Atlantis (Westerland)

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The Sylter Welle swimming pool is located where the Atlantis was supposed to be built.

The Atlantis was supposed to be a hotel in Westerland on Sylt . With a height of 100 meters, the building should be the largest building on the island and contain a new spa center . After fierce local disputes, the Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of the Interior finally prevented the building and withdrew planning authority from the municipality of Westerland for a few years. Today the Sylter Welle leisure pool stands at the planned location .

prehistory

New spa center built by Bense (left) and the former building site (right).
New Westerland spa center and typical hotel buildings from the Atlantis era.

In the decades after the Second World War, Sylt transformed into a center of tourism. In a few years numerous new buildings and the first large hotels were built. The first traffic lights in Westerland were not necessary until 1960, and in 1970 188,000 spa guests were staying on Sylt. Particularly noticeable was the new spa center built by the Stuttgart-based company Hausbau Bense , which was built right on the beach in Westerland in the mid-1960s. It consisted of three high-rise buildings that still characterize the Westerland cityscape today. The largest, directly across from the music shell on the beach, had 13 floors and towered over all other buildings. It contained holiday apartments, several hotels and public facilities. After the success with the spa center, the building contractor Bense wanted to create an even larger hotel building.

Planning

The plans for the construction became public in 1969. According to the original plans, the house should have 33 floors and an underground car park. 750 apartments with 3000 beds and 1500 parking spaces in the underground car park were planned. The originally planned costs amounted to 100 million DM. In addition, 16 million were to flow into a spa center integrated into the Atlantis for the community, for which Bense wanted to give the community 10 million DM. To find the name, the construction company put out a competition among the spa guests. In the course of the discussions, the project planning shrank.

The building was supposed to be built by the "Atlantis Architects" group in which various architecture firms were involved. By July 1971, the assembly had invested around six to seven million DM in planning and had already sold 200 apartments.

resistance

The "Tower of Sylt" was also controversial among the population. On the initiative of the local alternative practitioner Gerd P. Werner, the "Citizens 'Initiative Apartment Construction Stop" was founded, later renamed "Citizens' Initiative Sylt", which mobilized against the building. The points that were criticized were the traffic and rubbish pollution that the construction would bring, the visual impact on the townscape and the accusation that “non-island financial groups” were displacing the locals from the island. A list of signatures against the project required 18,373 signatures.

In the course of the escalating conflict, opponents of the building threw in windows and stabbed tires. There were criminal charges and anonymous threats. On November 23, 1971, a demonstration with 1000 participants took place in Westerland.

While the Sylter Rundschau became the “most interesting” discussion platform on German environmental protection for some time, the national press joined the resistance. In the autumn of 1971, Der Spiegel described the planned high-rise as a “memorial to manipulation” and warned of “marginalized groups of society” who would move into the holiday apartments. Die Zeit denounced “the rampant addiction to profit and more and more profit” that gave rise to this “concrete block”, and celebrated the final stop of the project as “victory on Sylt”. The ARD headlined the contribution on the subject as Sylt suicide ?

Discussions in the city council

In the city itself, the spa director Petersen was an advocate of the building, who advocated the hotel throughout the disputes. The Westerland city council approved the plans several times. In a first vote in April 1971, the city council voted 16 to 4 for the necessary development plan ("Development Plan North 25") for a building with 25 floors, 1200 spaces in the underground car park and a total floor area of 48,500 square meters. A prominent opponent in the city council was the then mayor Ernst-Wilhelm Stojan of the SPD. In the decisive meeting of the city council, his party nevertheless voted in favor of the construction, which the Westerland city council decided in November with 12 to 8. At this point in time, the community had already become so involved in contracts with Bense that a rejection would have cost the community several million DM in compensation payments.

Discussions in the state and federal government

After the city council had finally spoken out in favor of building the building, the opponents turned to the state of Schleswig-Holstein with their protest. The Ministry of the Interior in Schleswig-Holstein under Interior Minister Rudolf Titzck overturned the development plan on April 18, 1972. The Ministry justified its rejection with reasons of environmental protection, the burden on the natural area and the traffic flows that the project would bring to Westerland. In the ongoing dispute between the state and the municipality, in September 1973 the state even completely withdrew the authority to issue building permits.

Richard Tamblé , a member of the Bundestag from Westerland, had already resigned from the SPD in February 1972 because of the quarrels over the building.

and display information about the image
2016 - Wellness center in Westerland (Sylt), with Sylter Welle and Syltness Center

After that

After the end of the construction, Bense sued the city of Westerland for compensation of 3.25 million DM. In 1977 the courts finally dismissed the complaints. In 2013, the Sylter Rundschau called the building the "greatest building sin that has threatened the island metropolis so far."

literature

  • Herbert Bruns : SYLT - nature, recreation, research, teaching, environmental pollution, island planning and citizens' initiative. Documentation of the fight against 'Atlantis' and for Sylt . Volume 4 (No. 37-52) in the series Biologische Abhandlungen , Biologie-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1975.
  • Documentation of the citizens' initiative Sylt e. V. on the planned Atlantis high-rise in Westerland, Citizens' Initiative Sylt 1972

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Matthias Iken: Skyscrapers on Sylt - The Fall of Atlantis , Hamburger Abendblatt May 18, 2013
  2. ^ A b Hermann Funke: The Ruhr area of ​​the white industry , Der Spiegel 35/1971
  3. ^ Atlantis, Westerland, Sylt , Schwörer engineers
  4. ^ A b Rudolf Walter Leonhardt: Ein Sylt-Bürgerstreich , Die Zeit July 30, 1971
  5. ↑ Anonymous: Money bid , Der Spiegel July 5, 1971
  6. ↑ a b c Der Spiegel: Signs set , Der Spiegel 8/1972
  7. ↑ a b c Rudolf Walter Leonhardt: Sylt suicide? , The time September 10, 1971
  8. ↑ a b Sepp Binder: A victory on Sylt , Die Zeit April 28, 1972
  9. ^ A b Frank Deppe: A gigantic construction sin that Sylt was spared , Sylter Rundschau, March 11, 2013

Coordinates: 54 ° 54 ′ 36 ″  N , 8 ° 18 ′ 0 ″  E