Eckardtsturm
The Eckardtsturm is a lookout tower in the Upper Franconian city of Coburg , which was built in 1873 and is registered as a monument in the Bavarian list of monuments. The building stands on the 432 meter high Eckardtsberg. Together with the landmarks Veste Coburg , Castle Callenberg and Bismarck Tower, it forms a tower rectangle on the hills around the city center of Coburg with mutual line of sight.
history
Duke Ernst I had a first draft for a tower in the Gothic style on the Eckardtberg made by the Princely Leiningian architect Peter Speeth around 1810 . Between 1839 and 1840 Carl Alexander Heideloff designed a mausoleum for the ducal family. The plans for the neo-Gothic Church of the Holy Sepulcher with a double tower facade fell asleep with the death of Duke Ernst I in 1844. His son and successor, Duke Ernst II , continued to pursue the idea of building a building on the Eckardtsberg. In 1852 the court architect Wilhelm Streib designed the construction of an artificial ruin on his behalf. The project was dropped. On October 1, 1872, the Duke of Paul Julius Reuter , whom he had made baron on September 7, 1871 , finally acquired 0.0591 hectares for the construction of a tower on a spur-like western mountain ledge. Ernst II had a lookout tower built for 5544 guilders according to plans by the architect and court builder Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Streib . The foundation stone was laid on May 3, 1873 and the completion on October 15, 1873. In 1917 the city of Coburg became the owner of the building. Below the tower, the Eckardtsklause restaurant, which closed in 1979, was built in 1892 and later the Klein-Amerika restaurant, which was given up in 1976.
From 1955 to 1960 the Coburg public observatory was located on the Eckardtsturm. In 1980/81 the tower was repaired. New ceilings and a steel spiral staircase were installed. Since 1993 a relay station of the German Amateur Radio Club local association Coburg has been on the tower. The interior of the Eckardtsturm is no longer accessible to the public (as of January 2012).
architecture
A 21-meter-high, neo-Gothic tower was built on a square floor plan in 1873 with sandstone ashlar masonry, which with its light slits is similar to a medieval city wall tower. The projecting basement floor is characterized by rusticated brickwork and has a pointed arched entrance portal on the valley side with the designation SD 1873. Above the entrance there is a bay-like porch with originally colorful glazed pointed arched windows. A crenellated wreath forms the end, which includes a viewing platform.
The tower is accessible via an avenue of trees leading to the northeast and a staircase to the west.
literature
- Peter Morsbach, Otto Titz: City of Coburg. Ensembles-Architectural Monuments-Archaeological Monuments . Monuments in Bavaria. Volume IV.48. Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-87490-590-X , p. 65
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Harald Bachmann: The Eckardt Tower - a neo-Gothic building of the 19th century . Coburger Geschichtsblätter, 2-3 / 1997, pp. 93-100
- ^ Helmut Wolter: Space - Time - Coburg Volume 1: Coburg architects and builders 1820-1920 . Dr. Peter Morsbach Verlag, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-937527-38-3 , p. 118
Coordinates: 50 ° 15 ′ 11.6 ″ N , 10 ° 59 ′ 2.2 ″ E