Telecommunications tower in Großer Feldberg

For their new television broadcasting station , the Reichspost built a 53 m high television tower with outbuildings next to the (old) observation tower from February 1937. The shell was completed in October 1937 and after the installation of the sound transmitters, the structure was completed in 1939. The tower had a total of 16 floors. The 21.2 m high, five-story base was made of reinforced concrete . As with the television tower built the year before on the Brocken in the Harz Mountains , a wooden construction was placed on it, in which the antennas were located, which were thus protected from the weather. The intended image transmitter was not installed after the start of the war .

Second World War

In the autumn of 1940 the sound transmitter was removed and used for military purposes. Towards the end of the war, jammers were installed on the Großer Feldberg , which were supposed to interfere with the communication and navigation technology of enemy aircraft. On March 8, 1945, the telecommunications tower next to the Feldberghof was largely destroyed by bombing.

post war period

After the end of the war, the ruins of the tower were confiscated by the American armed forces and used for radio relay . In 1947, the American armed forces withdrew from the Großer Feldberg and the Deutsche Post then took over the ruins. In 1948, the central directional radio station in the telephone network of the three western occupation zones was built in the still standing base .

reconstruction

Reconstruction began on May 22, 1950. The still standing 21.2 m high, five-story reinforced concrete base was reused. In contrast to the pre-war version, a 17.65 m high, cantilevered steel structure with five storeys was placed on top of it. This in turn carries a 30.28 m high wooden structure with nine floors, so that the height of the tower (without the UHF antenna mounted on the top ) is 69.13 m. Since numerous directional antennas were set up on these floors, all connecting elements of the wooden superstructure had to be made metal-free. They were designed as wedged pressed wood dowels.

Television tower

Telecommunications tower in 1953

The television radio bridge Hamburg-Hanover-Cologne-Frankfurt-Stuttgart-Munich- Wendelstein , which the Deutsche Bundespost built with the FREDA radio relay ( frequency- modulated decimeter wave system ) newly developed by Telefunken and Lorenz , was in May 1953 with the section Cologne- Ölberg -Feldberg has been extended by another piece. From May 29, 1953, the 10 kW television station on the Feldberg was able to broadcast the television program that had been produced by the NWDR in Hamburg and Cologne since December 1952 . From September 1953 the control center for the technical consolidation of program parts and distribution of the signals was housed here until the ARD star took over this task on June 29, 1972 . The building complex cannot normally be visited.

today

Most of the directional radio antennas are superfluous as a result of the technical progress in transmission technology and have now been dismantled. In 1987 the facility was placed under monument protection. The broadcasting of radio and television was carried out from 2004 by the new transmission mast of the Hessischer Rundfunk in digital technology. In March 2007, the old, around 14 m high, VHF radio or UHF TV transmission system was dismantled by T-Systems . With the conversion to DVB-T - the new antenna was mounted on the radio mast - it had become useless due to the rotation of the polarization plane . The change was agreed with the monument protection and approved. During the Taunus Touristik Service e. V. (Association for the Promotion of Tourism) regretted the change, were the opinions of various letters to the editor to which the Taunus-Zeitung had asked, both for a re-establishment of an antenna (or at least a similar tip) and against it. The antenna replaced an older one on the Donaueschingen transmitter and went into operation as a DVB-T transmitter.

Monument protection

Round building in a quarter circle arrangement 2015

The entire building complex was protected in 1987 by the Hessian Office for Monument Protection. The tower's ground floor including the hall of honor and the outbuildings have been preserved in their original state.

Ownership

The Deutsche Funkturm , a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom , is the owner of the tower and is operated by T-Systems , also a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

Radio and television

From here until the switch to DAB-T / DVB-T Hit Radio FFH (105.9 MHz with 100 kW) and AFN (98.7 MHz with 60 kW) were broadcast horizontally in the radio range and ZDF (channel 34 with 500 kW) ) and hr television (channel 54 with 500 kW) also broadcast horizontally as omnidirectional.

Web links

Commons : Telecommunication tower Großer Feldberg - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Telecommunications tower in Großer Feldberg. In: Structurae

Individual evidence

↑ Hessisches Statistisches Landesamt : Statistisches Jahrbuch 2011/12, Volume 2, S. 21; Retrieved January 5, 2014.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g The telecommunications tower on the Großer Feldberg / Ts. (PDF) In: Bäsembinner Bläädche. wolfenhausen.de, October 25, 2013, accessed on May 26, 2015 .
↑ Tower without a point. (No longer available online.) In: faz.net. FAZ , March 22, 2007, archived from the original on May 26, 2015 ; accessed on March 28, 2018 .

[HSL-1] Hessisches Statistisches Landesamt : Statistisches Jahrbuch 2011/12, Volume 2, S. 21; Retrieved January 5, 2014.

[Wolf-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g The telecommunications tower on the Großer Feldberg / Ts. (PDF) In: Bäsembinner Bläädche. wolfenhausen.de, October 25, 2013, accessed on May 26, 2015 .

[3] Tower without a point. (No longer available online.) In: faz.net. FAZ , March 22, 2007, archived from the original on May 26, 2015 ; accessed on March 28, 2018 .