Devau Airport
| Devau Airport | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Characteristics | |
| Coordinates | |
| Height above MSL | 21 m (69 ft ) |
| Basic data | |
| opening | 1921 |
| Start-and runway | |
| X | 1400 m gravel |
The airport Devau at Königsberg was one of the early commercial airports in the world. Furnished in 1920, in 1922/23 it received an architecturally finely designed airport building from the Königsberg architect Hanns Hopp . Today Devau Airport is part of Kaliningrad, Russia . Since the construction of the Kaliningrad airport near Khrabrovo (Powunden) after the Second World War, it has only been used by sport pilots. The remnants of the former administration building are used by the Kaliningrad Sports Aviation Club.
Surname
The name Devau is derived from the Prussian “deywis” (god) and refers to an old pagan cult site.
location
The airport is named after the place Devau, today Rischskoje (Рижское). It is located 2.5 km northeast of Königsberg on the former Labiauer Straße, today Juri-Gagarin-Straße (Ул. Юрия Гагарина / Uliza Jurija Gagarina), which connects the arterial road from Königsberg (Kaliningrad) in the direction of Labiau, today Polessk (Полесск), and Tilsit, today Sovetsk (Советск), is.
Devau or Dewau was a district of Königsberg. The village was outside the wall northeast of the Königsberg districts of Sackheim and Kalthof .
Location and other information from " News for Air Drivers (NfL) ":
"News for air drivers, published by the Reich Ministry of Transport (Department of Aviation and Motor Vehicles) Volume 4, No. 10, Berlin March 11, 1923 - Königsberg-Devau Airport" Location: 54 ° 43 'N - 20 ° 36' E, 23 m ü. M., 2.5 km northeast of Königsberg. Area: 1500 × 1000 m, level, firm ground, smooth sward, constantly dry. Area: level parade ground. Part of the site is leased for grass use. North and west side: wire fence, barracks, sheds, stables. Control points: large three-masted FL system 1 km southwest of the square, northwest of the square former barracks with turrets. Landing mark is always on display. Facility: 1 new hall made of iron construction for 12–15 aircraft, 24 × 22 m, 2 gates with each 27 m span. Workshops of the airlines (Deruluft and Junkers) in permanent additions to the hall, furthermore workshops of the Devauer Automobilgesellschaft on the square. 2 fuel tanks (Martini and Heineke) for 7500 liters. Medical station, administration and information: Meyhöfer air traffic office, Devau airport, telephone 1856. Receiving antenna of the state weather station in the administration building. FL station in the city.
Not far from the airport was the small train station Devau of the Königsberger Kleinbahn (KKB) inaugurated in 1900 to Schaaksvitte, today Kaschirskoje (Каширское) and Possinders , today Roschtschino (Рощино). There are no more traces of the Kleinbahnhof and Kleinbahn in Devau.
history
Dewau was a farm on a mountain Royal Erbpachts pitcher ", with some gardeners houses, which are also called bleaching houses" . The small village had six fireplaces (households) and in 1785 belonged to the district of Schaaken . The residents were parish in the Alt Roßgärt'sche Church in Königsberg. To the west of Devau was the Borkenhof settlement, to the northwest the brickworks and the III. Sackheimer cemetery.
The beautiful view from the mountain, at the foot of which was a large pond, made this inn and the village a popular destination, especially since one of the owners had laid out a terrace garden. Like Kalthof, Devau was always militarily shaped and built with barracks. Devauer Platz was the name of the "Revuefeld" in the Kalthof Vorwerk . It was the oldest training ground for the Prussian army, and in 1740 the homage ceremonies for the king also took place there. Devau and the "Great Parade Grounds" were not incorporated into Königsberg until 1914. The Imperial Parade took place in this square in 1910 .
The "Ostmark Brewery", founded in 1910, is today again run under this name by a Russian-American investor group. The formerly known Ponarther beer is also brewed here and offered to guests as "German beer".
Already during the First World War there was an aviator-observer-school ( FBS for short ) in the Königsberg garrison . Devau was the first civil airport in Germany to be built from 1919 to 1921; the original station building was built in 1922/1923 based on designs by the Königsberg architect Hanns Hopp . On April 30, 1922, the Königsberg – Riga – Moscow route was opened, the first international scheduled flight connection in Soviet Russia . The flights were operated by the German-Russian airline Deruluft . On August 24, 1930, the new Graf Zeppelin airship came to Devau.
In 1931 Devau Airport became the first order customs airport and in 1938 it also became the industrial airport of Deutsche Lufthansa (DLH) with DLH workshops.
In 1939 Devau was approached by 1,173 aircraft.
architecture
The new airport needed buildings to handle passengers and accommodate aircraft. The architect Hanns Hopp, who was employed by the Königsberg Messamt at the time, received the order for the design. He placed the three-story station building in a corner of the airfield. Here he accommodated the traffic and ticket hall, the waiting room, customs, a travel agency, airline offices and garages, as well as a measuring station for the state weather station and a telegraph station. It flanked the station building on both sides with an aircraft hangar for 20 aircraft. The halls were spanned with a segmental arch roof. Because the building project "airport building" was completely new, Hopp could not fall back on any models. As was the case with many architects in this Expressionist phase of architecture in the early 1920s, Hopp was guided by the idea of using the buildings to create a concise image suitable for the occasion. So it is no coincidence that the entire complex was reminiscent of a bird taking off, with the reception building standing for the bird's body and the two arched hall roofs for the spread wings. As a further detail relating to the subject of "aviation", Hopp placed an iron sheet in the parapets of the accessible roofs of the reception building, in which planes and stars were embossed.
Lufthansa flights
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Air Force associations
The following table shows the complete list of all active flying units (excluding school and supplementary units) of the Wehrmacht Air Force that were stationed here between 1939 and 1945.
| From | To | unit |
|---|---|---|
| August 1941 | August 1941 | Courier relay 2 |
| April 1943 | April 1943 | Aviation readiness Luftgaukdo. I. |
| July 1943 | March 1944 | Stab / KG 77 (Staff of Kampfgeschwader 77) |
Construction of residential buildings next to the airport began in 2012, although no official approval was available. In the general plan of the city of Königsberg the airport is designated as a sports area, so that the close proximity of the gravel runway to the houses threatens to cease sports operations.
literature
- Ludwig von Baczko : An attempt at a history and description of Königsberg. Koenigsberg 1804.
- Hans Behrendt: Königsberg-Devau air cross. 1954.
- Maria Biolik: Hydronymia Europaea, the names of the flowing waters in the Pregel river basin. Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-515-06933-X .
- Grasilda Blažiene: Hydronymia Europaea, special volume II, The Baltic place names in Samland. Wolfgang Schmid Ed., Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-515-07830-4 .
- Fritz Gause: Königsberg in Prussia. Rautenberg, Leer 1987, ISBN 3-7921-0345-1 .
- Georg Gerullis: The old Prussian place names. Berlin / Leipzig 1922.
- Heinz J. Nowarra: 60 years of German commercial airports. Hoffmann, Mainz 1969.
- Karl Ries, Wolfgang Dierich: Air bases and deployment ports of the air force. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-613-01486-6 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Johann Goldbeck: Complete topography of the East Prussian Cammer Department. Königsberg / Leipzig 1785. (Reprinted Hamburg 1990, p. 35)
- ^ Gabriele Wiesemann: Hanns Hopp 1890–1971: Königsberg, Dresden, Halle, East Berlin: a biographical study of modern architecture . T. Helms, Schwerin 2000, ISBN 3-931185-61-3 .
- ↑ Henry L. deZeng IV: Air Force Airfields 1935-45 Germany (1937 Borders). Pp. 356-357. Retrieved August 29, 2014.
- ↑ Devau endangered by construction speculators. In: Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung. Episode 29-12, July 21, 2012.
- ↑ An airport with a great past. In: Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung. Episode 29-12, July 21, 2012.