Wikingturm

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Wikingturm in Schleswig in January 2009
View from the Wikingturm to the city center with the Schleswig Cathedral in summer 2006
The Wikingturm in the vicinity of its marina

The Wikingturm is a striking residential high- rise in the Schleswig-Holstein city ​​of Schleswig . The octagonal building with a height of 90 meters has 29 floors, 241 apartments and has a high recognition value thanks to its characteristic architecture - a narrow substructure and an equally designed upper area of ​​the top three floors. The Wikingturm was built in the Friedrichsberg district in the area of ​​a marina in the Schlei , approx. 500 meters southeast of Gottorf Castle . There is a restaurant on the 26th floor.

Building history

The tower was planned as an “Alter Garten construction project”, named after the neighboring street and the residential area there, but was later renamed the “Wiking Project”. As part of an architectural competition , the expert committee recommended the concept by the architects Hermann Weidling and Erhart Kettner from Kiel , which envisaged a 47 meter high hotel tower and three towers of different heights. However, the city council decided in favor of the design by the Sylt architect and investor Horst-Günther Hisam. Accordingly, a single, high tower with an adjoining leisure and sports center should be built. The plans sparked violent protests from the population, who viewed the tower as far too monumental and believed that it would destroy the harmonious cityscape. Some of the demonstrations continued during the construction phase.

In April 1970, the drilling for the foundation of the tower began east of the Alter Garten housing estate on a small drilling platform specially shipped to Schleswig . For this purpose, piles up to 30 meters long were driven into the silt of the Schleigrund ground. During a visit to the construction site in the same year, Helmut Lemke , the state's prime minister, found the project to be “economically sensible, good idea, aesthetic still to be examined”. Since the excavation pit was 1.9 meters deep and therefore 1.2 meters below sea ​​level , it was necessary to lower the water table by up to two meters. Hisam planned to complete the construction as a prestige project by the 1972 Summer Olympics , whose sailing competitions were held in Kiel and to operate the leisure and sports center as "Port Wiking". In fact, it was possible to pull up the core of the tower by April 1972 and on August 10 - just two weeks before the opening of the sporting event - the topping-out ceremony was celebrated in front of 1,000 guests . Subsequently, however, the construction was delayed, so that the high-rise was not completed until April 1973; the construction of the other buildings was even further behind plan. The complex was not due to open as a hotel with 100 beds and a swimming and tennis hall until the beginning of 1974.

However, this did not happen because Horst-Günther Hisam's surprising insolvency led to construction being interrupted in July 1973. The state government assessed this setback as an “entrepreneurial failure”. While the newspapers described the Wikingturm as “the most expensive ruin in northern Germany” and the 40 million Deutsche Mark project was in danger of failing, Prime Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg visited the construction site with politicians Heinz Bartheidel , Egon Schübeler and Otto von Wahl . From April 1976, there was no longer any possibility of an out-of-court settlement and the tower was threatened with foreclosure . Its debt burden alone was 32 million Deutschmarks and in the course of the auction, both the high-rise building and the leisure center were transferred to the Landesbank Schleswig-Holstein .

In 1977 the city administration planned to set up the municipal "House of the Garden" on the upper floor, but the idea of ​​a hotel had meanwhile been abandoned. The first residents moved into their apartments on November 1st of the same year. The Wikingturm later remained a structural problem for Schleswig. Economic crises and a drop in prices made themselves felt and the apartments sold very poorly. In some cases, relatives of more opaque, possibly crime- related milieus also moved in , which made the residents of Schleswig even more averse to the building. All apartments have now been renovated and almost every other area of ​​the tower has been completely overhauled.

Use in film

The Wikingturm can be seen several times in the feature film Ass Cold as the main character's residence. In the ZDF - TV series Under other circumstances, the Wikingturm is used both in the preamble and in various sequences as action / location.

Use in literature

Joachim Meyerhoff: When will it finally be like it never was again , Publisher: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, ISBN 978-3462045161 , p. 38f.

Web links

Coordinates: 54 ° 30 ′ 28 ″  N , 9 ° 32 ′ 59 ″  E