Saar crane
The Saarkran in Saarbrücken , originally "Saarkrahnen", later also called Alter Saarkra (hne) n , was a Baroque harbor crane , built according to plans and under the direction of Friedrich Joachim Stengel in 1761/1762 on the orders of Prince Wilhelm Heinrich von Saarbrücken-Nassau . Today's crane is a replica, erected at the same point south of the Wilhelm-Heinrich-Brücke on the left bank of the Saar . It is a land-based treadle crane , also called "house cranes" at the time, in contrast to floating cranes or crane ships.
description
The crane house is an octagonal wooden structure on a seven-layer sandstone base, the top layer of which protrudes. It is the only surviving or reconstructed crane of its type with an eight-sided crane house, of which there were several in earlier centuries (e.g. the stone baroque Rhine crane in St. Goar from the late 16th century (until 1866), the Koblenz crane (Crane house preserved), the two Frankfurt Main cranes). The eight-sided slate mansard roof consists of the fixed, steeper lower part with four pointed dormer windows with wooden wings , each attached to the north, west, south and east side of the roof, and the upper, flatter, inclined, rotatable part with three small round gable dormers with oval ones Wooden wings and a T-profile wooden bracket with chain, ball and hook with attached wooden barrel. At the boom tip with a fixed roller sits a gold-plated eagle with spread wings as a rare feature. As the representations of the original crane also show, it did not have a hook or loading gear with a loose roller like many other pedal cranes, which were easy to install. The entrance door with stairs is on the north side. Next to the crane, an information board shows the original "Saarkrahnen" (sic!), As it was then called, on a drawing from 1770, the history of the crane and indicates its current precarious condition, including damage caused by water ingress Kaiserbaum, boom and a break in the inner construction.
history
Today's crane is a reconstruction from the years 1989–1991 based on the historical "Saarkrahnen", which was in operation from 1762 to 1852 and was last called "Alter Saarkrahnen". It was used to reload goods from Saar ships onto carts and wagons. At that time, the sandstone plinth, several meters high, was almost fully visible on the steep bank of the Saar, with a significantly lower water level than today, a cast iron fence on a stone plinth with high stone pillars, directly on the east side of the crane and connected to the crane plinth, separated it the area. Due to the bank design, access was at ground level. The Trier customs crane had a similar demarcation until the middle of the 20th century.
Prince Wilhelm Heinrich von Saarbrücken-Nassau laid the foundation stone for the Saarkrahnen himself on June 15, 1761, the total cost of which was 5,000 guilders . The "Krahnengesellschaft" founded in 1760 acted as the client. She was princely privileged and operated the crane and its new construction from 1784 with an interruption from 1794 to 1801, during which the company was suspended. This crane company had the sole right to use the crane. Its members - wealthy traders - bought large sums of money into this exclusive transport and trading company and thus secured a preferential position by excluding all small traders from using the crane. During this time of the economy, which was largely characterized by guilds and guilds and thus by restrictions of competition, the members of the crane society took the first steps in the direction of performance orientation and market economy structures.
At the beginning of March 1784 it was destroyed by the flood of the century ( flood in 1784 ) and rebuilt in the same year. In 1852 the Stengel crane was dismantled and replaced by a steel structure. This soon became superfluous with the advent of the railroad and the construction of a large new port facility and was shut down in 1865. The crane fell into disrepair and disappeared, hardly noticed, from the cityscape and the memory of the city dwellers. During the construction work on the A620 urban motorway in the early 1960s, its old foundation was found. This octagonal sandstone plinth, protruding a little more than two meters from the level of the bank, in the shadow of the approach and exit ramps of the Wilhelm-Heinrich-Brücke , lived an unnoticed existence for almost another 30 years , only after a successful appeal for donations in the mid-1980s was erected according to historical plans and engravings from the Baroque period from 1989–1991 an architecturally and technically true-to-life reconstruction of the crane as a technical monument on its original foundation. Since then, the old Krahnen , as it is called in the dialect , has emerged as the icing on the cake of the renovation of the Saarbrücken Castle from 1982 to 1989, an indispensable part of the cityscape of the state capital.
If the project city center on the river can be realized, the demolition of the current Wilhelm-Heinrich-Brücke and its concrete ramps, which are typical of the 1960s, will make the Saarkran stand free again, and even be located on a promontory emerging on the banks of the Saar, making it an eye-catcher represent.
On June 26, 2012, the crane boom had to be dismantled due to significant defects. Putrefaction had attacked the “beak” made of pine wood instead of the usual oak wood used for load-bearing and weather-exposed crane parts. The barrel and eagle are stored.
See also
swell
- ↑ a b c Charly Lehnert : The Saarland Geheichnis, Volume 1: Stories and glosses . Lehnert Verlag, Bübingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-939286-18-9 , We don't make coal with coal, p. 82-83 .
- ↑ SOL article on dismantling the boom from June 18, 2013
Web links
- Literature about the Saarkran in the Saarland Bibliography
- Close-up of the gilded eagle with cantilever end
- lateral close-up of eagle
Coordinates: 49 ° 13 ′ 59.9 ″ N , 6 ° 59 ′ 30.9 ″ E