Gauss tower
|
Gauss tower
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||
| Basic data | ||||
| Place: | Berg Hoher Hagen near Dransfeld | |||
| Country: | Lower Saxony | |||
| Country: | Germany | |||
| Altitude : | 478 m above sea level NHN | |||
| Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 26.7 " N , 9 ° 45 ′ 58" E | ||||
| Use: | Telecommunication tower , observation tower | |||
| Accessibility: | Transmission tower open to the public | |||
| Tower data | ||||
| Construction time : | 1964 | |||
| Building materials : | Concrete , reinforced concrete | |||
| Operating time: | since 1964 | |||
| Last renovation (tower) : | 2008 | |||
| Total height : | 51 m | |||
| Data on the transmission system | ||||
| Waveband : | FM transmitter | |||
| Position map | ||||
|
||||
The Gauss Tower is a transmission and observation tower on the Hohen Hagen (approx. 492.5 m above sea level ) in the Dransfeld city forest in the southern Lower Saxony district of Göttingen .
Geographical location
The Gauss Tower is south of the summit region of the High Hagen, the highest mountain in the south of Dransfeld located Dransfelder city forest . The Hohe-Hagen-Straße leads past the tower, which branches off the federal highway 3 in Dransfeld and runs south up the mountain and then north-east to the state road 559 (Dransfeld – Jühnde). The tower can be reached on foot, for example, on the student path or during a hike in the Dransfeld city forest.
Name origin
The tower is named after Carl Friedrich Gauß , who made the large triangle Hoher Hagen - Brocken - Großer Inselsberg a basis for the land survey of the Kingdom of Hanover .
Tower description
Old Gauss Tower
The previous building, the Old Gauss Tower, was built from basalt stone, among other things , according to a design by the Kassel architects Ludloff and Stieger . The foundation stone was laid on July 29, 1909. On July 31, 1911, the tower was inaugurated in front of over 2000 visitors. It was 32.3 m high and carried a covered viewing platform at 22.17 m tower height and 528 m height. The construction costs amounted to 51,000 gold marks . The city made the land available. Kaiser Wilhelm II transferred 4,000 marks from the state treasury. The Göttingen professor Eberlein donated a Gauss bust made of white marble for the Gaussian room.
On the entrance doors of the tower was the following slogan:
Those who
do not drink and sing in the mountains and castles
Even sober in the valley do
nothing right
Who does not want to be
happy with cheerful comrades
The Scheer to go home blas
tribulation alone
The tower stood directly above or north of the basalt quarry at a height of almost 506 m . In the lease agreement of 1924, the basalt works had undertaken to “lay out the operating facilities in such a way that a disruption to tourism after the Gauss Tower is avoided.” Over the years, however, the mining limit moved closer and closer to the tower. The district government had banned further expansion of the quarry towards the tower during the Second World War . At that time, the preservation of the tower was given higher priority than the additional mining of basalt, which was important for the war effort. In the 1950s to 1970s, however, there was less public interest in buildings and monuments from around 1850 to 1918. In addition, the basalt works was the largest employer in the city of Dransfeld. So economic considerations were decisive and they began to mine basalt directly below the tower. The first cracks appeared on the tower as early as the 1950s. The blasting continued anyway and the tower collapsed in 1963 due to the loosening of the soil. According to a judgment of the Higher Regional Court of Celle on June 22nd, 1962, the basalt works was obliged to build a new building for 300,000 DM.
New Gauss Tower
The new Gauss tower was built by the Braunschweig company Lucks & Co. based on a design by the Kassel architect Mathern and was completed in 1964. It is 51 m high and was built from reinforced concrete east of the opencast mine with a 5 m thick tower shaft at a height of 478 m ; Due to construction defects, cracks formed in the concrete over the entire height after just a few years. The foundation of the tower extends 6 m deep into the rocky subsoil and has a 13 m diameter. In the 1970s, the tower was given the nickname “disgusting Koch tube”, named after Klaus Koch, the operations manager of the basalt works at the time. The current tower has never achieved the touristic importance of its predecessor.
The first (lower) platform with a diameter of 13 m and a panorama restaurant is located at a tower height of 14.5 m. This has only been operated as such since the late 1980s, before this room was an exhibition space. After the change of use and the conversion to a restaurant, the lower platform received a separate external entrance from the west side, also for fire protection reasons, which can be reached via an artificially constructed hill and a staircase construction. There was still access to the old main entrance using the elevator; only tickets and kiosks were no longer sold there. For reasons of economy, the restaurant has not been open for day-to-day business since September 2012 and is only available for special events.
The second (upper) platform at a height of 45 m is an open viewing platform at a height of 528 m , i.e. at the same height as the platform of the old tower. It could be reached until the restaurant closed during the opening times and can currently only be accessed by groups with prior agreement.
The town council of Dransfeld decided on February 7th, 2007 that the Gauss tower should be completely renovated . In June 2008 the entire facade of the tower was renovated and completed at the end of September 2008. The gross costs amounted to around 450,000 euros.
The tower is now illuminated in the evening hours. The lighting concept comes from the Mündener lighting technician Uta von Schenck.
In the spring of 2009, the radio mast was removed for reasons of stability and replaced by a new construction the following autumn.
Gauss museum / Gauss room
About 30 m north of the Gauss tower, a small, hexagonal outbuilding was erected which was originally intended to house the Gauss Museum or Gauss Room . The Gauß-Gesellschaft Göttingen established it in September 1977, but it turned out to be completely unsuitable due to structural defects and excessive humidity. The exhibits were therefore transferred to the Gauß Museum in the city of Dransfeld.
Tower data
Data of the (new) Gauss tower:
- Construction time: 11 months
- Completion: September 1964
- Elevation: 478 m
- Tower height: 51 m
- Foundation: 6 m deep with 13 m diameter
- Tower shaft: 5 m diameter
- 1st (closed) platform (with panorama restaurant at a height of 14.5 m): 18 m diameter
- 2nd (open) platform (viewing platform; at 45 m tower height or 528 m height): 13 m diameter
- Elevator for a maximum of 8 people (travel time: 55 seconds)
- Emergency stairs: 225 steps lead from the ground floor via the first to the second platform
Possibility of viewing
From the second (upper) platform (viewing platform) of the (new) Gauss tower, the view of the Dransfeld forest and surrounding villages falls. In addition, when visibility is good, you can see these destinations (clockwise, starting roughly in the north): the Solling , Göttingen , the Göttingen Forest , the Harz Mountains , the Hohe Meißner , the Kaufunger Wald , the Habichtswälder Bergland (including Wilhelmshöhe Castle , Herkules , Hohem Dörnberg and Großem Bärenberg ), the Reinhardswald and the Bramwald .
literature
- Gauss tower administration (ed.): The high Hagen near Dransfeld in southern Hanover . (no year) around 1920.
- 1881-1981. 100 years of the Dransfeld Transport and Improvement Association, eV (City of Dransfeld, 1981). Contains: Horst Michling: Carl Friedrich Gauß and the Hohe Hagen . Pp. 170-187.
- Fridel Rehkop: City of Dransfeld. A historical look back from the 19th century to the early days . Volume 1. Horb am Neckar: Geiger-Verlag, 1999. pp. 196-200, 352-360, 387-397, ISBN 3-89570-561-6 .
Web links
- The Gauss Tower , on gaussturm.de
- Hoher Hagen - Gauss Tower , u. a. with information on the old Gauss tower and the (new) Gauss tower , on stadt-dransfeld.de
- The history of the Gauss tower - episodes 1 to 12 and 13 to 24 , from and accessed on October 12, 2014, on goettinger-tageblatt.de
- Gauss tower. In: Structurae