new elevator system for maintenance work on the bridge.