Hindenburgdamm
Coordinates: 54 ° 53 ′ 4 ″ N , 8 ° 33 ′ 0 ″ E
Hindenburgdamm is the commonly used name for a railway embankment that connects the North Frisian island of Sylt with the mainland of Schleswig-Holstein . The designation is often the subject of discussion. The dam was opened on June 1, 1927 after a construction period of four years and is used exclusively for rail traffic . It is part of the march from Hamburg to Westerland . Originally built on a single track, later equipped with a siding, it has been continuously double-tracked since 1972. The dam is 11.3 km long; Due to the later reclamation of land in the course of the dike measures that formed the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Lübke-Koog and the Rickelsbüller Koog , only 8.1 km of this run through the Wadden Sea .
history
The situation before the dam was built
After the end of the German-Danish War in 1864, Sylt and Westerland belonged to the new Tondern district . The seaside resort of Westerland became increasingly important. As early as 1887, the march railway led from Altona via Husum and Niebüll to Tondern . From there it was given a branch line to the Hoyerschleuse transshipment port , from which paddle steamers operated to the Sylt port of Munkmarsch in order to serve the growing traffic to Sylt.
The connection was dependent on the tide , and in winter the ice in the Wadden Sea occasionally pushed together to form an insurmountable barrier. The crossing took around six hours, and longer in adverse weather and current conditions. In the period from 1875 to 1876, Ludwig Meyn carried out investigations and boreholes in the Wadden Sea off Sylt to build a dam from the mainland to the eastern tip of Sylt, Nosel . The increasing importance of Westerland as a seaside resort finally led to the commencement of official planning in 1910, and construction preparations began in 1914, but these were interrupted by the First World War. As a result of the war, Tondern and Hoyerschleuse became part of Denmark in 1920 ; Sylt remained with Germany after a referendum . Now, German travelers had to cross the new border in order to reach the mainland ferry port to Sylt and required a visa , which increased the urgency to build a dam on German territory . Although the visa requirement was replaced in 1922 by a transit regulation with sealed trains across Danish territory and monitoring of the transfer in Hoyerschleuse by Danish customs, Denmark was only willing to do so for a limited time and only on the condition that the German Reich used this time to create a new access to Sylt from the German mainland.
The construction of the dam
Due to the low capacity of the roads northwest of Niebüll , a track was moved to Klanxbüll in 1922 , on which the material was transported. In 1923 the construction of the railway embankment began. Four months after construction began, a storm surge washed away what had been created up to that point. After this experience, the route was laid further north. The dam was built by the companies Philipp Holzmann in Frankfurt am Main (from the mainland) and Peter Fix Söhne in Duisburg (from Sylt) under the direction of the Prussian water construction authority Dammbau Sylt in Husum ; The engineer Hans Pfeiffer was the director of the new building office . A rinsing area was created between the bushes and sheet pile walls. 1,000 to 1,500 workers were employed as dam builders. In the four-year construction process millions were three cubic meters of sand and clay , as well as 120,000 tons of stones hit the mainland. The dam was given the cross-section of a two-sided sea dike with a foot width of 50 meters and a crown width of 11 meters.
The construction costs for the dam amounted to 18.5 million Reichsmarks (that is about 1700 marks per meter - that is how much a double-track tunnel would cost ). In order to cover the construction costs for the dam construction in the amount of 25 million marks (including access routes), a surcharge was introduced for the journey over the Hindenburg dam at the price of a journey of 40 kilometers in length. The surcharge was gradually reduced from 1933 and dropped in 1940.
In connection with the feared flow changes caused by the construction of the dam, about 600 meters of new, higher dykes were diked in the mainland area north and south of the dam , so that the Wiedingharder Neue Koog and the Dreieckskoog were created.
Naming
The dam was named after the then Reich President Paul von Hindenburg , who opened the railway connection on June 1, 1927 and was one of the first passengers in the opening train from the mainland station Klanxbüll to Westerland on Sylt. At the breakfast that followed in the Kurhaus in Westerland, Julius Dorpmüller , General Director of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , christened the dam with the name Hindenburgdamm .
Since the Second World War , this designation has been criticized again and again, as Hindenburg is often seen as a pioneer of Adolf Hitler due to his hesitant attitude . There have been numerous initiatives to find another name for the dam. However, proposals such as “Sylt-Damm”, “Friedens-Damm” and “Nordfriesland-Damm” have so far not been successful.
nature and environment
The dam interrupted the tidal current that had flowed between the mainland and Sylt until then. Today it is assumed that the resulting change in the flow conditions is partly responsible for the considerable loss of land on the Hörnum-Odde at the southern end of Sylt.
The dam is located in the specially protected Zone I of the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park , which is not allowed to be entered or driven on. Mudflats are in this part of the Wadden Sea beyond and therefore not allowed because the tidal currents are very strong there.
Rail transport
Loading of motor vehicles
From 1932 on, motor vehicles were also transported to Sylt by train. Until the Second World War, they were only transported to Sylt as wagon loads. A freight train was driven daily, which was supplemented daily by a pure motor vehicle freight train during the summer season.
The vehicle occupants were allowed to remain in the vehicles from 1950, which were no longer lashed with safety ropes. From 1951 there were special car transport trains that were used as local healing trains. Initially, the car trains ran four times a day. In the following year car trains ran six times a day. Soon the capacity for the transport of motor vehicles threatened to reach its limits and the desire to build a road connection to Sylt grew louder.
In 1955, crossing possibilities were created on the dam and on the mainland near Lehnshallig to increase capacity. 450 vehicles were transferred at Easter 1957. After the acceleration work was completed, the line to Morsum on Sylt was upgraded to the main line in 1957 . From 1960 onwards, motor vehicles were only transported in pure car trains. In 1961 new double-decker car transporters were put into operation. In 1964, new double-deck articulated transport wagons were used. The line on the dam has been double-tracked since 1972. For several years now, the trains have been running as the Sylt Shuttle , and since 2016 also as the RDC Autozug Sylt . From 1997 to 2013 DB AutoZug was responsible for car loading . This was dissolved at the end of September 2013 and merged with DB Fernverkehr .
On January 20, 2011, the Higher Administrative Court for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia ruled that DB AutoZug must stipulate conditions as to how the loading terminals can be used by other providers.
Other rail traffic
In long- distance passenger transport , vacationers in particular use the Hindenburgdamm to travel to Sylt. Intercity trains run across the dam several times a day . Deutsche Bahn regional trains run roughly every hour; Among other things, they are used to transport commuters from the Niebüll area. The goods traffic to supply the island is mainly driven via the Hindenburgdamm by truck and mainly uses the Sylt shuttle. In Westerland there are several sidings for direct deliveries with freight cars; however, these are rarely used.
Train station / block station "Hindenburgdamm"
In 1955, the Hindenburgdamm station was opened with a single mechanical signal box in order to increase the number of trains between the mainland and the island of Sylt; However, this was designed as a pure operating station , i.e. without platforms . In 1970 the second track reached the crossing station , two years later it went on to Morsum. The operating site was reduced to a block site . Because of its isolated location, the staff was scheduled operating holding brought auto trains and picked up. Since 1996 it has been operated as an independent section block without staff.
To date, there is no running water in the building and only a dry toilet, which was built in the tensioning room. Until 1989 even the latter facility did not exist.
literature
- Kümmel: The new railway route through the Wadden Sea to Westerland-Sylt. In: Newspaper of the Association of German Railway Administrations, Volume 67, No. 21 (May 26, 1927), pp. 557–562.
- Kümmel: The Hindenburgdamm (Niebüll – Westerland railway line). In: Journal of the Association of German Engineers , Volume 72, No. 2 (January 14, 1928), pp. 48–50.
- H. Pfeiffer, W. Mügge: Construction of a flood-free railway embankment from the mainland to the island of Sylt. In: Die Bautechnik , Volume 6, Issue 6 (February 10, 1928) and Issue 7 (February 17, 1928), pp. 69–72 and 86–89.
- Erich Staisch: The train to the north - 150 years of rail traffic in Schleswig-Holstein; from the Christian-Bahn to electrification Ernst Kabel, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-8225-0298-7 .
- Hans Bock: The march from Altona to Westerland. A photo chronicle. Boyens, Heide 1989, ISBN 3-8042-0458-9 .
- Rolf Stumpf: The train to Sylt. Verlag Eisenbahn Kurier, Freiburg 2003, ISBN 3-88255-455-X (Regional Transport History 38)
- Jan Kirschner: On rails through the North Sea - 75 years of Hindenburgdamm . sh: z, Flensburg 2002, ISBN 3-926055-65-0 .
- Thomas Steensen: How the Hindenburgdamm got its name. In: Nordfriesland Tageblatt , May 22, 2017.
Web links
- Historical photos of the construction of the Hindenburg dam
- Information page from Deutsche Bahn AG on the SyltShuttle
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spiegel article to discuss the naming
- ↑ a b c Gerd Holmer: The Hindenburg dam on the route Niebüll - Westerland . In: Press service of the Federal Railway Directorate Hamburg (Ed.): 100 Years Railway Directorate Hamburg 1884–1984 , pp. 119–121
- ↑ Gerhart Eckert , Hans-Jürgen Stöver: On rails through the mudflats . Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7672-0467-3
- ^ A b Rolf Stumpf: The railway to Sylt. EK, Freiburg 2003, ISBN 3-88255-455-X .
- ↑ Hans Jessel (Ed.): The great Sylt book . Ellert and Richter Verlag, Hamburg 1994, p. 193
- ↑ The inauguration of the Sylt railway embankment. In: Newspaper of the Association of German Railway Administrations, Volume 67, No. 23 (June 9, 1927), pp. 633–635. The speech is documented and commented on in: Arno Bammé and Thomas Steensen : Afterword. In: Margarete Boie: Dammbau. A novel from Sylt . ( Nordfriesland im Roman , vol. 6), Husum Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft 2012, pp. 285–336, ISBN 978-3-89876-610-4 .
- ↑ nje: The Hindenburgdamm and the name question. In: Sylter Rundschau. sh: z Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag GmbH & Co. KG, January 15, 2014, accessed on September 19, 2016 : "The last one about three years ago was the historian Nils Hinrichsen from the North Frisian Institute to plead for a renaming."
- ↑ Die Welt: No more monopoly on Sylt
- ↑ Signal box in the sea. Retrieved January 14, 2020 (German).