Towers
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Türme is a non-fiction book by the children's book author Paul Maar about tower-like buildings from all epochs of human history from 1988.
content
This book tells of
As an introduction, Paul Maar clarifies the subjective selection principle of his non-fiction book by writing:
- “This book tells about old, new, tall and crooked towers. Extremely strange and quite ordinary. From domestic and foreign; of towers made of stone, wood, clay, porcelain, iron and ice. "
What a tower can be
At the beginning, Maar presents examples of photographed towers, which show how diverse the tower theme is:
The first towers
Above and below
Philosophers even attribute to people a "drive to heights", because "above" is always felt to be more desirable than "below".
Massive and hollow towers
According to Maar, the first towers were artificial escape mounds in the savannah that protected them from wild animals. But soon the main danger no longer came from animals, but from other people, and so the clay towers that could be climbed outside became useless. This is how the hollow tower that can be climbed from the inside was invented.
Jericho is considered the oldest city in the world and the remains of a stone round tower with a diameter of 8.5 meters were found here. What is remarkable about this escape tower is that it was built in the Stone Age and the stones still had to be worked with stone pestles.
The nurages in Sardinia and Sicily also came from the Stone Age , round, conical towers that could be climbed inside by a ladder or spiral staircase. They are built from large stone blocks and closed at the top by a vault.
The etymology of the word " nurage " is interesting . The word can be translated as » hollow tower « and thus indicates that there must have been other towers that could only be climbed from the outside.
Egyptian towers - how the development continued
The hieroglyphs with the meaning "castle" represent a tower. Although it has changed over the centuries, the tower can still be recognized. It is a round building that narrows towards the top and is crowned by a balcony-like parapet walkway that protrudes far. The entrance is at the top. If an enemy approaches, you simply pull the ladder up and close the door.
Report of a successful tower defense
The Old Testament, Book of Judges, tells of a successful tower defense:
- "But Abimelech went against the city of Thebez and besieged it and won it."
But it was a strong tower in the middle of the city. On it all the men and women and all the citizens of the city fled and closed behind them and went to the roof of the tower. Then Abimelech came to the tower and argued against it, and approached the door of the tower that he burned it with fire. But a woman threw a piece of a millstone on Abimelech's head and broke his skull. Abimelech called the boy who was carrying his weapons and said to him: "Draw out your sword and kill me, so that no one will say of me: A woman killed him."
The tower becomes a symbol
The higher and safer the towers became, the more it became a symbolic structure. They were no longer escape towers for everyone; now they belong to the king. You had to rely on the king's mercy, on his giving you refuge in his secure tower in case of danger, and you paid tribute for it. So the tower became a symbol of the ruler's power. The bigger a tower, the more powerful its owner had to be.
Towers with strange names (1)
Butter tower and buttermilk tower
The Butter Tower of Rouen Cathedral owes its name to a tradition: during Lent, the consumption of butter and other dairy products was generally forbidden. The temporary lifting of this ban enabled the construction of the bell tower to be financed with the income from the sale of butter.
The buttermilk tower in the former East Prussian town of Marienburg ( Malbork ) was built as an atonement for a sacrilege with buttermilk . In the "Great Universal Lexicon" by Johann Heinrich Zedler it says:
“Marienburg is a Polish city with a permanent castle in Polish Prussia. There is a tower in the city, which the very rich and high-spirited farmers of Groß-Lichtenau had to build as a punishment. Because they put an old sow in a bed and called the pastor of the place to give the patient the final unction. "
When the bishop heard about it, the farmers had to build a tower and mix the lime with buttermilk instead of water.
The buttermilk tower of the Church of the Dead in Treysa takes its name from a legend: During a siege, the Treysaers outwitted their enemies. The tower was painted white, and the town servants shouted to the besiegers that there were still so large supplies of food within the town walls that the church had been whitewashed with buttermilk. The enemy then withdrew in resignation. The legend has a real core. In fact, milk-based casein white was previously used as a paint, and curd and buttermilk were used to give glue and mortar greater strength. As part of the renovation of the church, bills were found that prove that the parish bought milk for the manufacture of casein paint at the time of the legend of the Thirty Years' War .
The devil deceived
A young builder in Rouen was commissioned to build the tower of the cathedral. But because the young man soon realized that his skills were insufficient, he called on the devil for help. The devil was ready to help, but he demanded the soul of the builder. The construction was finished after a year. The builder said to the devil: "If you manage to run up the spiral staircase from the base of the tower to the top while the tower clock strikes midnight, you can grab me and fall from the tower." The builder smears thick butter on the upper steps The devil slipped, fell halfway down the stairs, and got to the top too late. With that the soul of the builder was saved.
The oldest known tower visitor
An inscription in the tower of the Frauenkirche in Munich reports that in 1819 the 114-year-old Anton Adner from Berchtesgaden climbed the tower alone and without help for his pleasure.
Cake towers
In 1985 the press reported that a cake tower 16.5 meters high had been baked to celebrate Luis Trenker's 93rd birthday . But this record was already overtaken in 1987 when a 17.5 meter high cake tower was shown at the opening of the Hamburg confectionery fair.
The Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel is the most famous tower in the world, but not as a building, but as a symbol of man's arrogance .
The origin of the tower fable
The story goes back to the Indian Veda , in which it is said that people planted a tree and watered it until it reached the sky to be able to penetrate into the sky. Then the angry gods scattered people all over the world. Seven hundred years later, this story is in the Mesopotamia have penetrated. Only the tree became a tower.
The Sumerians and their temple towers
The Sumerians founded cities with mounds of earth in the middle. The reason for this could have been that the hills protruded from the water during floods and served as a refuge. These terraces became higher and higher and resulted in a stepped temple tower, ziggurat , the top step of which supported the temple.
Effect and aftermath
For travelers who came to Babylon by boat or camel caravan, it must have been an imposing sight when they approached the city from the flat land. The tower could be seen for miles and dazzled in the sunlight. The top floors were covered with glazed ceramic tiles. Above it shone the temple, the outer walls of which were covered with gold.
Tower reconstruction
Numerous archaeologists speculated what exactly the tower looked like. But some things could not be read from the texts. Did the tower have seven terraces, on which the temple stood eighth, or was this itself the seventh step? Between 1811 and 1900, scientists found the remains of a total of eleven ziggurats. A German expedition to the Orient led by Robert Koldewev finally found the ruins of Babylon in 1912. Glazed tiles were found, the remains of pillars and, 60 meters away, the starting point, the beginning of a 9 meter wide staircase.
How the Tower of Babel used to be imagined
In the Middle Ages there was a lot of argument about how tall the Tower of Babel was. The book of Moses says that the point “reached up to heaven”. Since the clouds move over the earth at a height of 1000 meters, and since the cloud layers can be a thousand meters thick, the tower had to have been at least 2 kilometers high. Others claimed that the top of the tower reached at least as far as the moon, and this view prevailed. It would have taken a worker 105 years to walk from the foot to the top of the tower.
The Jesuit Athanasius Kircher proved in 1679 that the tower could not have been that high, because its weight would have thrown the earth off balance and tipped it over.
Another natural scientist, Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, published his so-called "Copper Bible" in 1731 and stated in it:
- "Not to mention that 50 times more building materials and stuff would have been needed than the whole earth could have held."
Scheuchzer also calculated that there were 9,094,468 descendants of Noah and his three sons at that time, of whom exactly 1,763,128 people would have worked on the tower, and concludes from this:
- "It takes 12 years to complete such a huge building."
In reality the Tower of Babel was only 90 meters high
A tower and a story from Africa
In the past, all people spoke in one language. They would still do that today if they weren't so curious! One day people got the idea to see what was above the clouds. They asked their king, and his wife advised him to build a tower that reached up to the clouds. People gathered all of their granaries and placed them on top of each other. Then the king ordered the lightest of his men to climb up and see what was above the clouds. But there was still a little missing when the king had a good idea and said:
- "You just take away the lowest granary and put it on top as the last one!"
The tower collapsed with such a din that the people forgot their language in shock. And since then, people have been speaking in different languages.
How the rook got into chess
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The hallmark of a tower is that it stands firmly in its place. The rook in chess is completely different . Here he is only surpassed in agility by the lady. But the German name "Turm" is based on a misunderstanding.
The Persians called the war chariot "Rukh" . The Arabs also adopted the Persian name for this character. Islam just became the state religion. Now religion banned the making of sculptures and so they changed the appearance of the figures. They turned the chess pieces into symbols, abstract shapes.
When the Europeans asked about the meaning of the corner figures, they were told that it was the "rukh" . The knights interpreted the rukh according to its external shape: they took the notches for tower battlements, so they made the figure a tower. In England, however, the tower is not called "Tower" , but "Rook" .
Mr. Turm himself
In old reports one can read of travelers who burst into tears with joy when they saw the outline of a tower of their hometown on their return home. Such towers all had a name. They weren't called the " tower of the parish church " because you don't address a friend in such an impersonal way. They were called " the old Steffel ", " the Michel " or " Big Ben ".
From the "German Proverbs Lexicon" from 1876
- High towers fall particularly hard.
- Those who live by the tower have to put up with the ringing.
- Great towers are measured by their shadow, great people by their envious people.
- The higher a tower, the closer to the weather.
- Even the largest towers have small beginnings.
- You will soon see large towers.
- When the tower is down, everyone runs to it.
- Whoever wants to help a collapsing tower will be killed under it.
- If you want to build a tower, you should first calculate the costs.
- One should bow in front of old towers.
The flag thrower on the Old Steffel
A special surprise was thought up for the entry of Emperor Leopold I into Vienna in 1658: the gardener Gabriel Salzberger waved a flag at the top of the Stefansturm tower at a height of 135 m. As the emperor rode by below, the courageous (and probably not afraid of heights) man stood on the narrow tower button and waved the flag with both hands. However, he was forgotten and he had to spend the whole night on the top of the tower. For this the city paid him 12 thalers instead of the agreed 10 thalers.
Steeples
Churches did not always have towers . It took up to seven hundred years for the first church towers to be built. In the early days of Christianity, believers were called to worship from an elevated position. Later a drum was tried. Around the year 500 bells came from North African monasteries. They were easy to hear and more pleasant than hammering on wooden panels. At first the bells were hung on a wooden frame next to the church. But since they could be heard better when they were hanging high, towers began to be built for them, the campaniles .
A bit of church tower and art history
In the Romanesque era , the outer walls supported the roof structure. Therefore the walls were very thick and the windows were small. In the Gothic one invented the skeleton construction. Now a frame of buttresses carried the weight of the building. The brickwork in between only protected from wind and weather. While the round arch prevailed in the Romanesque, it was the pointed arch in the Gothic. In the Gothic church, the vertical is emphasized, turrets and decorations should direct the view upwards.
The Gothic churches
The Gothic style originated in France. This is where the first tower was built, which was more than 100 meters high.
- The south tower of Chartres Cathedral is 105 meters high.
- The cathedral towers of Lübeck exceeded the tower of Chartres by two meters.
- Then the tower of the Freiburg Minster was completed with 116 meters.
- Ten years later, the Salisbury Tower was completed with a height of 123 m.
- In 1433 the Stephansturm in Vienna reached 137 meters
- In 1439 the tower of the Strasbourg cathedral was completed with 142 meters.
- In 1478 the tower of the Marienkirche in Stralsund was finished with 151 meters.
- In 1569 the crossing tower of the cathedral at Beauvais reached 153 meters, but collapsed four years later.
- Until 1647 the tower of Stralsund was again the highest church tower in the world, then it burned down.
- Until the 19th century, the Strasbourg cathedral tower was again the tallest church tower in the world.
- When the residents of the city of Ulm decided to build their cathedral, it was very important for them that the tower should be higher than the Strasbourg cathedral tower.
In most cases, builders had to sign before construction began that they would not build a similarly large one in any other city after construction work was completed. However, some builders were so in demand that they could reject these conditions and still get orders.
The devil and the cathedral building in Cologne
When Master Gerhard stood on the construction crane and supervised the construction of the cathedral, the devil approached him in the form of a master builder. He bet for the soul of master Gerhard that he could derive a brook from Trier to Cologne underground before the towers were finished. Gerhard von Rile agreed and the devil told him that he would have gambled his soul away if ducks could swim on this stream from Trier to Cologne before his towers were finished to the top. Now master Gerhard encouraged the craftsmen. When his wife asked him what was making him so worried, he told her about the bet, but he took courage because the water in an underground pipe can only flow if you leave an air hole every quarter of an hour. The devil certainly doesn't know that. But the devil, as a doctor, gained the woman's trust and learned the secret. A few months later, at dawn, Master Gerhard climbed onto the crane and saw four ducks flying up from the stream that the devil had led to the cathedral the night before. Then he threw himself from the tower and the devil grabbed his soul. In 1886 an old Roman aqueduct was discovered that runs through the entire cathedral underground.
Why the top window in the left tower of the Lorenzkirche is bricked up
When the left tower of the St. Lorenz Church in Nuremberg was built, two masters were working on it. These two had previously denounced a third foreman at the city council and thus stole his job. They were jealous of each other too, and one day when one of them went to the window to measure something, the other gave him a push. But he clung to him and pulled him with him. But because there was only the third builder left, the city council had to ask him to continue construction. He was finally able to justify himself and the council decided that he could also set an example to commemorate the crime and his innocence. But that was far from him. Rather, he wanted to cover up the trail of the evil deed and ordered that the window be closed.
The decline of the Gothic and its later triumph
Of all the planned Gothic domes, only one was actually built as the architect had designed it: the Freiburg Minster . The Strasbourg cathedral should have a double tower facade. After all, it was only built with the left tower. When the building of the Ulm Minster was stopped around 1600 , it only had one tower stub. None of the planned twin towers in Regensburg stood. At Cologne Cathedral, construction stopped when one of the towers was half finished. The cathedral crane , which was used during the construction work on the half-finished church tower, remained in place for four hundred years.
The reasons for the end of the construction work were varied. Some cities ran out of money and the citizens were tired of having to raise money for cathedral construction again and again. Cities that had become Protestant lost interest in the “Catholic” cathedral. And then the Gothic architectural style went out of fashion. The Italian architect Giorgio Vasari wrote about the Gothic style around 1570:
- “Nowadays this style is no longer in practice, indeed the great masters flee its example as something monstrous and barbaric. Countless works of this type contaminate the world. God preserve the peoples in future from such ideas and works that do not deserve to be talked about longer than has already happened here! "
It is thanks to Goethe that we learned to appreciate the Gothic again. Impressed by the Strasbourg cathedral , he wrote the famous essay “Von deutscher Baukunst” , in which he placed Gothic as a typical German art form on an equal footing with Italian art. In a frenzy of enthusiasm, all the unfinished Gothic churches were finished. The tallest Gothic churches were all completed in the nineteenth century: the Regensburg Cathedral, the Ulm Minster and the Cologne Cathedral.
Brothers or twins
When the church towers were finished in the 19th century, care was taken that the double towers were exactly the same. In the case of the twin towers, which were completed in the Middle Ages, however, it was not taken very seriously. This was sometimes intentional so that the tower guard could see over the smaller tower. Sometimes only details were changed.
The lady on the tower
A young British lady named Idilia Dubb set off for Germany with her father and a governess. The father's business dragged on. The ladies had now thoroughly visited Cologne and Düsseldorf and were bored. So Mr Dubb suggested that the two of them should take a little excursion up the Rhine. Daughter and governess traveled to Koblenz. The next morning the governess woke up with a severe headache, so she was only too happy to let Idilia get her permission to go on a little excursion on the Rhine alone. The young lady drove up the Rhine. The castle ruins must have attracted Idilia in such a way that she secretly boarded a boat and rowed over to the other bank. She arrived at the ruin and found that not only the tower had stood the test of time, but also the tower stairs. Just before she reached the tower platform, a rotten beam broke and the whole staircase collapsed. Nobody heard her call, nobody saw her wave. In the evening the governess in Koblenz notified the police and the next morning the father. A search was initiated. There were some people who had seen the young English lady on the steamship. Everyone said that she left the ship in chapels. So the search was concentrated on the wrong bank of the Rhine. After decades, people began to renovate Lahneck Castle and climbed the tower platform. Only then was the riddle of the missing lady solved. Her skeleton lay on the platform next to her removed shoes. In the opening of the tower was a rope that was much too short and made of strips of her dress.
All kinds of spiers: tower crosses, weather vanes and weather cocks ...
In 1894, the American architect John Moser wrote an essay on skyscrapers . He concluded with an outlook on the century ahead:
- “The office building of the future will be useful and practical. It will communicate what it is and not claim to be anything else. It will be elegant because of its proportions and its simplicity. "
You can tell by looking at modern industrial buildings that they are not churches, but in Moser's time, John, the prediction was not at all a matter of course. Because until the 1920s, industrial buildings and high-rise office buildings tried to hide what they were. Water towers looked like the keep of medieval castles or Italian bell towers. Skyscrapers pretended to be Gothic church spiers. The architects of historicism resorted to historical art styles and oriented themselves towards Gothic and Renaissance, imitated Egyptian or Greek temples and did not look to the future.
The pagoda in balance (an imaginary tower)
We erect a massive stone base on solid ground. Two metal plates are placed on this substructure, butt against each other in the middle of the base and protrude far beyond the base. Now a pagoda is built on the plates, the weight of which presses the two plates against the base so tightly that the supporting framework can be removed. If someone were to remove the tower from the top, then there would be a situation where the pagoda and the bronze lions are equally heavy on the ends of the metal plates and are balanced. Now it is enough to throw a single stone down and the pagoda collapsed.
Awards
For this book, Maar received the German Youth Literature Prize in 1988 in the youth non-fiction category and in 1989 the Austrian State Prize for Children's and Youth Literature and the European Children's Literature Prize " Pier Paolo Vergerio ".
Quote
“One could almost think that there is a basic human urge to climb up, to build up, to erect towers. One philosopher even ascribes people a 'high instinct'. 'Above', in contrast to 'below', is always perceived as positive, as something worth striving for. "
literature
- Paul Maar: Towers. A non-fiction and narrative book of famous and unknown, remarkable and strange towers . Friedrich Oetinger, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 978-3-7891-1961-3
- Jack Reese: Lookout and monument towers in Schleswig-Holstein. Verlag Kultfeinwerk, 2008, ISBN 978-3-9812031-0-3 . kultfeinwerk.com A non-fiction book with extensive image and data material - only for Schleswig-Holstein but also with tower lexicons, explanations of terms and much more, 120 pages.
Web links
- Kulturatlas-oberfranken.de ( excerpt from Paul Maar: Towers )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marienburg Castle margin Margraburg, a niche Pohl city. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 19, Leipzig 1739, column 1536 f.