Museum Island (Munich)
| Museum Island (Coal Island ) |
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| Waters | Isar | |
| Geographical location | 48 ° 7 ′ 48 ″ N , 11 ° 35 ′ 0 ″ E | |
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| length | 863 m | |
| width | 197 m | |
| surface | 8.6 ha | |
| main place | German museum | |
The Museum Island is a river island in the Isar in Munich , on which the main location of the scientific and technical German Museum is located.
geography
The Museum Island has an area of 8.6 hectares with a length of 863 meters and a width of up to 197 meters .
The island, which is close to the center, divides the Isar into the canalised Große Isar on the left and the natural Kleine Isar , which has a relief function during floods .
The island lies on the edge of the Isarvorstadt , which today belongs to the Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt district. It is accessed from both sides by the Ludwigsbrücke , and from the west by the Boschbrücke . On the other side, the Zenneckbrücke leads to the neighboring Au-Haidhausen district . On the southern edge, the Museum Island is touched by the Cornelius Bridge, which for some time has also provided public access to the island (you can commute along the museum building as a pedestrian or cyclist between the Cornelius and Bosch Bridge).
The part north of the Ludwigsbrücke already belongs to the Altstadt-Lehel district and is now a small park with the Father Rhine Fountain . This is followed by a closing weir at running the weir Museum Island with the Praterinsel connects.
history
The gravel bank was formed in the course of the Middle Ages at a point on the Isar, where the then only Isar bridge in Munich, a wooden predecessor of today's Ludwigsbrücke, led the salt road over the Isar. From the Middle Ages it served as a raft landing , on which timber and coal delivered by the rafts were unloaded and stored. Because of this use, the island was given the name Coal Island . The city-side arm of the Isar, today's canalised part of the river, was also dammed in the Middle Ages. Initially this was done by raft rakes , which were supposed to slow down the wood that was floated in. From the 18th century, the gate was turned into a weir in order to obtain a port basin with no current.
The flood problem prevented an early settlement of the coal island. In 1772, security considerations were the decisive factors in setting up barracks and a parade ground on the island. To the right of the Isar was the suburb of Au , which was the third largest city in Bavaria at the end of the 18th century and mainly housed poor sections of the population and could have been dangerous for the royal seat of Munich.
Even at the beginning of the 19th century, the Isar flood remained a risk for the coal island. On September 13, 1813, the Isar bridge collapsed again, with over 100 onlookers who had been on the bridge drowned. Part of the Isar barracks was also affected by this flood. With the floods of 1813, plans for a boulevard from the Isartor over the bridge were also discarded.
Today's Ludwigsbrücke was built in 1828 at the behest of King Ludwig I , whose name it also bears. It was the first stone construction of the bridge. The island was also used militarily until 1885.
Rafting reached its peak around 1870 - the Coal Island was the largest rafting port in Europe at that time . In the 1870s , around 12,000 rafts landed on the island each year, the wood was primarily used as firewood, but also as construction timber. At the end of the 19th century, however, the Floßlände was relocated to Thalkirchen , as the coal island had been included in the town planning in the meantime.
After the soldiers withdrew in 1885, the coal island was used as an entertainment and exhibition area. The Auer Dult was extended to the island, it was also used as a festival meadow and bathing resort. In 1898 the “II. Kraft- und Arbeitsmaschinenausstellung München “. For this purpose, a neoclassical exhibition building was built that also included the old Isar barracks. Two pedestrian bridges - the forerunners of today's Bosch and Zenneck bridges - were built halfway up the island from the left and right banks of the river. The "First German Sports Exhibition" was shown in the complex in 1899. In the same year, a flood destroyed several Isar bridges and the buildings on the coal island.
As a consequence of this last flood, the island was made flood-proof based on the model of the Paris Île de la Cité . In the course of these measures, today's Cornelius Bridge was built at the southern end of the Coal Island. With the expansion, the area became attractive building land. Various proposals were discussed, for example the engineer Theodor Lechner planned the construction of a train station.
In the spring of 1903 Oskar von Miller came up with the idea of a national technical museum. The idea was welcomed across the empire - even by Kaiser Wilhelm II . As early as the autumn of 1903, the Munich city council decided to make the coal island available free of charge as a building site and to secure the prestigious museum building venture. In the spring of 1906, the new building of the museum, now known as the “ German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology ”, was put out to tender. In November 1906, a design by the renowned architect Gabriel von Seidl was chosen as the winner .
The further history of the Coal Island from 1906 onwards is identical to the building history of the Deutsches Museum. The foundation stone was laid on November 13, 1906 by Kaiser Wilhelm II. Interrupted by the First World War and the political and economic upheavals of the post-war period, construction dragged on until 1925. The new museum building was opened on May 7, 1925 - Oskar von Miller's 70th birthday. During the Second World War , over 80% of the building was destroyed by bombs at the end of 1944. After the end of the war, the reconstruction of the Deutsches Museum began, which was provisionally reopened on October 25, 1947.
The part of the Museum Island north of the Ludwigsbrücke, on which several buildings stood in the 19th century, was also called Kalkinsel in the population after a lime kiln built in 1865 , not to be confused with the peninsula to the east with the Müller'schen Volksbad, which is called Kalkofeninsel has been. The operation of the lime kiln was stopped in 1906 after a flood. Today the part of the island is undeveloped except for the Vater-Rhein-Brunnen, which came here from Strasbourg in 1932 , and is part of the landscape protection area on the Isar.
literature
- Hans-Luidger Dienel: The German Museum and its history. , Deutsches Museum, Munich, 1998
- Peter Klimesch: Isarlust - Discoveries in Munich , Munich publishing house , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-937090-47-4 . With an essay on the Museum Island and the Isar after the renaturation.
- Peter Klimesch: Munich Isar Islands - Past, Present and Future. (To the northern part of the Museum Island with the Father Rhine Fountain.) In: Ralf Sartori (Ed.): Die neue Isar, Volume 4. Munich 2012. ISBN 978-3-86520-447-9 .
Web links
- The Museum Island ( Memento from September 28, 2006 in the Internet Archive )