Aeronauticum
The Aeronauticum is a German airship and naval aviation museum in Wurster North Sea Coast (district Nordholz ; near Cuxhaven ). The name of the museum is derived from the English word aeronautics or its German translation aeronautics .
17 original aircraft of sea and naval pilots of the German Navy and the GDR , which were in service after 1945, are shown on the approximately 36,000 m² outdoor area . The latest exhibits since December 2005 are a Breguet BR 1150 Atlantic of the Naval Aviation Wing 3 "Graf Zeppelin" in Nordholz and a Panavia MRCA Tornado of the former Naval Aviation Wing 2 in Tarp / Eggebek . In the 2050 m² indoor area, the historical and technical development of airship and naval aviation is shown using examples, small exhibits and replicas.
terrain
On December 17, 1912, the State Secretary of the Reichsmarinamt , Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz , commissioned the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven with the construction of an 800 hectare naval base in the heathland near Nordholz. The area met all the special requirements for the location of the Nordholz naval base : it was a centrally located site without too much military presence, to acquire cheaply and secured against shelling from the sea by the offshore mudflats. Over 18,161,000 marks went into the construction of the secret gas works, the accommodation and the airship hangars. The double hall “NOBEL”, first called “HERTA”, stood on rails and could be rotated 360 ° within an hour. This world's only double turning hall had a mass of 4600 t and was initially 182 meters, then during the war 200 meters long with a width of 70 meters and a height of 30 meters. The purpose of the revolving hall was to pull the airships out of or into the hall without the risk of cross winds, regardless of the wind direction . On the other hand, the double halls NORMAN, NOGAT and NORDSTERN as well as the single halls NORA and NORBERT were fixed. From 1915, all halls were given names beginning with NO.
With the ability to accommodate ten airships, Nordholz was one of the largest and most important airship bases in the First World War . In particular, airships from the Zeppelin system were used, but also some airships from the Schütte-Lanz system .
All halls were blown up, dismantled or scrapped after the First World War. In the mid-1920s, the air force built an air base on the site, which at times housed 1200 West Prussian refugees who needed a new home due to the cession of the " corridor " to Poland . The community Wursterheide was founded on the edge of the base.
During the Second World War , this air base secured the southern North Sea . After the war, the airfield first served the British as a base, for example for the bombing of Heligoland . The Americans later used it as an airfield before the German Navy could take over the site and build it into a naval air base .
Emergence
In 1967 the then Federal President Heinrich Lübke christened the naval aviation squadron stationed in Nordholz with the name "Graf Zeppelin". Young naval aviators and some naval aviation and zeppelin supporters began with the support of the "Marine-Luftschiff-Kameradschaft Hamburg von 1924", to show their small collection of airship objects on various occasions. However, due to a lack of funds, this growing collection could not be adequately presented to the public. This changed in 1987 when the municipality of Nordholz suggested the establishment of the “Friends of the Marine Airship Museum Nordholz im Landkreis Cuxhaven eV”. The main task of the association's statutes was: “… to collect and process all objects and documents from the era of the airships and to present them to the public in a museum , as well as to record and present the history of Wurster Heide. ... "
The first building
Directly at the entrance to the naval air base, the defense area administration gave the association a 1500 m² site in 1990 as part of a "joint use contract". In order to do justice to the traditional name "Graf Zeppelin", the entire Marine Aviation Squadron 3 took over the initiative. In close cooperation with the district of Cuxhaven , the municipality of Nordholz and the “Marine-Luftschiff-Kameradschaft”, a building that had not been used until then was converted directly on Landstrasse 135. On October 17, 1991, the "Marine Airship Museum Nordholz" opened the four areas of airship technology , naval airship , infrastructure of an airship site using the example of Nordholz and passenger airship in four rooms . It quickly became apparent that the area was not sufficient for all the exhibits and could only be viewed as an interim solution.
The "new" building
The German Maritime Museum (DSM) in Bremerhaven also suffered from a lack of space and was therefore already planning an extension to the open-air site to replace the “boat hall” built in the early 1970s. The Nordholzer Museum received this hall with 750 m² of freely spanned usable space as a gift on condition that it was quickly dismantled and removed for further use.
The 6th Company of Pioneer Battalion 11 from Dörverden offered their help and began in the late autumn of 1994 with 60 soldiers to dismantle the hall , which was built according to plans by Hans Scharoun , and to transport it by truck to Nordholz. However, the trusses , which are over 10 meters high and 20 meters wide, could not be transported by truck . The transport of the twelve wooden trusses weighing more than 3.5 t in the assemblies as external load on CH-53 transport helicopters took place with great media interest . The transport planes of the army flew them from Bremerhaven to the naval aviators in Nordholz.
Many companies, training institutions and individual sponsors in the region supported the development. On May 6, 1997, the then Minister for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony , Helga Schuchardt , opened the museum, now known as the Aeronauticum.
Extension
An urgently needed hall extension was realized with funds from the European Union , the Lower Saxony Sparkasse Foundation , the EWE Foundation , the Lower Saxony Lotto Foundation , donations from the "Project X" of the Kreissparkasse Wesermünde-Hadeln , the Bremerhaven Sunday Journal and the company : seeyou from Bremerhaven.
On October 4, 2006, Lutz Stratmann, the former Minister for Science and Art of Lower Saxony, in the company of MdB Annette Faße and other politicians of the district as well as invited guests, sponsors and association members opened the extension. Manfred Mittelstedt and Rainer Huismans' speeches by the sponsoring association dealt with fundamental considerations and broad ideas for the future. The key was handed over by the architect Herbert Butt. A day later, visitors were also able to view the new part of the building and new exhibits. After completing the remaining work of the over 1 million expensive extension and renovation, the new catering area was opened in January 2007.
The additional approximately 800 m² of exhibition space is largely used for special exhibitions, such as the exhibition on the fate of the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen , which runs from August to the end of December 2006 .
Exhibition areas
Outdoor area
The collection consists of 17 aircraft and helicopters, including a Breguet BR 1150 Atlantic from Marinefliegergeschwader 3 in Nordholz and two Panavia MultiRoleCombatAircraft Tornados from the former Marinefliegergeschwader 2 in Tarp / Eggebeck.
Since December 2009 there has been an exhibition section on the history of the naval railway with two main exhibits , a freight wagon and a "naval locomotive" on the outdoor area with two newly built sheds .
In the outdoor area there is also a memorial that previously stood near the Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel airship port in Hamburg-Langenhorn and commemorates the deceased crew members of the first marine airship L 1 , which crashed into the North Sea on September 9, 1913.
Halls
The interior exhibition areas are divided into five areas of the permanent exhibition and the special exhibition area.
- Technology and history of the airships
- Airships at war
- Civil aviation
- Nordholz airship place
- Sea and naval aviators (and outdoor areas)
Zeppelins
The exhibition shows information on zeppelins in military and civil use and documentation on the fate of the crews. The life of the Zeppelin commander Hans Flemming is shown.
Special exhibitions
Special exhibition "Everything flies - children's toys through the ages" October 17, 2011 to September 30, 2012
Special exhibition “Airship Dornier DO X - Flight captain Horst Merz, from sea pilot to responsible airship pilot of DO X” April 1 to November 30, 2011, extended to November 30, 2012
Gallery W: “Impressions from the Wurster North Sea coast” July 19 to November 30, 2012
"Peace through Understanding - Prince Eugene" An exhibition in the newly opened building "Barrier-free Tourism" January 6th to November 30th, 2012
Weddings
Since September 2005 it is possible to get married in a VFW 614 (G18, formerly flight readiness of the Federal Ministry of Defense).
Criticism of the Federal Audit Office
The acceptance of the construction aid offer of the army was a test for the museum, because the Federal Audit Office saw the engagement of the army aviators in the dismantling and reconstruction of the "boat hall" in Nordholz as a waste of taxpayers' money and demanded a reimbursement of costs. According to this calculation, the help of the Bundeswehr would have cost around two million DM. With a financial burden of this size, the museum would have had to close. Thanks to the increasing number of visitors, the great popularity among the population and the local companies as well as the commitment of the state and federal representatives of all parties, this billing was finally abandoned after almost ten years of negotiations.
Similar difficulties are not to be expected in the future, since the Aeronauticum, as the second museum in the field of defense / technology in Germany, is now also a teaching material store for the Navy, which had to restructure its teaching material collections for financial and spatial reasons.
cooperation
On April 11, 2013, the Aeronauticum, the Aviation Museum Laatzen-Hanover , the Helicopter Museum in Bückeburg and the Ju-52 Museum in Wunstorf merged to form the “Association of Lower Saxony Aviation Museums ”.
See also
Web links
- The website of the Aeronauticum Museum in Nordholz
- Pictures from the museum
- ARGE Lower Saxony Aviation Museums
Individual evidence
- ↑ Permanent exhibition outside area ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Pictures from the museum
- ↑ Memories of the great time of the zeppelins. In: Südkurier of August 24, 2013
Coordinates: 53 ° 46 ′ 30.5 ″ N , 8 ° 38 ′ 20.1 ″ E