As of: March 13, 2024, 1:00 p.m
Comments
Press
Split
The workers at the Walchensee power plant toiled in miserable conditions for six years.
This picture from the power plant archive shows the floor walls in the Kesselberg tunnel.
© Josef Flemmerer / Kraftwerk archive / Repro: Pröhl
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Walchensee power plant, Kochler Helmut Renner published two books on the history of the building.
Now he gave his first lecture on this in the information center of the power plant in Altjoch.
The interest was great.
Kochel am See – Today there are larger and more powerful hydroelectric power plants, such as the controversial Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China.
But 100 years ago, the Walchensee power plant, which uses the 200 meter difference in altitude between Kochelsee and Walchensee to generate electricity, was the largest of its kind in the world and also one of the largest construction sites ever.
No wonder that this magnificent pioneering achievement on Bavarian soil under the leadership of engineer Oskar von Miller is being duly celebrated with a variety of events in the anniversary year.
Numerous anniversary events
Today the power plant is also a significant industrial monument and an example of great engineering.
It went into operation for the first time on January 26, 1924 after almost six years of construction.
This year there is a long series of anniversary events with numerous lectures, book presentations, guided tours and seven open-air concerts in the summer with which the power plant operators want to do justice to the big occasion.
At a well-attended lecture, Kochler local historian Helmut Renner gave an insight into his two books, which he published together with his Grainau colleague and co-author Peter Schwarz.
They are simply called “100 Years of the Walchensee Power Plant” and tell the story from the idea to the construction and up until today against the backdrop of an eventful contemporary history.
Author and local researcher Helmut Renner (right) with Theodoros Reum Schüssel, press spokesman for Uniper's Hydropower Germany division.
© rbe
Many workers still suffered from war trauma
At his first appearance (the second follows on September 26th at the information center in Altjoch), Helmut Renner was not concerned with the technical data of the power plant, but with the “human side” of the construction of this major project.
This began with the vanities in the scholarly dispute when it came to the sense or nonsense of this project.
My news
Disillusionment with the expansion of wind power: a maximum of 3.9 percent of the Oberland is suitable for systems
Overtaking maneuver goes wrong: Mercedes driver pushes man (68) away - and then commits an accident
1 hour ago
Escalation due to illegal parking: traffic monitor badly insulted - landlord and waiter in court
Significant decline: the number of holidaymakers in Lenggries is falling because there is no snow
“A lot is forgotten in everyday life”: Experts give tips for thorough spring cleaning
New “Zachschuster” in Gaißach: The opening is getting closer – the first reservations have already been received
(Our Bad Tölz newsletter regularly informs you about all important stories from your region. Sign up here.)
With many picture examples, his lecture mainly revolved around the living conditions and the fate of up to 2,000 construction site workers.
They worked in a turbulent time under terrible strain and great danger, still suffering from their war traumas, from economic hardship and hyperinflation, which ate up their meager wages and even made it impossible for them to travel home by train to their relatives.
Renner described individual fates such as that of Egidius Bruckbauer, whose brothers had died in the war and who was even banished from his own family as a “destroyer” because of this “terrible shame and cowardice”.
The war-worn workers had nothing to lose.
In their distress they also poached.
They became vulnerable to radical ideas and organizations.
They also took part in a Spartacist uprising with a march on Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
It amounted to an attempted coup, but ultimately went unpunished because they were simply indispensable to construction.
“Kochel was very lucky in the Second World War”
Much of this was written down by Josef Rambeck, who stood up for the workers as a trade unionist and later found himself in the crosshairs of the National Socialists.
Then in Kochel during the Second World War there was also the construction of a “hypersonic wind tunnel”, a Nazi experimental facility relevant to the war to research the flight behavior of supersonic jets, rockets and projectiles.
“Kochel was very lucky not to be bombed by the Allies like the facilities in Peenemünde,” said Renner.
That would certainly have claimed many lives.
After the war, the Americans took advantage of the flow experiments of the world's leading German engineers.
Helmut Renner blamed the small-minded dissension of the democratic forces between 1918 and 1933 for the Nazis coming to power.
“Today we have to be careful again.
“Democracy doesn’t need cowards,” Renner appealed to his audience.