Old Swede (Hamburg)

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Location in Hamburg
The foundling is salvaged (1999)
The old Swede 2003 with information board in the foreground
Landside view (2005)
View from the Elbe side (2011)

Alter Schwede is a large boulder near Övelgönne in Hamburg and a geotope of national importance . The protected natural monument is the oldest large boulder in Germany and has a circumference of 19.7 m, a height of 4.5 m and a weight of 217 t.

geology

The old Swede near Övelgönne consists of a gray to brownish-gray, uniform-grain (i.e. non- porphyry ), tectonically largely undeformed granite . It is mainly composed of bluish quartz, partly vergrüntem plagioclase and brownish-gray to pale pink feldspar as feldspar component and biotite as mica component. Due to its relatively high proportion of plagioclase and low quartz content, the rock can be characterized as monzogranite . Based on the combination of rock features, the region of origin was determined to be the Transscandinavian Igneous Belt (TIB) in the southern part of the Baltic Shield and limited to the area around Växjö in East Småland ( southern Sweden ). The corresponding rock deposit is also known as gray Växjö granite . The straight line distance to the region of origin of the boulder is thus around 600 kilometers, which does not say anything about the length of its actual hiking trail, which probably followed the course of the Baltic Sea basin .

By examining the fine-grained material in which the boulder was embedded in the underground of the Elbe (see →  glacial till ), it was possible to determine that it had already been transported to today's Hamburg area with the inland ice of the Elster Ice Age more than 320,000 years ago . This makes it the oldest large boulder in Germany - the other known large boulders only came with later ice ages , the Saale or Weichsel ice ages . However, the age of the granite from which the boulder is made is significantly higher and is around 1.8 billion years. The surface of the stone shows clear traces of the transport in the ice. The protrusions in the rock are heavily abraded, in some places scratches can be seen, which result from collisions with other rocks during transport.

Find and rescue

The rock was found in 1999 during excavation work for the deepening of the fairway in the river bed of the Elbe and, after being successfully recovered in the second attempt, set up on the banks of the Elbe with the help of a floating crane . On June 6, 2000, he was facing the phrase in the name of Old Swede baptized and "officially naturalized". The Old Swede is one of the eight nationally significant of a total of 32 protected geotopes in the Hamburg city area.

vandalism

At the beginning of January 2019, the entire stone was painted gold by strangers. A few days later, however, part of the paint was washed off again due to the weather. In fact, since it was erected on the banks of the Elbe, the erratic boulder has often been provided with graffiti to a lesser extent . Therefore, on behalf of the Hamburg Port Authority , the operator of the Port of Hamburg, it has been equipped with a special coating that makes cleaning easier. On the night of March 8th to 9th, 2019, in the run-up to the Hamburg city derby, previously unknown perpetrators painted the old Swede in the club colors of FC St. Pauli brown-white-red.

literature

  • Gunnar Ries: Report on the rescue of the Övelgönner foundling. In: Geschiebekunde aktuell. Vol. 15, No. 4, 1999, pp. 111–112, ISSN  0178-1731 , PDF (11.5 MB; whole issue)
  • Roland Vinx: The Elbe foundling from Hamburg-Övelgönne. In: Geschiebekunde aktuell. Vol. 15, No. 4, 1999, pp. 107–110, ISSN  0178-1731 , PDF (11.5 MB; whole issue)
  • K. Wüstenhagen: The "Great Stone of Övelgönne". In: The sediment collector. Vol. 33, No. 1, 2000, pp. 17-18, ISSN  0340-4056

Web links

Commons : Alter Schwede (Övelgönne)  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
  • J. Ehlers: The old Swede. Undated article in the geotourism section on the official website of the city of Hamburg (hamburg.de), with u. a. Thin sections of the rock

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ordinance for the protection of the natural monument foundling »Alter Schwede« of April 3, 2001. Hamburgisches Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt (HmbGVBl). 2001, p. 45 ( HTML version )
  2. ↑ a b Geotopes in the Hamburg area. In: hamburg.de. Retrieved January 3, 2019
  3. ↑ a b c J. Ehlers: The old Swede. Retrieved on January 3, 2019 (see web links )
  4. ↑ a b R. Vinx: The Elbe boulder from Hamburg-Övelgönne. 1999 (see literature )
  5. ↑ The golden days will soon be over: the old Swede is turning gray again. In: Hamburger Abendblatt (abendblatt.de), January 4, 2019
  6. ↑ Golden foundling is graying again. In: welt.de , January 4, 2019
  7. ↑ Findling loses its golden sheen In: ndr.de , January 4, 2019
  8. ↑ Old Swede, he's golden. In: Spiegel Online (spiegel.de), January 3, 2019
  9. ↑ Old Swede smeared in Pauli colors! - First derby riot in town. bild.de, accessed on March 9, 2019 .

Coordinates: 53 ° 32 '40.52 "  N , 9 ° 53' 44.27"  O