Waitzscher Tower
The Waitzsche Tower in the spa park of Bad Nauheim is, next to the windmill tower on the Long Wall, one of the two wind pumps built between 1742 and 1747 at the former Nauheim salt works .
It served as a wind- and water-driven pumping station to convey the brine to the graduation buildings. The builder was the Obersalzgräfe Jakob Sigismund Waitz von Eschen, who in 1735 had received an order from the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel to modernize the Nauheim saltworks and to make salt production profitable. The location of the Waitz Tower was chosen carefully by the salt marshland. He had noticed that an abundant brine spring emerged in the river bed of the USA . He diverted the water and dug two sink wells ten meters deep in the drained gravel bed.
The four-story tower with a height of 21.3 meters was erected over this fountain. Inside, a wooden staircase led to the individual floors and under the hood. This was covered with shingles and had a tinny button with a flag. The hood with the windmill blades rested with twelve iron wheels on a wooden turntable. When the wind was favorable, the 20-meter-long, canvas-covered wings moved the pumps to convey brine to the neighboring graduation buildings over a wave tree. When there was no wind, the pump mechanism could be driven by a so-called artificial linkage from a water wheel on the USA.
In the autumn of 1824, both the Waitzsche Turm and the windmill tower on the Long Wall were badly damaged by a hurricane . A repair was not possible for cost reasons. The windmill tower on the long wall was provided with a half-timbered structure and a slate roof, the Waitzsche tower fell into ruin. It was not until 1931 that the so-called “Rabenturm” received a copper roof. Today the basement of the tower, which is completely empty inside, serves as a storage room for chlorine gas bottles from the neighboring thermal bath .
The two wind arts of the former Nauheim saltworks are the only windmill towers ever erected in Hesse for the extraction of brine. They are entered in the list of cultural monuments in Hessen.
literature
- Erich Brücher: The Waitzsche Tower and the former windmills of the saline in (Bad) Nauheim. Wetterauer Geschichtsblätter Volume 7/8 (1959), pp. 148–151
- Brigitte Kull: Brine and salt make history. State Office for Monument Preservation (2003), p. 49
- Karl Christian Langsdorf: Instructions for salt works. (1784), p. 286
- Johannes Mager: Mill wing and water wheel. VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig 1987, p. 198
- Alfred Martin: The Waitz'sche Thurm. Bad Nauheimer Jahrbuch VII (1928), pp. 56–59
- Alfred Martin: Bad Nauheim, from the early days to the present. Ed. Hess. Staatsbad 1952, pp. 47–48
- Roland Scharf: The Nauheim Saltworks, 1st edition. Published by the City of Bad Nauheim 2007, p. 8
- Reimer Stobbe: Söderdorf to the heart spa. Ed. WZ-Verlag / Magistrat der Stadt Bad Nauheim 1997, p. 94
- Wilhelm Wagner: Chronicle of Bad Nauheim. Self-published by the author in 1897, pp. 44 and 45
- Cultural monuments in Hessen, Wetteraukreis II. 1999, p. 135
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 22 ′ 4.1 ″ N , 8 ° 44 ′ 31.3 ″ E