Oberhausen gasometer

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Oberhausen gasometer
Oberhausen gasometer
Exterior view of the gasometer from the south; Stair tower on the left
Location data
State : Germany
Region : North Rhine-Westphalia
City : Oberhausen
Construction data
Building-costs: 1.74 million Reichsmarks
approx. 7.13 million euros
Construction: 1927-1929
Business: 1929-1945
1949-1988
Shutdown: 1988
Modification: 1993-1994
Reuse: Exhibitions (since 1994)
Technical specifications
Type: Dry / disk gas container
Construction: MAN
Mass of the gas pressure disc including concrete ballast: 1,207 t
Mass of the gas pressure disc without concrete ballast: 600 t
Operating pressure : ≈3 kPa
Height : 117.5 m
Maximum filling level: ≈95 m
Diameter : 67.6 m
Usable volume : ≈347,000 m³
Floor plan : 24-sided with 8.80 m edge length
Base area : ≈3,000 m²
Others
  • Ascents and elevators:
    • Panoramic elevator inside
    • Safety elevator outside in the stair tower
    • Stair tower with 592 steps
  • Surfaces:
    • approx. 7,000 m² of exhibition space on 3 levels
    • Viewing platform on the roof
  • Monument:
    • National industrial monument on the Route of Industrial Heritage
    • International industrial monument on the European Route of Industrial Culture

The Oberhausen Gasometer is an industrial monument in Oberhausen and the highest exhibition and event hall in Europe. It is one of the panoramas and landmarks as well as the anchor points of the Route of Industrial Culture and is also part of the European Route of Industrial Culture (ERIH). The gasometer is located in the Neue Mitte directly on the Rhine-Herne Canal . With a storage volume of 347,000 m³, a height of 117 meters and a diameter of almost 68 meters, it was Europe's largest disk gas tank in operation until 1988 .

history

The gasometer was built between 1927 and 1929 as a disk gas container in MAN design by the MAN plant in Gustavsburg . He first stored the furnace gas , a waste product from the surrounding blast furnaces of the Gutehoffnungshütte , which was then burned again in the rolling mills. Later the energetically higher quality coke oven gas from the coking plant of the Osterfeld colliery was temporarily stored and thus mainly supplied the surrounding industrial plants up to the Ruhrchemie in Holten . The so-called gas pressure disk floated on top of the gas, weighed down by additional concrete weights. Depending on the amount of gas present, she could slide up and down the walls of the gasometer and kept the gas pressure constant.

During the Second World War , the gasometer was badly damaged in bombing raids and was shut down in 1945. During repair work in 1946 it caught fire and had to be dismantled down to the foundation. During the reconstruction, which lasted until 1949, various structural elements, including the roof, could continue to be used. The gasometer was in operation until 1988.

After the shutdown, it should first be demolished. The requested approval for this was already ready to be signed, but the owner Ruhrkohle AG was reluctant to actually force the demolition plans because of the costs of around 1.5 million DM. Meanwhile, other uses were under discussion, including a. as a red and white "Coca-Cola can" by the then Essen- based Coca-Cola GmbH . Monument preservers campaigned for the building to be preserved; Karl Ganser , head of the International Building Exhibition Emscher Park, threatened to resign if the building was torn down. In 1992 the Oberhausen city council decided to buy the building in order to use it for exhibition purposes and to integrate it into the planned New Center.

In 1993/94 the gasometer was converted into Europe's highest exhibition hall as part of the IBA Emscher Park for 16 million Deutschmarks. The gas pressure disc was fixed to the cylinder jacket at a height of 4.20 meters and with intermediate supports. It now serves as the second level of the exhibition area, on which a grandstand for 500 visitors has been installed. In addition, four external stairs were built, three to the upper exhibition level at a height of +12.0 meters and a fourth with 38 runs to the roof of the gasometer. An elevator is integrated into the stair tower. With a height of 115 meters and floor plan dimensions of 6.0 meters by 8.5 meters, it is one of the largest industrial stairs in the world. The gasometer roof is a viewing platform and can be reached on foot, by an external elevator or panoramic elevator with a glazed cabin inside the gas tank. It offers a panoramic view of the city of Oberhausen and the western Ruhr area .

Planned renovation 2020

After renovation work in 2002/2003, the gasometer again shows severe corrosion damage. With a complete renovation in 2020, these should be fixed for a longer period of time. To do this, the building will be closed for about a year and initially sandblasted, then given a primer coat and finally two top coats. The financing of over 14 million euros was secured in summer 2018. The federal government is contributing 7.25 million euros, a further 4.4 million euros come from the Ruhr Regional Association and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia also promised 2.5 million euros in funding.

photos

and display information about the image
Exhibition area below the gas pressure disc during the exhibition on the history of the largest disc gas cylinder in Europe

  • Main entrance with the banana by the artist Thomas Baumgärtel

  • View from the gas pressure disc upwards

  • Evening lights of the gasometer the Rhine-Herne Canal seen from

  • View of the gasometer from the Promenade des CentrO

  • View from the gasometer to the north on the grounds of the State Horticultural Show 1999

  • View from the gasometer to the east on the Rhine-Herne Canal

  • View from the gasometer to the southeast of Oberhausen's Neue Mitte (CentrO)

  • View of the animated globe at the exhibition Wonders of the Earth

  • View of the model of the sun at the exhibition Sternstunden - Wonders of the Solar System

Exhibitions

Overview

Since 1994, exhibitions on topics such as 200 years of the Ruhr area, 100 years of the German Football Association or great moments with the "largest moon on earth" have attracted more than four million visitors to the Oberhausen Gasometer. The Oberhausen Gasometer is now one of the most important anchor points on the Route of Industrial Culture. The exhibition Sternstunden - Wonders of the Solar System was the most successful exhibition in 2010 as part of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010 . In 2011/2012 the special exhibition Magical Places presented important natural and cultural monuments of the world.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Christo and Jeanne-Claude have already used the gasometer twice for their works. In 1999, as the final installation for the International Building Exhibition Emscher Park The Wall , they created a wall made of 13,000 lacquered oil barrels.

From March 16 to December 30, 2013, the installation Big Air Package - Project for Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany could be viewed. The project was conceived by Christo in 2010, for the first time without his wife Jeanne-Claude. The artistic installation inside the highest exhibition hall in Europe was made from 20,350 square meters of translucent fabric and 4,500 meters of rope. When inflated, the installation, weighing over five tons, reached a height of 90 meters, a diameter of 50 meters and a volume of 177,000 cubic meters. The fabric cover temporarily represented the largest self-supporting installation in the world. In the accessible interior of the Big Air Package, the artist offered a unique experience of space, size and light.

Parallel to the exhibition in the Gasometer, a selection of seven original design drawings of Christos Big Air Package was shown in the Ludwig Galerie Schloss Oberhausen , which covered the time from the idea in 2010 to its implementation in 2013.

The curator , photographer and project manager was Wolfgang Volz .

List of exhibitions

year example exhibition Visitors
1994/1995 Fire and Flame
(Ruhr Area Exhibition)		 190,000 (1994) / 270,000 (1995)
1996 I Phoenix
(contemporary art exhibition)		 100,000
1997/1998 The dream of seeing
(media exhibition on the age of televisions)		 290,000 (1997) / 250,000 (1998)
1999 The Wall
(installation made from 13,000 oil barrels by Christo and Jeanne-Claude)		 390,000
2000 The ball is round
(football exhibition 100 years of the German Football Association)		 216,000
2001/2002 Blue gold
(staging on the theme of water)		 292,000
2003 Five Angels for the Millennium
(video art installation by Bill Viola )		 139,000
2004 Breitling Orbiter 2 (gondola) in the Oberhausen gasometer.jpg Wind of Hope
(adventure balloon flight )		 190,000
2006 Light Sky.jpg FeuerLichtHimmel
(history of the gasometer, light-sound installation Licht Himmel by Christina Kubisch )		 113,000
2007/2008 The eye of the sky.jpg The eye of the sky
(satellite images of the earth, light sky )		 375,000
2009/2010 Gasometer OB - great hours - wonders of the solar system 02.jpg Star hours - miracles of the solar system
(exhibition of the German Aerospace Center (DLR))
( space images , astronomical exhibits and a moon sculpture with a diameter of 25 meters)		 960,000
2011/2012 Magical Places83653.JPG Magical places
(exhibition about the great natural and cultural monuments of the world)		 800,000
2013 Christo: Big Air Package
(indoor installation by Christo)		 440,000
2014/2015 The beautiful glow
(art exhibition)		 470,000
2016/2017 Gasometer Earth3.JPG Miracles of nature
(exhibition of large-format photographs and other exhibits to illustrate the diversity and uniqueness of the flora and fauna. The highlight is a 20-meter-tall, freely hanging sculpture of the earth, onto which moving satellite images are projected and thus the interplay of day and night and the seasons.)		 1,350,000
2018/2019 The mountain calls
(exhibition in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) about the fascination and formation of the mountains with large-format photographs and nature film scenes to illustrate the diversity and uniqueness of the flora and fauna. The climax is one in 100 meters Highly suspended sculpture of the Matterhorn , onto which moving images of the mountain are projected using 3D technology, thus illustrating the interplay between day and night and the climbing routes chosen by people. The 17-meter-high sculpture hangs upside down in the room and is reflected in the one below Mirror surface.)		 250,000 (March 16 (opening) - August 2018; the exhibition ran until October 27, 2019.)

Exhibition catalogs

  • Peter Paul Kubitz, Peter Hoenisch, TRIAD Berlin (ed.): The dream of seeing. An exhibition on the age of televisions in the Oberhausen Gasometer May 30th - October 15th 1997. Verlag der Kunst , Dresden 1997, ISBN 90-5705-054-4 .
  • Peter Pachnicke, Wolfgang Volz (ed.): Magical places. Natural and cultural moments in the world. Klartext Verlag , Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0516-0 . (Photo book for the exhibition of the same name from April 8, 2011 to October 21, 2012)
  • Gasometer Oberhausen GmbH (Ed.): Christo. Big Air Package . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8375-0850-5 .

Oberhausen Theater

The gasometer was used by the Oberhausen Theater as an "outside project":

Transport links

The gasometer is accessed through the Neue Mitte Oberhausen stop on the public transport route .

Nationwide it can be reached in just a few minutes from junction 10 Oberhausen Zentrum of the federal motorway 42 . The federal highway 223 and, as its northern extension, the federal highway 516 also run adjacent .

Trivia

In a much smaller Oberhausen , namely a district of the southern German city of Augsburg , there is also a disk gas tank in MAN design in the historic gasworks there . It was completed in 1954 and shut down in 2001. With a height of 84 m and a diameter of 45 m with a storage volume of 100,000 m³, it is significantly smaller than its counterpart in the city of Oberhausen, but one of the few (disc) gas containers preserved in southern Germany and accessible (inside and outside).

literature

  • Anneli Kleine: Gasometer Oberhausen. In: Origins and developments of the city of Oberhausen, sources and research on their history , Vol. 5 (1996), pp. 71–128.
  • Jeanette Schmitz, Wolfgang Volz (Ed.): Gasometer Oberhausen. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-341-0 .
  • Landschaftsverband Rheinland, Rheinisches Industriemuseum (Hrsg.): Gasometer Oberhausen. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89861-718-5 .
  • Jeanette Schmitz (Ed.): 20 Years of Gasometer Oberhausen. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8375-1291-5 . (Photo book about the 14 exhibitions from 1994 to 2015)
  • Jeanette Schmitz (Hrsg.): Gasometer Oberhausen: Cathedral of industrial culture. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8375-2064-4 .

Web links

Commons : Gasometer Oberhausen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Official website Gasometer. Retrieved March 29, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Norbert Gilson: Oberhausen gas container: The "giant on the canal" turns 90 in Industriekultur 1.19, pp. 34–35, Klartext-Verlag, ISSN 0949-3751
  3. ↑ The History of the Gasometer. In: Osterfelder Bürgerring eV Retrieved on March 29, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Birwe: Industrial monuments - gasometer. In: www.uni-due.de. Retrieved March 29, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Land closes funding gap for gasometer renovation ; In: Neue Ruhr Zeitung from August 30, 2018
  6. ↑ christojeanneclaude.net: Big Air Package (English, December 23, 2016)
  7. ↑ The dream of seeing: an exhibition in the Oberhausen gasometer . In: DIE ZEIT , July 11, 1997, accessed on March 29, 2018.
  8. ↑ Pictures on commons.wikimedia.org : commons.wikimedia.org: Category: Sternstunden - Wonders of the Solar System (December 23, 2016)
  9. ↑ derwesten.de , October 17, 2015, Gudrun Mattern: Oberhausen beauty on the home straight (December 23, 2016)
  10. ↑ The Matterhorn is upside down . In: Rheinische Post , March 16, 2018, accessed on March 29, 2018.
  11. ↑ Bettina Jäger: The new exhibition in the Oberhausen Gasometer is amazing . In: Ruhr Nachrichten of March 15, 2018. Retrieved October 20, 2019
  12. ↑ 250,000 visitors have already seen the floating Matterhorn - “The mountain calls” in the Oberhausen gasometer. Retrieved April 1, 2019 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 38.6 "  N , 6 ° 52 ′ 13.8"  E