Gas lantern open-air museum Berlin
The Gaslaternen-Freilichtmuseum Berlin is a permanent exhibition of historical gas lanterns in the immediate vicinity of the Berlin S-Bahn station Tiergarten on the edge of the Great Tiergarten , near Joseph-Haydn-Straße. In the meantime, some gas lamps have been dismantled and stored in the Technikmuseum Berlin , where the entire gas lamp collection is to be built later.
The museum
The museum was set up in 1978 under the responsibility of the Berlin Senate Department for Building and Housing in cooperation with the Berlin Gas Works (GASAG), which also supply the energy required. The German Museum of Technology in Berlin supervises the project scientifically, supported by the light working group of the Association of Friends and Patrons of the Museum of Technology. At the opening, the collection contained 31 lights from Berlin, Baden-Baden , Düsseldorf and Munich . By 2009 it had grown to 90 copies from 25 German and eleven other European cities, for example Dublin , London , Bruges , Zurich , Brussels , Copenhagen , Amsterdam and Budapest . The presentation ends with Berlin lanterns from the 1950s; there are plans to expand them to the present day.
The history of gas street lighting began in Berlin in 1826. The British company Imperial Continental Gas Association (ICGA) had received the relevant contract. To do this, she imported her Camberwell lanterns - converted oil lanterns on cast-iron triple-pillar masts in the style of English neo-Gothic . 27 of them illuminated the boulevard Unter den Linden for the first time on the evening of September 20, 1826 with a light that was several times brighter than all light sources known until then. Gas light for illuminating streets and factories quickly gained considerable importance for the beginning industrialization of Prussia and for its rapidly growing capital. In 2009, around 44,000 gas lamps were still in use on the streets of Berlin, more than in any other city. A copy of the Camberwell lantern, which was named after a London district , is in the Berlin open-air museum.There are also several lights of the widespread so-called "Schinkel lantern", which, however, was not designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel , but only in 1892 by the urban Berlin gas works; It owes its name to cast iron decorative elements in the classical style of the Schinkel period.
After 28 years of exhibition, the museum pieces were in dire need of repair - 140 panes of glass alone had been destroyed by vandalism . Extensive renovation work was carried out within a short period of time and completed in good time before the start of the soccer World Cup in summer 2006 . All lanterns were thoroughly cleaned, painted and given new individual parts, and finally they received uniformly designed signs with consecutive numbers and, in some cases, newly developed technical and historical information on each individual model. The equipment of the museum complex is completed by information boards and new park benches, on the backrests of which a quote from the poem The Revolutionary by the writer Erich Mühsam is attached: “I am the lamp cleaner of this good luminous light. Please, please, don't harm him! If we turn off the light, no citizen can see anything. "
Example for the object descriptions
Lantern No. 14, Viennese mast
Lantern No. 15, Camberwell Lantern
Lantern No. 35, Charlottenburg (square) candelabra (three-armed)
Object descriptions (selection)
The information texts attached to the lanterns are reproduced here in abbreviated form.
- (13) Small bundle pillar . Small cast-iron gothic four-bundle pillar mast with ladder iron. Four-flame Berlin lantern, model 1882. Originally stood in side streets of the then independent city of Spandau .
- (14) Viennese mast . Cast-iron heavy four-bundle pillar mast with a hexagonal base. Four-flame Berlin (hexagonal) city palace lantern, copper roof , model 1880. Originally located in Berlin-Mitte and in the south-west of Berlin. Named after the Austrian capital .
- (15) Camberwell lantern . First three-pillar bundle mast erected in Berlin with a ladder bar on one side. Camberwell lamp with six-flame sectional burner from Sugg Lighting, Crawley , Great Britain
- (35) Charlottenburg (square) candelabra (three-armed). Cast-iron (historical) eclectic jewelry candelabra, model 1904. Three four-flame Berlin lanterns, model 1892. Originally stood on squares in Berlin-Charlottenburg , the last original (five-armed) in Schloßstraße in Charlottenburg, with gas operation.
- (39) City of Dresden . Cast-iron Friedrich Siemens candelabra (Viktoria mast) , model 1881. Four-lamp post-top light. Stand in downtown Berlin ; last surviving originals found in Viktoriapark (hence the name) in Berlin-Kreuzberg . Named after the Saxon capital .
- (47) City of Freiburg im Breisgau . Cast iron candelabra of southern German design. Four-flame square Münsterplatz lantern . Stand in downtown Freiburg .
- (52) City of Augsburg . Cast iron mast with a hexagonal base. Large four-bulb top-mounted lamp with door openings on both sides. Was in Augsburg , today there is only gas operated in the Fuggerei .
- (70) Charlottenburg (square) candelabra (five-armed). Cast-iron (historical) eclectic jewelry candelabra, model 1904. Five four-flame Berlin lanterns , model 1892. Originally stood on squares in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the last original in Charlottenburger Schloßstraße , with gas operation.
Lantern No. 39, City of Dresden
Lantern No. 47, City of Freiburg im Breisgau
Lantern No. 52, City of Augsburg
Lantern No. 70, Charlottenburg (square) candelabra (five-armed)
literature
- Herbert Limann, Sabine Röck: The open-air gas lantern museum shines in new splendor. In Deutsches Technikmuseum , magazine of the Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin and the friends and sponsors of the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin e. V., No. 3/2006, pp. 4-5.
Web links
- Press release from the companies involved on the reconstruction of the Open Air Museum for Gas Lanterns (PDF file; 373 kB)
- Museumsportal Berlin: Open-air gas lantern museum Berlin
- The different types of gas street lighting at berliner-verkehrsseiten.de
- On the monument value of the Berlin gas lights at gaslicht-kultur.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ The gas lantern collection comes to the technology museum. ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. At: rbb -online.de , June 2, 2016, accessed on January 28, 2017
- ↑ Press release of the companies involved on the reconstruction of the open-air gas lantern museum
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 46 ″ N , 13 ° 20 ′ 13 ″ E