Westwall Museum Pirmasens
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| place | Pirmasens |
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Military museum
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| ISIL | DE-MUS-933217 |
The Westwall Museum Pirmasens on the edge of the Pirmasens district of Niedersimten in the southwestern Palatinate (state of Rhineland-Palatinate ) is a museum that is set up in a former fortress . It is about war and for that very reason sees itself as a memorial to peace . It was founded by the registered association HGS Gerstfeldhöhe and is operated by this in cooperation with the city of Pirmasens .
location
The Westwall Museum is located in the underground former fortress Gerstfeldhöhe . The district of Niedersimten, two kilometers south of Pirmasens, is reached via the Bitscher Straße, which continues to Bitsch in France . Two disused tanks mark the entrance to the fortress and museum.
history
As part of the construction program for the construction of the west wall during the National Socialist era, the Gerstfeldhöhe fortress, reminiscent of a huge bunker , was started in 1938 . Kilometers of arched passages were blasted and carved into the massive rock . An underground narrow-gauge railway was planned , which was to carry soldiers and military equipment over a distance of five kilometers to the planned combat stations on the nearby French border. After the start of the Second World War in 1939, work continued on the building project for another year, then it was discontinued.
After the war, the Gerstfeldhöhe gallery was used by the US Army as a warehouse for vehicle spare parts until the early 1990s. The US Army had more than 20 such underground facilities in the southwestern Palatinate .
meaning
The Siegfried Line, which was only partially completed, stretches for around 600 kilometers from Weil am Ober- to Kleve on the Lower Rhine . It consisted of almost 20,000 different weir systems. After the war ended in 1945, most of the structures were blown up or left to decay naturally. The Gerstfeldhöhe fortress is one of the few very well-preserved structures - probably because it was never in use during the war.
sightseeing
A constant temperature of 8 ° C prevails throughout the fortress. It can be viewed during the visiting hours published on the museum's website.
On a one-and-a-half-hour tour, which leads about a kilometer through tunnels, some of which are fully developed and some of which are still in the rock, the visitor is presented with an impressive amount of war tools that the operating association received mostly from private collectors. Comments and messages from American soldiers written on the tunnel walls can also be read. The exhibits include not only an armory stocked with all sorts of projectiles , but also small parts such as gas masks and machine guns, as well as larger exhibits, for example an anti-aircraft cannon weighing more than two tons, large trucks and heavy motorcycles as well as a VW bucket car . A crew quarters have been reconstructed true to the original. Mannequins dressed in Wehrmacht and NSDAP uniforms act as mute extras .
literature
- Kai Christian Deinhard: The Gerstfeldhöhe fortress in Niedersimten Pirmasens. In: Ingo Eberle (ed.): The West Wall. Preservation, social acceptance and tourist use of a heavy heritage for the future , 2006, ISBN 978-3-8334-6593-2 . Pp. 134-141
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Register of Associations No. 1358 at the Pirmasens District Court
- ↑ a b c westwall-museum.de: Price information
Coordinates: 49 ° 10 ′ 32.1 ″ N , 7 ° 35 ′ 47.1 ″ E