Fürigen fortress

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Fortress entrance
Plan of the fortress
Gun post 1
Ammunition magazine

The Fürigen fortress (also known as the Fürigen artillery , army designation A 2255) was built as a rock structure and was part of the Swiss Reduit defense system in World War II . The building, built in 1942, was abandoned by the army in 1987 and opened in 1991 as one of the first more modern fortress museums in Switzerland.

location

The plant is located at 436  m above sea level. M. at the west foot of the Bürgenstock in the Fürigen district of the municipality of Stansstad in the canton of Nidwalden . It is located on the road from Stansstad to Kehrsiten on the shores of Lake Lucerne .

history

The shell construction took place from February 1941 to July 1941 based on plans by the Office for Fortifications (BBB) ​​of the Federal Military Department (EMD) . The construction company Murer in Beckenried had the order to drive a two hundred meter long tunnel into the Bürgenstock as the main piece. According to the construction contract, it had to employ dismissed military men in an appropriate ratio for this work and, in the case of new hires, primarily to consider unemployed military men. The facility was completed at the end of July 1942. The technical acceptance and handover to the troops took place in October 1942.

In 1987 the fortress was abandoned by the army. Today it is one of four exhibition houses in the Nidwalden Museum . The rooms and facilities are largely from the time it was built.

Order and work

The fortress had to block the narrow areas of Stansstad (from Hergiswil to the Archereggbrücke in Stansstad) and at the Renggpass ( Loppergrat ) transition . She was supported by other fortresses in the region:

The plant consists of two fighting stands, an ammunition magazine, kitchen, hospital, offices and bedrooms. Machine gun positions and barbed wire obstacles were used for close defense. As a war reserve, Fürigen Fortress had food for thirty days. The water supply was ensured by a sea water pump. The around 80 soldiers shared the 52 berths on a rotation basis, plus eleven berths for NCOs. The officers' quarters consisted of an office / accommodation for the commanding officer and a bedroom for two officers.

Armament and crew

The armament comprised two 7.5 cm mounting cannons model BK 39 and three fortress machine guns Mg 11 (later replaced by the air-cooled Mg 51 ) and a white light searchlight , which was later replaced by an infrared searchlight . The two cannons were developed in 1939 and had a firing distance of 10.5 km (steel grenades) to 12 km (pointed grenades) and were oriented towards Stansstad and Hergiswil. The guns could fire ten to fifteen rounds per minute.

The external defense consisted of three permanently installed fortress machine guns, which were aimed at the loopholes and the fortress entrance, by a number of mobile weapons as well as by two "permanent explosive objects" in the Kehrsitenstrasse, the explosive charges hidden under the street could be detonated if necessary To make access to the fortress impassable.

In active service, the crew was provided by the 4th Division. To operate the fortress cannons, you needed seven to eight soldiers, a gun chief (to pass on the orders of the firing commander or the battery fire control center), a judge (to point the cannon at the target), an indoor observer (who supported the judge), and a loader (who loaded the cannon with ammunition), a lock attendant (who operated the lock and trigger) and up to three ammunition carriers.

Literature and television broadcast

  • Martin Lengwiler , Stefan Länzlinger: The Fürigen fortress. (Swiss Art Guide, No. 689, series 69). Ed. Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 2001, ISBN 978-3-85782-689-4 .
  • Gregor Bättig: The defense efforts in the Nidwalden area 1935–1995. 150 years of Nidwalden Officers' Association, 1857–2007. Aktiv-Verlag, Stans 2007, ISBN 3-909191-36-3 .
  • From July 27 to August 14, 2009, Swiss television (SF 1) broadcast the widely discussed Living History project “Alpine Fortress - Life in the Réduit”. Around 30 men and women were transferred to the time of active service , national defense and the cult battles during the Second World War. The men did active duty in the Fürigen artillery fortress near Stansstad (NW) for around three weeks, just like in the 1940s.

Web links

Commons : Fürigen Fortress  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Underground Switzerland: Artillery Works Fürigen ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.unterirdischeschweiz.ch

Coordinates: 46 ° 59 '1.2 "  N , 8 ° 20' 54.5"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred and sixty-nine thousand two hundred and nineteen  /  204024