Diemelsee-Staumauer

Marsberg-Helminghausen (51.377974 | 8.72799)

Strength and power

Terrain at the foot of the dam wall, which rises here as a 36 m high quarry stone wall.

My father was a bricklayer. He mastered a technique that he was very proud of: he could build quarry stones. The difficulty lies in the fact that every stone is different. The right place has to be found for each one, with the right neighbors. No matter how crooked and angular the stones are, the wall must not only be stable, but should also be smooth. Not many people can manage that. That's probably why he would have liked to have worked on the Diemelsee dam wall if it had been his time. The stones for the dam wall, barely weathering diabase, were quarried not far from the construction site. Ninety quarry masons were called in from Italy and Serbia and construction began in 1912, but it was not completed until 1924 due to the war and a lack of funds.

Since then, the "curved gravity wall" has stood 42 meters high and almost 200 meters long at the top. The diabase has turned dark gray over the years, the joints are still light gray. The masonry has not only become stable, but also smooth. I stand at the foot of the wall, lean my head back to take in the entire height up to the sky, and think only one word: strength. I can literally feel the weight of the stones in front of me, but can only imagine the weight of 20 million cubic meters of water behind them. An unusual place of power that inspires me to make associations like this: The reservoir actually practises Asian martial arts. It builds up power, directs it and concentrates it on a single point, such as the turbines, in order to achieve the greatest possible impact. Aqua karate, so to speak.

The wall symbolizes both protection and danger. The more man intervenes in the flow of water, the higher the pressure, the greater the care required in the construction of the dam wall, the reliability of the materials and the skill of the engineers. The wall must not bulge more than five centimeters, measured with high-precision lasers, otherwise the alarm would be sounded.

During the Second World War, allied bomber units attempted to destroy the dam. But the approach through the Diemeltal was difficult and the dam remained intact. The apocalyptic plan of the Waffen SS, who wanted to blow up the dam in the last days of the war in order to leave the approaching Siegen not only scorched earth but also flooded valleys, also failed at the last minute. Water as a weapon: lucky circumstances prevented their use.

It is thanks to them that I can sit at the foot of this artificial rock face and meditate on the flow of power; on the transformation of one energy into another, of water power into electricity; on the power of man to tame the forces of nature and his impotence when this goes wrong again; and finally on the fact that I should have told my father, the quarry stone mason, how proud I am of him while he was still alive.

Author: Michael Gleich