Bismarck Tower (Bad Ems)
The Bismarck Tower in Bad Ems an der Lahn in the Rhein-Lahn district in Rhineland-Palatinate was built in honor of the first German Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898). The tower planned by the architect Wilhelm Kreis (1873–1955) stands east of the city center on the Bismarckhöhe, is twelve and a half meters high and was inaugurated in 1901.
history
Planning time
After Bismarck's death in 1898 there was a broad movement in the German Empire that erected monuments for the former Chancellor. In Bad Ems (where Otto von Bismarck had been an honorary citizen since 1895 ), a group of Bismarck supporters suggested in January 1900 that a Bismarck tower be built in the city. In the same year it was decided to have the Götterdämmerung model designed by the architect Wilhelm Kreis erected on a hill on the Auf dem Klopp mountain east of the city center .
In 1899, Kreis won a German student union competition with his design . According to an idea of the student body, a network of so-called pillars of fire should be set up throughout Germany in order to light large braziers on certain days in honor of Bismarck. The Bismarckian column from the Götterdämmerung model was built as a so-called type construction a total of 47 times in the German Empire until 1911 .
The city acquired the building site and made it available free of charge. The construction itself was financed by donations from citizens , spa guests and the spa commission. On June 7, 1900, the building permit for the tower was granted.
construction time
The foundation stone was laid on June 26, 1900 and construction began. The construction work was not supervised by the architect Wilhelm Kreis himself, but carried out by the Bad Ems contractor Wilhelm Jacob Balzer. The main building materials used were quartzite from a nearby quarry near Kemmenau and basalt from a quarry in Niedermendig in the East Eifel .
Construction progressed rapidly. In January 1901, has been building shell construction law removed and in April the tower was completed. The Bismarck Tower in Bad Ems was inaugurated on May 10, 1901. The fire bowl on the tower was lit for the first time on the evening of the inauguration day. A Bismarck coat of arms was attached to the south side of the tower facing the slope . The total costs for the building including the land amounted to 11,740 gold marks .
First decades
On April 1, 1902, a Bad Emser Bismarck Association was founded, which looked after the maintenance and lighting of the tower on memorial days. After the inauguration, the fire bowl on the tower was regularly lit in the evening on April 1st (Bismarck's birthday). However, these commemorative bonfires were no longer held after a few years (the last traditional fire was on April 1, 1913) and probably not resumed after the end of the First World War and the occupation of the Rhineland . The Bismarck Tower survived the following decades and the Second World War largely unscathed.
Time after World War II
After the Second World War, however, the Bismarck Tower in Bad Ems was neglected and later even robbed of its function as a free-standing monument. In 1977/78 a four-meter-high restaurant building was built in the lower tower area directly on its west and south walls, the modern flat roof architecture of which stands in stark contrast to the historicizing style of the tower. With the extension, most of the tower substructure with its two-tier platform was destroyed. In addition, the Bismarck coat of arms attached to the south side of the tower was removed by the 1980s at the latest.
In the 1990s the restaurant was given up, the building stood empty for years and the Bismarck Tower was also further neglected. At the end of the 1990s the tower was in need of renovation. In the run-up to its centenary, the structure was at least partially repaired. The hundredth anniversary of the inauguration of the Bismarck Tower was celebrated with a ceremony in May 2001.
The restaurant at the Bismarck Tower has been in operation again since 2006; the interior of the tower serves as a storage room. The tower cannot be climbed because the iron rungs attached to the walls are only partially preserved and three originally existing resting platforms have been removed.
architecture
The Bismarck Tower in Bad Ems has square foundation walls and the tower itself is square, but the massive effect is softened by three-quarter columns at the corners of the tower body.
When planning the tower, it was taken into account from the outset that it would be related to other towers on the surrounding hills of Bad Ems. These include the observation tower on the Malberg to the southwest of the Bismarck Tower, the reconstruction of a Roman Limes tower on the Wintersberg to the south and the Concordia tower to the southeast. The Bismarck Tower was therefore deliberately built to be representative and with clear lines of sight to all sides.
With the addition of a restaurant building at the end of the 1970s, the representative character of the tower and its function as a free-standing monument were destroyed. The modern flat roof architecture of the restaurant stands in stark contrast to the listed Bismarck Tower. In addition, most of the tower substructure with its two-tier pedestal was destroyed by the extension.
Podium and basement
The Bismarck Tower was originally divided into four parts: The lowest part was a two-tier, square platform that was a good meter high. Both platform steps were 55 centimeters high each, the lower step was 9.5 by 9.5 meters, the upper step 7.5 by 7.5 meters. On the entrance side in the north, the two platform steps were broken over a width of a good one meter, so that the tower entrance could be reached without stairs.
The pedestal was originally the substructure for the basement of the tower above . This has a side length of 5.5 by 5.5 meters and a height of almost two meters, on its north side there is the 1.8 meter high entrance door. After the podium was largely destroyed when the restaurant building was added, the basement now forms the lowest part of the tower.
Tower body and upper floor
The actual tower, around six meters high, rises above the basement. It is set back from the basement and rounded off at the corners by three-quarter columns. On the south side facing the slope, a Bismarck coat of arms used to be attached in the upper area of the tower body.
Above the tower body follows the approximately three meter high upper floor, which consists of an architrave and a three-tier superstructure. The upper floor is set back a little compared to the tower body. A square, 2.65 by 2.65 meter large fire bowl made of cast iron is built into the top of the tower head . The bowl was made in the nearby Nieverner hut and is not visible from the outside. The tower has a total height of twelve and a half meters.
Staircase and lighting
Inside the Bismarck Tower, it was originally possible to climb to the top of the tower with the help of ladders , iron rungs attached to the walls and three resting platforms with cement floors . However, these ascent aids have largely been removed so that the tower can no longer be climbed. In the tower head there is still a small lockable iron door that opens onto a balcony-like projection, from which an iron ladder, which is also still there, leads to the fire bowl on the tower head.
The bowl was fired with tar , mineral oil and fats, and wood chips soaked with petroleum . This fuel was pulled up inside the tower with the help of a winch . The flames reached heights of up to nine meters and burned for up to two hours.
Others
In the immediate vicinity of the Bismarck Tower of Bad Ems is the mountain station of the Kurwaldbahn , a funicular that went into operation in 1979 .
See also
literature
- Günter Kloss, Sieglinde Seele : Bismarck Towers and Bismarck Columns. An inventory. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 1997, ISBN 3-932526-10-4 .
- Sieglinde Seele: Lexicon of the Bismarck Monuments. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2005, ISBN 3-86568-019-4 .
Web links
- Bismarck Tower Bad Ems on bismarcktuerme.de
- Bismarck Tower of Bad Ems in the register of cultural monuments of the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis. (PDF; 1.6 MB)
Coordinates: 50 ° 19 '58.9 " N , 7 ° 43' 29.6" E