Old Landing Bridge (Lomé)

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Coordinates: 6 ° 7 ′ 15 ″  N , 1 ° 13 ′ 25 ″  E

Lome Landing Bridge (between 1904 and 1911)

The old pier in Lome (German also Lome ) is a former pier from the German colonial period. Between 1904 and 1914, most of the shipping traffic to and from the German colony of Togo took place here . Under French colonial rule, a successor system was built in the immediate vicinity of the old landing stage.

Need and planning

Planning for the construction of the pier began in October 1899. The colonial demarcation of Togoland made new transport connections necessary from a German perspective. On the part of the local trading offices there was a demand for a pier on the open Togo coast in order to facilitate the transport. The strong surf on the West African Atlantic beaches ( called Kalema ) and the lack of natural harbors made a modern mooring point for safe shipping indispensable. Before the bridge was built, a significant part of the transports was lost due to the swell, people were completely soaked or even drowned. Traders and members of the navy often did not get on or off board on the German Togo coast for days.

Since the colony emanated from the coast in the form of a “slender tube”, the infrastructure planning aimed at traffic routes from the coastal towns to far inland. Future domestic traffic should be done through the construction of roads and railways. A suitable landing site made sense for two reasons: On the one hand, it should enable heavy equipment to be landed for the construction of the route in the first place. On the other hand, it was necessary to create a suitable starting point for the further course of the railway lines. The landing stage was therefore designed for access by railway wagons in order to become, as it were, the "entrance gate" to the colony's transport network.

Construction and function

Loading of cotton by a steam crane on the landing stage

Construction of the bridge began in mid-1902. The construction costs amounted to about 800,000 marks . The opening took place on January 27, 1904, the 45th birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Due to its length of a good 300 meters, the treacherous surf near the shore could be bridged generously. In 1909 it was extended by 50 meters. The bridge was made of ironwork. Their piles were protected by concrete. The width was six meters - apart from the end facing the sea, which consisted of a 15 meter wide platform. On the platform, several steam cranes handled the handling of goods or the transfer of people for whom there were special gondolas. The cranes had a lifting capacity of three to six tons. However, due to the considerable swell, it was still too risky to dock with ocean-going vessels directly at the bridge, so that they only approached the bridge within one or two ship lengths. The transport between the ship and the bridgehead was carried out by barges with a cargo capacity of around three tons. Passengers - with the exception of post office and government officials - bought tickets worth three marks per person for the short crossing. Freight wagons could be driven to the end of the bridge on two tracks that had a direct connection to Lomé train station . Shunting was done by a type B n2T tank locomotive from the manufacturer Borsig . A customs building stood at the landside end of the bridge.

Significance for German colonial policy

View of the landing stage at Lome during the German colonial period (almost Adolf-Friedrich-Platz)

Since the coastal towns of Togoland only had open roads , the landing stage had an impact on the entire shipping traffic of the colony. Most of the steamboat lines stopped calling at Anecho and other coastal locations in Togo. In contrast, Lome experienced a significant upgrade as the gateway to Togo . The tracks from the landing stage were extended by three railway lines in the years after the bridge was built. The landing stage and the railways were owned by the tax authorities and leased to the German Colonial Railway Construction and Operating Company in Berlin. The 44-kilometer Lomé – Aného line was the first to go into operation. Among other things, it should compensate for the loss of importance of the other coastal towns. This underlined the importance of Lome as the main place and transition point of the colony. The bridge became the symbol of the city.

Natural disaster of 1911

The catastrophe of May 17, 1911, when the bridge was badly damaged in a storm - a contemporary witness spoke of a seaquake was all the more serious . The middle section of the bridge fell into the sea. Three slewing cranes and about a dozen railway wagons were swept away. The local products such as rubber, cotton and ivory were lost. A bridge house and the landing craft also fell victim to the waves. This hampered landing operations for more than a year. At times, people and mail had to be transported again by means of boats and barrels on the beach. Nevertheless, between 1911 and 1912, a total of 74,000 tons of goods worth over 650,000 marks and around 7200 people passed the bridge. The solemn arrival of the new governor, Adolf Friedrich zu Mecklenburg , on June 19, 1912 took place on the bridge under repair. The completion of the reconstruction fell on December 1, 1912. The rebuilt bridge area was led in an arch around the collapsed section. This gave the previously straight bridge two curves and lengthened it to around 360 meters.

Further development

Remnants of the German investor, 2006
French investor, 2006

With the handover of Lomes on August 7, 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War , the operation of the bridge was also transferred to the Entente . After the war, Lome was in the French mandate. When the old landing bridge was destroyed again by a seaquake in 1928, the French built a more modern and longer landing bridge next to the remains of the bridge from the German colonial era. But the French bridge is also out of order today. However, in contrast to the bridge built by the Germans, their remains are relatively well preserved. Almost only the foundations of the German landing stage can be seen.

As a replacement for the landing stages, the deep-water port of Lomé was built between 1965 and 1968 by a consortium of three German companies.

In 1984 the old landing stage was an image in a series of stamps on one hundred years of German-Togolese history.

See also

literature

  • Peter Sebald : Togo 1884–1914 - A history of the German “model colony” based on official sources . Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1988. ISBN 3-05-000248-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Willi A. Boelcke: This is how the sea came to us - The Prussian-German Navy in Übersee 1822 to 1914. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-550-07951-6 , p. 140.
  2. ↑ Helmut Schroeter, Roel Ramaer: The railways in the once German protected areas / German Colonial Railways . Röhr-Verlag, Krefeld 1993, p. 103, ISBN 3-88490-184-2
  3. ↑ Peter Sebald: Togo 1884–1914 - A history of the German “model colony” based on official sources . Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1988, p. 332 ISBN 3-05-000248-4
  4. ↑ Helmut Schroeter, Roel Ramaer: The railways in the once German protected areas / German Colonial Railways . Röhr-Verlag, Krefeld 1993, p. 107, ISBN 3-88490-184-2
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Lauber (Ed.): German Architecture in Togo 1884–1914 / L'Architecture allemande au Togo 1884–1914 . Karl Krämer Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, p. 54, ISBN 3-7828-4017-8
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Lauber (Ed.): German Architecture in Togo 1884–1914 / L'Architecture allemande au Togo 1884–1914 . Karl Krämer Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, pp. 116f., ISBN 3-7828-4017-8
  7. ↑ Peter Sebald: Togo 1884–1914 - A history of the German “model colony” based on official sources . Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1988, p. 337 ISBN 3-05-000248-4
  8. ↑ Peter Vogenbeck: The Landungsbrücke in Lome and the catastrophic collapse of 1911. Online at www.petervogenbeck.de , accessed on November 1, 2019 (see photos on pp. 19-23).
  9. ↑ Photo from 2008 , shows the French bridge in the foreground and the German bridge in the background
  10. ↑ Helmut Schroeter, Roel Ramaer: The railways in the once German protected areas / German Colonial Railways . Röhr-Verlag, Krefeld 1993, p. 115, ISBN 3-88490-184-2
  11. ↑ Lome - Vue du wharf - 1903 Togolese postage stamp, 1984