Atlantropa

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Overview map of Atlantropa's hydropower and land reclamation projects.
Design sketch of the skyscraper above the Gibraltardamm lock.
The Mediterranean at the time of the last glacial period , at the same time a picture of what it would look like after the realization of Atlantropa from space.

Atlantropa is the name of a monumental dam project in the Strait of Gibraltar and near the Dardanelles , which the German architect Herman Sörgel planned and made known from 1928 until his accidental death in 1952.

Conception

The concept was based on the observation that water from the Atlantic and the Black Sea constantly flows into the Mediterranean , as more water evaporates there than its inflows compensate for. By building a dam, this inflow was to be reduced on the one hand in order to lower the sea level in order to reclaim new land, on the other hand the remaining inflow was to be used to generate electricity using hydropower .

In the early 1920s, Sörgel began planning the Atlantropa dam on the Strait of Gibraltar together with the Swiss engineer Bruno Siegwart . When planning the plan, they decided not to go for the narrowest point, but for one about 20 kilometers west of it. According to Sörgel's notes, the foundation alone should be 2.5 kilometers wide and up to 300 meters high. The construction time was estimated at ten years. 200,000 workers were to be deployed in four shifts. The logistical problems with the procurement of building materials and the transport of workers remained unresolved.

The project originally ran under the name "Panropa". The change in Atlantropa was intended to make the difference to another interest group, the Paneuropean movement , which Sörgel saw as a brother and ally.

layout

The name of the project also stands for the visionary goal of the project to create a continuous continent from today's Europe and Africa , connected by a largely drained Mediterranean Sea. Sörgel planned two subsidence areas. A land bridge was supposed to connect Sicily , today's Italy and North Africa , more precisely Tunisia . This should enable a continuous rail link between Berlin , Rome and Cape Town .

In the two-part Mediterranean Sea, in the final expansion stage, the water level in the western part should have been lowered by up to 100 meters and in the eastern part by 200 meters. The water surface of the Mediterranean would have shrunk by 20 percent and 500,000 km² of new land would have been gained; an area about the size of Spain.

For Venice , Sörgel planned a dam and an artificial lake in his project , which should protect the Venetian lagoon from "drying up". In order to preserve the character of Venice, a dam was planned, which should no longer be visible from the campanile (distance about 30 km).

The project should also include irrigation of the Sahara and, according to later plans, the Congo Basin . With the expansion of Lake Chad , a kind of “second Nile” was to be created.

aims

The project should solve several problems at the same time. It was supposed to gain valuable virgin territory, create living space and jobs and supply electrical energy for all of Europe. Last but not least, this large-scale colonization project that spanned several generations was intended to bundle the creative forces of the European peoples in a positive way and thus avoid renewed armed conflicts in Europe. In 1940, after a long period of planning, the “Atlantropa-Institut” association was founded, which continued to operate until 1960 after Sörgel's death and tried to raise funds for the implementation of the project. The institute was dissolved six years after Sörgel's death.

Failure

The clear colonialist project despite arguments Sörgels as for the " master race " habitat-creating project and with reference to enlargement of the Rome-Berlin axis to an axis Berlin-Rome-Cape Town, by the Nazi regime rejected as too pacifistic. Instead, a propaganda film was published against the project and Sörgel was banned from publication in the 1940s.

advantages

In addition to the reclamation of land, the advantage of the project would have been greater independence of the European energy supply and the lower consumption of fossil fuels for generating electrical energy. Added to this would be the economic integration and industrial development of North Africa.

disadvantage

From a geological perspective, the dam would have been exposed to the dangers of plate tectonics and an increased risk from tsunamis . The effect of the immense pressure change on the volcanically and seismically active zones in Italy, Greece or Turkey, for example, can hardly be estimated. The desertification of the fringes of the Mediterranean would have reduced rainfall in North Africa and with it the crop yields.

In addition, severe ecological consequences (destruction of the habitat of thousands of species) would be expected, in particular due to the increasing salinity of the residual sea. In addition, the impact on the climate in the Mediterranean region is likely to be extremely difficult to assess.

The political consequences would not have been foreseeable either, since the borders of all Mediterranean countries would have shifted.

The project would have had an impact on the international trade in goods by shipping, as it would have been restricted and impaired by a large number of locks.

By displacing the water in the Mediterranean area, the sea level would rise worldwide by about one meter and it could possibly have affected the Gulf Stream .

See also

literature

Sörgel's writings on Atlantropa

  • Mediterranean subsidence. Sahara irrigation. (Atlantropa project) = Lowering the Mediterranean, irrigating the Sahara. Leipzig: Gebhardt 1929.
  • Europe-Africa: a part of the world (online) / Herman Sörgel. - [Electronic ed.]. In: Socialist monthly books. - 37 (1931), no. 10, pp. 983-987.
  • Atlantropa. Zurich: Fretz & Wasmuth 1932, XII.
  • The three big "A". Greater Germany and the Italian Empire, the pillars of Atlantropa. [America, Atlantropa, Asia]. Munich: Piloty & Loehle 1938, XII.
  • Atlantropa ABC: strength, space, bread. Explanations of the Atlantropa project. Leipzig: Arnd 1942.
  • Atlantropa. Characteristics of a project. Foreword by John Knittel . Stuttgart: Behrendt 1948.

Electronic ed .: Bonn: FES Library, 2006

Other authors

  • Dirk van Laak : White elephants. Demand and failure of major technical projects. DVA, Stuttgart 1999, ( review of the NZZ , PDF file, 4 pages)
  • Wolfgang Voigt: Atlantropa: Building the world on the Mediterranean. An architect's dream of the modern age. Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-933374-05-7 .
  • Alexander Gall: The Atlantropa project: the story of a failed vision. Herman Sörgel and the subsidence of the Mediterranean. Campus, Frankfurt a. M. 1998, ISBN 3-593-35988-X .
  • Alexander Gall: Atlantropa: A Technological Vision of a United Europe. In: Erik van der Vleuten, Arne Kaijser (Ed.): Networking Europe. Transnational Infrastructures and the Shaping of Europe, 1850-2000. Science History Publications, Sagamore Beach 2006, ISBN 0-88135-394-9 , pp. 99-128.
  • Oliver Köller: Herman Sörgel's "Atlantropa" between technocracy and political utopia. Grin-Verlag, Munich, 2018, ISBN 978-3-668-80516-3 .
  • Anne Sophie Günzel: The “Atlantropa” project. Opening up Europe and Africa. Grin-Verlag, Munich / Ravensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-638-64638-3 .
  • Ulrich Blode: Gibraltar dam and the Mediterranean subsidence. In: Walter Delabar, Frauke Schlieckau (Ed.): Bluescreen. Visions, dreams, nightmares and reflections of the fantastic and utopian. Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 978-3-89528-769-5 , pp. 87-97.
  • John Knittel : Amadeus. 1st edition. 1939. (Wolfgang Krüger Verlag, Hamburg 1956) (novel)

Movie

  • Atlantropa - The dream of the new continent. Documentation, 45 min. Or 60 min., 2006, script & director: Michel Morales , editor: Harald Rauser, production: Haifisch Entertainment, NDR, BR, ORF WDR , first broadcast: February 13, 2006, summary ( memento from 16. July 2006 in the Internet Archive ) from WDR
  • A sea is sinking. Dokudrama., 1936. Script and direction: Anton Kutter , production: Bavaria-Filmkunst.
  • The Man in the High Castle , Season 2, Episode 3, Welcome to the Realm - Project Atlantropa

In fiction

The Atlantropa project has been used in several fictional works as a realized plan and as inspiration for similar projects. In Philip. K. Dick's novel Das orrakel vom Berge let the fictional Chancellor Martin Bormann dry out large parts of the Mediterranean in order to create new land. In the series adaptation of the Philip K. Dick work , this plan is currently being prepared and presented with a model and a conceptual sketch - under the name Atlantropa, Sörgel is not mentioned. In the first part of Arthur C. Clarke's Rama cycle , it is mentioned that the Mediterranean Sea had been lowered with great technical effort - among other things, to make immense archaeological excavations possible.

Web links

Commons : Atlantropa  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hanns Günther ( Walter de Haas ): In a hundred years . Cosmos, 1931.
  2. ^ Sylvia Huber: Atlantropa. The Mediterranean Sea - closed for renovation. In: forum. Technical Museum Vienna magazine. ZDB ID 2056697-9 . Issue 3/2017 pp. 5–7.
  3. ↑ Huber, Atlantropa, p. 7.
  4. ↑ a b c Michael Förtsch: Atlantropa: When a Munich architect wanted to drain the Mediterranean. In: 1E9 Community. 1E9 Team, February 14, 2020, accessed February 24, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Atlantropa: When a Munich architect wanted to drain the Mediterranean. February 14, 2020, accessed February 22, 2020 .