While most theoretical analyses pursue a unified account for the meaning of definite descriptions, there are various languages and dialects with two different types of definite articles, suggesting a richer typology of definite descriptions. After introducing these two types and their general characterization with German data on contraction of prepositions and the definite article, I turn to the question of how bridging definites relate to the two articles and their analysis. I argue that bridging with the so-called `strong', anaphoric, article involves relational nouns that have an implicit anaphoric relatum-argument (as in `a book' ... `the author', where the book provides the implicit argument of `author'). Bridging with the `weak', uniqueness-based article, on the other hand, involves picking out a unique individual within a given situation (talking about a car-trip, `the steering wheel' will pick out the unique steering wheel in the driving situation). This analysis provides further support for the respective roles that anaphoricity and situational uniqueness play for the two articles, as well as a new perspective on bridging. In closing, I relate the analysis of anaphoric bridging with the strong article to regular anaphoric cases (`a book' ... `the book'), and discuss some implications of the broader perspective on definiteness that opens up once we recognize the existence of the different definite articles.