Kamina radio station
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Kamina radio station
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| Basic data | |||||
| Place: | Kamina | ||||
| Region: | Plateaux | ||||
| Country: | Togo | ||||
| Altitude : | 386 m | ||||
| Coordinates: 7 ° 30 ′ 20.2 " N , 1 ° 10 ′ 13.9" E | |||||
| Use: | Telecommunication system | ||||
| Owner : | The German Imperium | ||||
| Demolition : | 1914 | ||||
| Data on the transmission system | |||||
| Number of towers / masts: | 9 | ||||
| Height of the towers / masts : | 3 × 75 m , 6 × 120 m | ||||
| Construction time: | 1911-1914 | ||||
| Operating time: | July 1914 – August 1914 | ||||
| Send type: | Directional radio | ||||
| Shutdown : | August 1914 | ||||
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| Position map | |||||
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The Kamina radio station was a transmitting and receiving system for wireless telegraphy ( extinguishing spark transmitter ) in the German colony of Togo .
Their location was near the village of Kamina . The closest, larger settlement was Atakpamé . The station was planned and built by the German company Telefunken on behalf of the German government from 1911 to 1914. In terms of size and location, the station was designed as a hub and switching point for other German colonial radio stations. Shortly after the beginning of the First World War in Togo , it was destroyed by the operating staff themselves.
planning
In the committee for joint work in the field of radio telegraphy of the German Reich government, representatives of the army, navy and colonies recommended on December 9, 1910 that radio tests be started in the colony of Togo. Experiments by ship had previously been carried out off the coast of Cameroon , but these were not satisfactory. The experts from Telefunken, however, saw the region around Atakpamé in Togo as promising. Anae, north of Atakpamé, should initially serve as the place for the receiving station. Baron Anton von Codelli was entrusted with the implementation and arrived in Togo on February 15, 1911, together with two members of the military and three fitters. The material for the construction of an experimental station was on site from April 1911. With the help of the local governorate, 120 African workers and 150 porters were forcibly recruited for Telefunken. Their daily wages were between 50 and 75 pfennigs, which was also very low in comparison at the time. (In the British neighboring colony of Gold Coast , locals received the equivalent of 2 Marks for comparable work .) The exploitation of workers that existed in the context of colonial rule was fully used by Telefunken.
After several setbacks due to storm damage in the first half of 1911, a radio link was established on June 7, 1911 with the Nauen radio station near Berlin. The antenna was temporarily brought into position with a tethered balloon . Codelli then received the order to expand a permanent station.
Choice of location and construction
Due to better topography and transport conditions as well as an adequate water supply, an area near Atakpamé was chosen as the final building site. The space requirement was initially about 1600 × 300 meters between the villages of Auju and Kamina. The direction to Berlin was devoid of mountains in the vicinity. The distance to the hinterland railway at Agbonu was 3.5 kilometers. The direct traffic connection was ensured by the construction of a field railway with a gauge of 600 millimeters, on which a benzene-powered locomotive from the manufacturer Deutz drove. The water for cooling and generating steam for the machines was provided by a nearby stream. A charcoal burner , a joinery , a brickworks and a forge were built on the site . Locals were hired to work by the Kabre people from the north of the colony. First three lattice masts with a height of 75 meters each were erected, for which a total of nine fastening foundations were built (for three wire rope anchoring per tower). In addition, there was an earth network made of galvanized iron wire and almost 300 telegraph poles for the directed electrical counterweight.
Since firewood was used instead of coal for the construction and later operation, there was considerable deforestation in the already sparsely forested region around Kamina.
Trial operation and final expansion
The trial operation was again delayed by storm damage, but this time at the other end of the radio link in Nauen . In addition, atmospheric disturbances only allowed adequate reception at night and in the morning. In the end, however, successful results were achieved, so that in 1913 the Reich government decided to expand Kamina into a large radio station. In addition to the three radio towers, there were another six towers, each 120 meters high.
On October 7, 1913, State Secretary Wilhelm Solf and Togo's governor, Duke of Mecklenburg , paid a visit to the radio station. The station was festively decorated and the towers illuminated. Recordings of the station construction were shown in a cinema show. In retrospect, State Secretary Solf describes Kamina's visit as “the highlight” of his trip.
When completed, the station comprised an area of around 4000 × 3000 meters with nine radio towers and the following buildings:
- Recipient and official residence
- Broadcasting house with water tank and cooling tower
- Boiler house with water purification
- Machine hall
- Weir and pump house
- Operations manager's house
The station was essentially completed in mid-June 1914. The official commissioning took place at the end of July 1914.
The construction and start of operation of the station were initially kept secret. Radio messages from and to Kamina could be received by colonial radio stations of other nations. Until the First World War, however, foreign radio operators had difficulty assigning the signals to a station they knew.
War operation and destruction
At the beginning of the First World War, the chief engineer Dr. Abraham Esau and the engineer Carl WH Doetsch in the Kamina station. In the last days of July 1914 they received the code word havaube , which was identified as a war warning for German merchant ships. The report was forwarded to all accessible land and ship stations. On August 2, 1914, the mobilization order arrived. Under the direction of Esau, the station was prepared for the expected peak operation. Esau later named the main tasks of the first days of the war in the following priority:
- Request to German ships to call at neutral ports
- Transmission of orders and messages to the African "protected areas" as well as to German warships in African waters
- Forwarding of the reports from the colonies to Berlin
- Mediation of communications with South America based on submarine cables that can still be used
- Attempts to connect to radio stations in neutral countries
- Eavesdropping on enemy radio communications
- Disturbance of enemy radio communications
From the beginning of August 1914, government and press telegrams began to operate intensively. Now the importance of Kamina as a hub and mediation point became apparent. The stations in Cameroon , German Southwest Africa and German East Africa , for their part, did not have the transmission power to establish a regular connection with Germany. Even Kamina could not receive any replies from East Africa, as the stations there only had regional transmission ranges. Radio was practically “blind” here. The radio messages via Kamina were received in Dar es Salaam and forwarded to the cruiser Königsberg located in the Indian Ocean . The first feedback also came in from South America via submarine cable . The station crew of Kaminas now knew that their warning messages had been received by German ships in the South Atlantic and that they had reached safe havens in neutral countries in Latin America .
Esau reported that his activities had been impaired by opposing attempts at jamming, which had originated mainly from the powerful transmission systems of the Paris Eiffel Tower .
The colonial administration of Togo received instructions from the German government to protect the station from being occupied by the British or French neighboring colony for as long as possible. As a result, the Atakpamé district was the only part of Togo that was not voluntarily evacuated by the German side. However, since the Germans only had small police units in the colony - not protection troops - the imminent occupation was foreseeable. The station was prepared for destruction so that it would not be functional if it would fall into enemy hands. The order to self-destruct was issued on August 20, 1914 and was carried out on the night of August 24th to 25th, a few days before Togo's surrender. The radio towers were forcibly torn down and all technical equipment smashed.
Balance sheet
The station, built with far-reaching intentions, was only in official operation for about a month. This time was nevertheless characterized by high intensity. In the period from August 1 to August 22, 1914, a total of 229 telegrams were received and sent. According to estimates, the construction costs of the station were 4 to 5 million marks , compared to values of at least 80 million marks, which were withdrawn from the Entente powers by warning messages from the station . The shipping space of the merchant ships warned from Kamina comprised around 800,000 GRT .
The operators of the Kamina radio station were brought to Lomé by the British occupiers and handed over to the French there. After an odyssey full of privation through prisoner-of-war camps in the French colonies and France , the last station members made it to Germany in 1919.
Reconstruction that was initially considered was discarded due to the thorough destruction. Today the foundations of the holding cables are still reminiscent of the former large radio station. In addition, an office and residential building for the technical staff as well as the now converted recipient and officials' residence have been preserved.
reconstruction
The historian Peter Sebald built a model of the station, which was shown in 2009 on the occasion of a book and photo project by Reinhard Klein-Arendt at the Goethe Institute in Lomé .
Photos of the remains of the station
- Kamina radio station 2010
water-tank
Underground facilities
Generator system
Generator system dimensions for comparison
generator
Steam boilers for generators
Foundation of the holding cables with blast holes
See also
literature
- Abraham Esau: The large station Kamina and the beginning of the world war, in: Telefunken-Zeitung , III. Year, No. 16, July 1919, pp. 31-36. ( entire issue as pdf; 4.7 MB )
- Reinhard Klein-Arendt: "Kamina calls Nauen!" The radio stations in the German colonies 1904–1918 . Cologne 1995, Wilhelm Herbst Verlag, ISBN 3-923925-58-1 .
- Reinhard Klein-Arendt, Peter Sebald: Kamina: The emperor's large radio station in Africa - Telefunken in the German colony of Togo 1911-1914. Maisach 2013, Margret Kopp, Togo-Contact, ISBN 978-3-00-042631-5 .
Web links
- Michael Friedewald: Funkentelegrafie and German colonies: Technology as a means of imperialist politics . (pdf; 267 kB)
- Golf Dornseif: pioneering years of colonial telegraphy connections . (pdf; 2.2 MB)
- Golf Dornseif: German tropical architecture in Togoland . (pdf; 1.9 MB)
- Keyword "Funkentelegraphie" in the German Colonial Lexicon from 1920
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reinhard Klein-Arendt: "Kamina calls Nauen!" The radio stations in the German colonies 1904-1918 . Cologne: Wilhelm Herbst Verlag, 1995, p. 113f. ISBN 3-923925-58-1
- ↑ Michael Friedewald: Funkentelegrafie and German colonies: Technology as a means of imperialist politics , p. 59 (pdf; 267 kB)
- ↑ Helmut Schroeter, Roel Ramaer: The railways in the once German protected areas / German Colonial Railways . Röhr-Verlag, Krefeld 1993, p. 116, ISBN 3-88490-184-2
- ↑ The construction of the Telefunken station Kamina (Togo), in: Telefunken-Zeitung , 2nd year, No. 12, June 1913, p. 166ff. ( entire issue as pdf; 3.45 MB)
- ↑ Visit by the State Secretary of the Reich Colonial Office, Exe. Solf, at the Telefunken station Kamina (Togo), in: Telefunken-Zeitung , 3rd year, No. 13, p. 40f. ( entire issue as pdf; 2.13 MB )
- ↑ Reinhard Klein-Arendt: "Kamina calls Nauen!" The radio stations in the German colonies 1904-1918 . Cologne: Wilhelm Herbst Verlag, 1995, pp. 206f. ISBN 3-923925-58-1
- ^ ER Macpherson: Radio-Telegraphy on the West Coast of Africa 1914, in: Royal United Service Institution , Journal , 68, Feb./Nov. 1923, pp. 487-491.
- ↑ Reinhard Klein-Arendt: "Kamina calls Nauen!" The radio stations in the German colonies 1904-1918 . Cologne: Wilhelm Herbst Verlag, 1995, p. 266ff. ISBN 3-923925-58-1
- ↑ Reinhard Klein-Arendt: "Kamina calls Nauen!" The radio stations in the German colonies 1904-1918 . Cologne: Wilhelm Herbst Verlag, 1995, pp. 273f. ISBN 3-923925-58-1
- ↑ Carl WH Doetsch: Kamina und das Los der Togogefangen, in: Telefunken-Zeitung , 4th year, No. 19, Feb. 1920, pp. 29-41. ( entire issue as pdf; 4.83 MB )
- ↑ Wolfgang Lauber (Ed.): German Architecture in Togo 1884-1914 / L'Architecture allemande au Togo 1884-1914 . Karl Krämer Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, pp. 130-136, ISBN 3-7828-4017-8
- ↑ Kamina - The transcontinental radio station of the Empire in Togo 1911 - 1914.