Goethe Tower

The Goethe Tower (German:Goetheturm) was a 43-metre high public observation tower built entirely out of wood on the northern edge of Frankfurt City Forest located in Sachsenhausen (Frankfurt am Main). The tower was built in honour of German writer and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. After Rottenbuch Radio Tower, the Jahrtausendturm, the two towers of the Brück aerial testing facility and the Blumenthal Observation Tower it was the fifth tallest wooden construction in Germany, due to the addition of two antenna measuring stations. It burned down on October 12th, 2017.

History

In 1867, a wooden tower was first built on the site, at that time 22 metres tall. After the First World War, this first tower had become so rickety that it had to be pulled down.

In 1931, the Goethe Tower was rebuilt with money donated by the Jewish businessman Gustav Gerst. The opening ceremony took place in November 1931, shortly before the 1932 commemorations of Goethe's death one hundred years before. The city of Frankfurt provided the wood for the tower - altogether more than 340m³ of pine, beech, and oak timber.

The Goethe Tower remained a popular place for day-trippers, especially families, as a large playground and a café were built at the foot of the tower.

The building was completely destroyed in a fire on 12 October 2017. It was one of Frankfurt's beloved landmarks, visited by many tourists, and city officials have already announced plans to rebuild it largely the way it was.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Goethe Tower" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.