Astronomical tower
The term astronomical tower or mathematical tower was previously used as a synonym for observatories when they reached the height of several floors. These structures, mostly between 15 and 30 meters high, were not only a place for astronomical observations , but also a kind of status symbol . Some of them also housed scientific museums or libraries, sometimes also the physical wonder chambers that became increasingly popular from the 17th century .
history
Antiquity
Even in early antiquity there were temples or other representative buildings, the upper floor of which served as an observation platform for court or priest astronomers. Examples are some Babylonian ziggurats , Central American step temples and probably the Tower of Babel as well . In Greece, the 13 m high, octagonal Tower of the Winds (Athens) probably served as an observatory, which the astronomer Andronikos of Kyrrhos in the 1st century BC. Built.
Heyday of Islam
The design of the observatories, which were used in the cultural heyday from Arabia to Persia to the Mongols, is not exactly known. They too probably had stable platforms on observation towers, which is indicated by the accuracy of the wall quadrants and other measurements, as well as the obliqueness of the ecliptic . Important locations from the 9th to 13th centuries were a. Baghdad , Alexandria, Shiraz or Samarkand (see Large Sextant from Ulug Begs Observatory 1425), and in Spain the Alfonso X observatory in Toledo around 1250.
Europe of the modern age
In other parts of Europe, such buildings with ancient and Arab influences did not emerge until the late Middle Ages, including the tower of Heinrich von Langenstein at the Herzogskolleg in Vienna in the 14th century .
However, the following served as a model for many later tower observatories:
- the Tower of the Winds in the Vatican, the 73 m high observation platform of the first Vatican observatory . It was added from 1578–1580 to the four-story wing that is now used for the Vatican Library and named after the Athens model;
- the mathematical tower of the Kremsmünster observatory from 1749. The 50-meter-high building, built by the Kremsmünster Benedictine Abbey , is considered the world's first high-rise . It served as an observatory until the early 20th century and as a weather station with the longest data series to this day . The lower floors of the tower housed art collections and various museums. All four aspects show that the Benedictines are open to new developments in science and art;
- the tower of the Clementinum of the Jesuits in Prague (around 1700). It became the model for some early university observatories .
From around 1600 similar towers were built for many observatories of universities, monasteries and buildings of the nobility . Such buildings include:
- the tower of Mühlegg Castle near Gössendorf (Styria) built for Johannes Kepler by his father-in-law around 1600 ,
- the mighty Sukharev Tower in Moscow from 1692 in the style of the Moscow Baroque , which a few years later received a small observatory at a height of 66 m by General Bruce ,
- Clementinum Prague around 1700
- Astronomical tower of the Benedictine AbbeyChecking , Upper Palatinate, around 1700,
- the tower of Wetzlas Castle (around 1720) in the Waldviertel, Lower Austria,
- the Zwehrenturm in Kassel (around 1710),
- the mathematical tower of the University of Wroclaw, built around 1730, observatory from 1790,
- the Kremsmünster observatory (1749),
- the old Vienna University Observatory, tower construction in 1755 under Maximilian Hell on the Alma-Mater building next to the Jesuit Church,
- the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera of the Jesuit observatory in Milan (almost 20 m, 1762), where Giovanni Schiaparelli discovered the Martian canals in 1877 ,
- the mathematical tower of the Graz University Observatory , a 12 m high structure above the west wing in Bürgergasse, with an additional observation terrace ,
- the over 20 m high, single observation tower of the Mannheim observatory (1772),
- the observatory tower of the Reichenbach am Regen monastery (Bavaria),
- the octagonal tower of the Halle observatory (Saxony-Anhalt) from 1788,
- the approximately 30 m high tower of the Pleißenburg (1549/1787) of the Leipzig University Observatory , demolished in 1897
- the dome structure on the roof of the Göttingen observatory ,
- and last but not least the Einstein Tower (1919) in Potsdam .
Picture gallery
literature
- Günter D. Roth : Cosmos of astronomy history: astronomers, instruments, discoveries . Kosmos-Verlag, Stuttgart 1987
- W. Foerster: Weltall und Menschheit Volume III (chapter on the history of astronomy, p. 82–150), Berlin-Leipzig-Vienna 1902
- Otto Wutzel: 1200 years of Kremsmünster , p. 214 ff On the history of the observatory . Upper Austrian provincial government, Linz 1977
Individual evidence
- ^ Walter Demel: European history of the 18th century , p. 150, Kohlhammer 2000.