Gustav Kröhnke

Gustav Kröhnke around 1886

Gustav Heinrich Adolf Kröhnke (born June 30, 1826 in Glückstadt ; † March 29, 1904 in Frankfurt (Oder) ) was a German civil engineer , surveyor and "secret building officer". He was the first to have the idea for a direct connection to Scandinavia via the so-called Vogelfluglinie .

Life

Gustav Kröhnke was born in Glückstadt in Holstein, which was then still Danish, on June 30, 1826. In 1863, at the age of 37, he submitted a plan to the Danish government to build a railway line from Hamburg to Copenhagen via Fehmarn . In the politically turbulent period before the German-Danish War in 1864, Kröhnke developed on behalf of the Danish King Christian IX. first plans for a direct travel route between the then Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein and Denmark . As a Royal Danish master builder, on June 4, 1863, he presented the Danish government in Copenhagen with fully developed plans for the shortest connection between Copenhagen and Hamburg, roughly following the line that the migratory birds take on their flight to the warm south. Then the roads and railways on Zealand , Falster and Lolland were to be expanded, Lolland and Fehmarn were to be connected with a ferry, the Fehmarnsund was to be crossed with a dam and the connecting route to Hamburg via Neustadt in Holstein and Lübeck was to be extended accordingly.

People in Copenhagen were enthusiastic, but the German-Danish War of 1864 prevented the plans from being carried out. Denmark lost the war, Fehmarn became Prussian and, after the founding of the Empire in 1871, German. Kröhnke's plans disappeared in the drawers of the Copenhagen Maritime Archives.

Released from Danish service, Gustav Kröhnke offered his plans to the Prussians, and on September 17, 1865, the highest civil authority gave him permission to begin the preparatory work ( leveling ) of a route from Hamburg via Segeberg and Oldenburg in Holstein to the northern edge of the island of Fehmarn Railway line. But the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/71 delayed the execution again.

Kröhnke now devoted himself to new tasks: in 1866 the Danish government granted him the concession to build a railway on Lolland and the construction of a ferry port near Rødby (Syltholm). He also devoted himself to land reclamation. On Fehmarn he drained the Kopendorfer See to build a property and took over the almost 500 hectare area free of charge in 1866, but with the Prussian state's requirement to build a protective dike at its own expense, without government assistance. After extensive and time-consuming work, the drainage was successful and an area of ​​around 400 hectares was gained. The "Schleswig-Holstein Official Gazette" announced at the time:

The entirety of the buildings on the property of the engineer Kröhnke, the drained lake on the island of Fehmarn, has been given the name " Wallnau ", district Wallnau.

Schleswig, April 19, 1871.

"Royal Government, Department of the Interior."

On November 13, 1872, a storm surge devastated the coast of Fehmarn; all protective dikes were eroded and broken through, all villages in the lowlands flooded. When Gustav Kröhnke and his people tried to save the cattle, their own lives were in danger and could only flee to the attic of the cement-walled barn, from where they were not rescued until the afternoon of November 14th. After this catastrophic storm surge, Fehmarn's dykes were repaired or strengthened and raised with state aid, but the Wallnau dyke was left out because the landowner Kröhnke was contractually responsible for maintaining it. As a result, he began again to drain Wallnau and to strengthen and raise the protective dike. But before he was finished, the next flood broke into his country again in 1874 and 53 cattle and 51 sheep drowned.

family

On October 22, 1874, Gustav Kröhnke married a Fehmarn farmer's daughter, Anna Emerentia Wilder (born November 13, 1847) from Gammendorf . From this marriage a daughter Ella emerged, who was born on July 19, 1875 in Wilhelmshaven . Ella later recalled that after the catastrophic flood of 1872, her father had received compensation of 1,500 gold marks from the German state . At a young age she accompanied her father on his activities, for example in the Oderbruch , and took care of his physical well-being and that of his guests. In 1904 Ella Kröhnke married the later infantry general Robert Bürkner . In the same year the engineer Gustav Kröhnke died on March 29th in Frankfurt an der Oder at the age of 78. He had already sold his Wallnau estate to Hamburg spice merchants who laid out large meadows and herb fields.