Bismarck Tower (Dortmund)

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The Bismarck Tower Dortmund was a monument erected in Dortmund in honor of the first German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck .

history

As in the entire German Empire , efforts were made in Dortmund to honor the former Chancellor, who died in 1898, with a Bismarck tower. In mid-1899, an association was formed under the direction of the Dortmund Regional Court Councilor Wilhelm Baeumer (1845–1904) and tried to raise the financial means to build the monument. The Kaiser-Wilhelm-Hain , part of the later Westfalenpark , was chosen as the location . The building plot was made available by the city free of charge.

The club's efforts were initially unsuccessful. After the symbolic foundation stone had been laid on March 30, 1901 , the actual construction could not begin until the summer of 1904. Without further ado, the foundation stone of the Bismarck Tower was laid again on June 30, 1904. The inauguration took place on April 1, 1905, when Bismarck would have been 90 years old.

The tower was built according to the plans of the post office building councilor Karl Buddeberg (1856–1934), who was then active at the Dortmund post office . Stones from the former city ​​fortifications of the city of Dortmund , Herdecker Ruhr sandstone and tuff stone were used as building materials . The building had a square floor plan with sides 6.5 m and was 24 m high.

A memorial hall was set up on the ground floor of the tower. A bronze Bismarck coat of arms was placed above the entrance. Further up on the front of the tower, the natural stone masonry showed an imperial eagle relief by the Essen sculptor Christian Bauer . A fire bowl was firmly embedded in the tower's observation deck. The tower was fired with benzene and could generate a flame up to eight meters high.

After the Second World War, only the irreparably damaged side stair annex was removed. In 1957, a necessary renovation of the building was estimated at 75,000 DM , the demolition on the other hand at 7,000 DM. With regard to the Federal Horticultural Show in 1959 , which was planned in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Hain enlarged to the Westfalenpark, the decision was made to demolish it. Neither the Bismarck memorial nor the architecture of the tower were considered historically valuable at the time.

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Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 51.7 "  N , 7 ° 28 ′ 39.6"  E