Leaning Tower of Dausenau
The Leaning Tower of Dausenau is a tower of the medieval walled city of Dausenau , one at the Lahn located municipality in Rhineland-Palatinate, Rhein-Lahn-Kreis . At 5.22 degrees, it has the highest known incline of all towers originally built vertically.
Establishment
After the place received city rights in 1348 , the construction of a fortification was probably completed in 1359. The tower was part of the exit towards Nassau .
At the beginning of the 19th century, part of the city wall with the bulge gate was demolished below the tower and the then through road and later the B 260 were lowered. Since the city wall above was also dismantled to a few meters, the tower has been free since then.
The tower is not accessible today. An entrance staircase on the north side is no longer accessible since the city wall was partially demolished.
Tilt
Originally the tower was about 25 meters high. After its inclination became more and more pronounced in the 19th and 20th centuries and it even turned, its masonry was removed by around 7.5 meters from 1950. Today its height is given as 16.39 meters.
The movement of the tower has been observed with the help of plaster marks since the early 20th century. The seals are placed exactly over a gap. If a seal breaks, this is a sign that the slope of the tower is still increasing. The last seal from 1979 has not yet been torn, but a tear leads past it on the left.
The Leaning Tower is currently (mid-2017) leaning 2.46 meters towards the main road. The tower is thus inclined by more than 5 degrees and is comparable to the Leaning Tower of Suurhusen , which was included in the Guinness Book of Records in 2008 as the leaning tower in the world , and significantly more leaning than the Leaning Tower of Pisa (3.97 degrees). A measurement in 2003 showed a deviation of the tower from the vertical by 5.8 gon , corresponding to 5.22 degrees. The Dausenauer Tower thus slightly surpasses the record of Suurhusen (5.19 degrees) and should therefore be considered the most crooked tower in the world. This recognition was rejected by the Guinness book editorial team on the grounds that the tower was in ruins.
Causes of inclination
The Leaning Tower of Dausenau stands on the mountain side on solid rock, but on the valley side on a loam-strewn underground. During the construction work on the thoroughfare, the tower lost its abutment on the valley side and, with the city wall, also an essential support. The expansion of the Lahn into a navigable waterway in the middle of the 19th century with the construction of weirs (near Dausenau in 1926) increased the groundwater level and thus the moisture penetration of the subsoil. The increase in road traffic, especially truck traffic with its vibrations that arose in the 20th century, also contributed to its tendency. Since the B 260 bypasses the place on the left bank of the Lahn, the immediate vicinity of the tower has been free of through traffic.
Concrete seal for observing crack formation.
Leaning tower from the west.
Tower stump of the opposite tower (reconstruction). This is where the dented gate had stood.
See also
literature
- Dausenau and its history. Dausenau 1997 (from page 449) by Stefan Fischbach
- The medieval city fortifications of Dausenaus , Dausenau 1995 by Stefan Fischbach
- Carlo Rosenkranz: Still slippery - record in Dausenau? , Rhein-Zeitung, BK, from October 20, 2007
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Photo of the board on the tower, on commons.wikimedia.org
- ↑ Historisches Dausenau , accessed on April 29, 2017
Coordinates: 50 ° 19 ′ 42.1 ″ N , 7 ° 45 ′ 43.9 ″ E