Crane gate (Danzig)
The crane gate (in Polish Brama Żuraw - crane (I) gate or Żuraw for short - crane ) is a city gate in Gdansk made of brick and wood with a double crane function . It is the most famous landmark in the city.
history
As early as the second half of the 14th century (1363), a two-tower gate building with a wooden structure was built, which closed the right city to the Motława river and already functioned as a lift ( werktor , pol. Brama warowna ) of the river port and in 1367 as caranum in a Latin text Was mentioned. Mostly destroyed by fire around 1442, it was rebuilt in 1442–1444 and received its familiar shape.
In 1945 the wooden construction of the crane gate burned down and the stone elements were badly damaged. After the Second World War , the building was reconstructed according to plans by Stanisław Bobiński from 1957 to 1959 and has served as part of the National Maritime Museum since July 20, 1962. With the Trier old crane from 1413, the crane gate is one of the oldest lifting devices of this type in the (formerly) German-speaking countries.
description
.JPG)
The crane gate in Gdansk was built in the brick Gothic style as a double semicircular tower gate with steep, tile-covered roofs directly at the Mottlauhafen. The 31 m high central building clearly towers above the flank towers (24.5 m). The flat side of decorate city four each, via the first and second floor reaching blind arches on either side of the gate entrance, the recess inner surface is engaged cm to about 60 and whose two inner sheets each having two square windows of said floors. On the harbor side, it protected the city and also served as a loading facility.
The wooden porch in the central section of the gate above the port-side gate passage is designed as a double lift over six floors. The interior of the stone central building houses two pairs of pedal bikes with the largest diameter of all known pedal cranes of 6.5 m. The pedal wheel axle of the lower crane is embedded in the middle building walls on the first floor (at a height of 6 m a little above the ground) so that the wheels reach into the gate passage below. The approx. 10 cm thick hemp rope ( hawser ) runs from the winch (treadle axle) located between the wheels through two hatches to the third floor, from where it is picked up by a pulley set in a wooden frame on the floor and to the crane roller on the outside and from down there to a simple hook without a roller, the stop of which is about 11 m high.
The upper pair of bicycles is installed in the same way on the fifth floor at a height of 20 m. His crane rope runs through an opening to the sixth floor (attic), where it is guided forward via a similarly mounted pulley to the two crane rollers lying one behind the other down to the loose roller with hook. Its end is attached to the crane beam under these rollers (approx. 27 m). With the upper crane, loads of up to four tons could be lifted using hemp rope, the loose pulley with hook and load rope. The individual floors can be reached via ladders and hatches. Four or more winch men (in Danzig mostly prisoners) started the lifting device by climbing it. The goods could be raised 11 m and 27 m, which in the latter case also served to insert ship masts.
The two pairs of treadmills are each mounted on an axle beam with an edge length of 0.60 m. The segment between the wheels is used to hold the rope, which is why its edges are rounded there. The treadmills each have eight spokes on each side, two of which are attached to the axle sides at an angle of 45 ° and behind them tangentially (180 °). Two surrounding wooden wreaths, mounted on the spokes between the axle and the outer treadle base, stabilize the wheels and serve as a handrail. The wooden rims of the lower pair of treadles are closer together than those of the upper pair of wheels. This tangential spoke assembly is not very common. Most of the pedal bikes still in existence today have a more radial spoke assembly. Four spoke struts in the center of the wheel diameter attached to each side of the axle beam form a kind of double cross. Of these four double spokes (eight spokes), two shorter spokes are attached symmetrically to the wheel rim (tread floor) to fill the four right-angled spaces between them (16 spokes: old cranes in Andernach , old cranes in Marktbreit , earlier cranes in Frankfurt, etc.) or . Two each over a cross piece (16 spokes: treadmills in Gmünder Münster and in the north tower of the Frauenkirche Munich ) or one each (12 spokes: Stockholm cannon crane ).
The roof of the rebuilt crane gate, the front gable of which is hipped off in contrast to the old gate , has been adorned there since 1993 by a crane (Polish: żuraw ) as a weather vane with the addition AD 1993 . Up until the 19th century, a weather vane also showed sailors the wind direction that was so important at the time. The crane gate is depicted on the 5 guilder coins of the Free City of Danzig from 1932.
See also
Web links
- The crane gate . In: Website of the National Maritime Museum in Gdansk
Coordinates: 54 ° 21 ′ 2 " N , 18 ° 39 ′ 28" E