Blue pot
| Blue pot | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Blue pot |
||||
| location | ||||
| Country or region | Alb-Danube District ( Baden-Württemberg ) | |||
| Coordinates | 48 ° 24 ′ 57 " N , 9 ° 47 ′ 2" E | |||
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| geology | ||||
| Mountains | Swabian Alb | |||
| Source type | Karst spring | |||
| Exit type | Source pot | |||
| Hydrology | ||||
| River system | Danube | |||
| Receiving waters | Blue → Danube → Black Sea | |||
| Bulk | 2280 l / s | |||
| depth | 21 m | |||
Coordinates: 48 ° 24 ′ 57 ″ N , 9 ° 47 ′ 2 ″ E
The Blautopf in Blaubeuren in Baden-Württemberg is the second richest karst spring in Germany . This is where the blue rises , which flows into the Danube after around 22 kilometers in the city of Ulm .
The Blautopf is known for the more or less intense but always striking blue color of its water, depending on the incidence of light. The blue color is caused by a physical effect of light scattering (so-called Rayleigh scattering ) on the nanoscale lime particles that are dispersed in the water . Due to their small size, the blue light is preferentially scattered and creates the blue glow. The same effect can also be observed with the Blue Lagoon in Iceland ; there the effect is caused by nanoscale silicate particles .
location
The Blautopf is located on the eastern edge of the Swabian Alb in the north of the city of Blaubeuren , 16 kilometers west of Ulm . About the source, the karst water flowing past the Blue cave called Blauhöhle in blue cave system and that of Hessenhauhöhle from.
The Blautopf can be reached by bike via a detour from the Danube Cycle Path .
Data
The flow of the spring fluctuates very strongly with the precipitation between a minimum of 250 l / s, an average of 2,280 l / s and a maximum of 32,670 l / s. After its middle bed, it is the second largest karst spring in the Swabian Alb and behind the Aachtopf the second strongest single spring in all of Germany. The catchment area of the Blautopf is around 160 square kilometers.
Over time, the high water pressure has washed out a funnel-shaped spring pot with a diameter of about 40 meters on the surface, which extends to a depth of 21 meters.
Legends
The Blautopf is a place of sagas and legends . The color of water was once explained by the fact that a barrel full of ink was poured into it every day . In popular belief, the blue pot was considered bottomless. Attempts to determine the depth with a lead solder are said to have been thwarted again and again by a mermaid who stole the weight. Based on this legend, there is a rock called "Klötzle Blei" not far from the Blautopf. And a well-known Swabian tongue twister is also happily told to the children in the area:
- 'S lead a Klötzle lead at Blaubeira,
- same with Blaubeira lead a Klötzle lead.
In high-level language this is something like:
- There is a block of lead right next to Blaubeuren,
- Right by Blaubeuren there is a block of lead.
In fact, as early as 1718, after a sounding, the depth was given quite precisely at 62½ feet (approx. 19 meters).
The story Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmännlein by Eduard Mörike reproduces these and other legends in an internal narrative, embedded in the framework narration of a journeyman traveling across the Alb to Blaubeuren. The story of the beautiful Lau is told in great detail , the daughter of a human woman and a nixie from the Black Sea, who was banished to the Blautopf by her husband, the Danubeix, because she couldn't laugh and only gave birth to dead children. She should not return and give birth to a living child until she laughed five times. The landlady of the Nonnenhof helped her with this .
geology
The Blautopf is a karst spring, which means that water comes back to the surface here, which has seeped away in a larger area. This karst area has only one underground water drainage, there are no surface waters.
The water has created a large cave system over hundreds of thousands of years. The blue cave system consists of the blue pot cave and the cave cave . The Blautopfhöhle was researched by Jochen Hasenmayer among others until the mid-1980s . On September 23, 2006, Jochen Malmann and Andreas Kücha from the Blautopf working group discovered a huge hall in the blue cave, which they called the Apocalypse . While the first 1200 meters of the blue cave are still filled with water, the apocalypse is dry and with its size (170 meters in length, 50 meters in width, 50 meters in height) is a special feature in this region. In April 2010, a 17 meter deep hole was made Directly next to the federal highway 28, a dry, but only cave-explorers, overland path was created into the Blautopf cave system for the first time. In a marking attempt on April 21, 2012, a hydraulic connection between the Hessenhau cave and the blue cave system could be detected.
The Blautopf has been recognized as an important geotope and geopoint of the UNESCO Geopark Swabian Alb since 2019 .
Diving in the Blautopf
In 1880 the first helmet diver got into the blue pot. The bottom was only reached by a diver in 1957.
The entrance to the Blue Cave is about 21 meters deep and can therefore only be accessed by well-trained cave divers .
Several diving accidents among amateur divers, including fatal ones, caused the community of Blaubeuren to close the Blautopf to divers since the 1980s. Special permits have been granted to emergency divers in water rescue, for example from the DLRG , the Verein für Höhlenkunde München e. V. (VHM Munich), the Blautopf working group of the HFGOK (cave research group Ostalb Kirchheim) and a group of cave researchers around Jochen Hasenmayer . The last serious accident occurred in 2003 when a member of the Hasenmayer team could only be recovered dead.
Diving in the blue pot plays a role in the thriller Little Red Riding Hood by Max Bentow and in the detective novel Bienzle and the beautiful Lau by Felix Huby , which was also filmed as part of the Tatort television series .
Worth seeing
At the Blautopf there is a hammer mill that is powered by the water from the spring.
In 1804 the blacksmith and armorer Abraham Friedrich received from the city of Blaubeuren the approval for a hammer forge with a grinding shop. The hammer forge was operated in its original way until 1889. It was then converted into a mechanical workshop that was functional until 1956. After that, the Blautopfhaus was only a storage room for the city of Blaubeuren. At the beginning of the 1960s, the tradition of the Blautopfhaus was remembered and the intention was to make it attractive. The search for a hammer forge found a suitable facility in Bad Oberdorf (Allgäu). After the expansion of the Blautopfhaus, the hammer forge was built in over two years. Since the mid-1960s it can be viewed again in its original function.
Movies
- The myth of the Blautopf - expedition into the dark. Documentary, Germany, 2007, 43 minutes, director: Claus Hanischdörfer, production: Eikon Südwest GmbH, ZDF and Arte , summary
- Diving flight into the cold heart of the Alb - Jochen Hasenmayer's foray into the depths of the Blue Cave. Documentary, Germany, 1985, 65 minutes, directors: Jochen Hasenmayer and Frank Westphal
- Crime scene: Bienzle and the beautiful Lau feature film, Germany, 1993, 83 minutes, book: Felix Huby and Werner Zeindler, director: Hartmut Griesmayr, production: Süddeutscher Rundfunk, first broadcast: March 28, 1993, synopsis
See also
Web links
- Blautopfhaus Schönhofer: Information about the Blautopf
- Blautopf working group
- Information website of the city of Blaubeuren
- Jochen Duckeck: The Blautopf (with further links)
- Iris Radisch : "The spiritual in nature : the deepest lake in the world in Blaubeuren, right behind the monastery" . In: Die Zeit , 1997, No. 42 .
- Mörike's “History of the beautiful Lau” with illustrations by Moritz von Schwind and historical texts on the Blautopf
- Tom Duration: “Entry into Germany's most beautiful cave” . In: National Geographic , 2014, No. 4 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Danube Cycle Path. Retrieved April 29, 2017 .
- ↑ (ND8425012), (Profiles, page 12) (PDF; 6.5 MB)
- ↑ Google Earth
- ↑ For the full text see Eduard Mörike: Die Schöne Lau .
- ↑ stuttgarter-zeitung.de