Fernsehturm Stuttgart Radiosender

German words agglomerate.  Hence the existence of the book Schottenfreude. "Fernsehturm" is the German word for television tower. "Fernsehen" means television, as in the noun, the electronic device. To break that down further, "sehen" means to see.  The word "fern" means remote; as in at a distance. So You can string that together pretty sensibly "fern-sehen-term" or "remote - seeing - tower."    But "turm" was the root that meant tower or steeple.

To further cloud this waters for those of use who speak a largely non-agglomerating language, "Fernmeldeturm" is the correct word, only if it's part of a building. The noun "meldung" means "information, report or an announcement.  So they added the "building" root when it was just a tower and then further added the "information" after the tower was on a building. Tricky language. Also sometimes makes things difficult to research.

This is added to the formal name of any radio tower that has a name like a prefix ex. Fernsehturm Berlin which is the tallest structure in Germany at 368 meters tall  (including antenna). It was built between 1965 and 1969 so it's coming up on it's 50th Birthday. Another example would be Fernsehturm Stuttgart which is the first telecommunications tower in the world constructed from reinforced concrete. Stuttgart is older having been placed in service by February of 1956. But today it only broadcasts several public FM radio stations. So despite the lack of "remote seeing devices" they still refer to it as a Fernsehturm. Transmission of the ARD TV network's analogue service stopped in 2006. Those television services moved to nearby Fernmeldeturm Stuttgart.

So I deduced that since the German word for radio is radio.. that radio tower should be then a radioturm. The answer is... sort of. Radioturm is not a popular word. It's used only in specific contexts, mostly much older radio constructions. Ex. Radioturm Schuchow, Radioturm mit Sirene, Shabolovka Radioturm, and the Shukhov radioturm which I wrote about previously.

Save the Shukhov Tower!

I'll start off by saying that the Shukhov Tower has already been saved. Russian news was slow to cross the pond, and slower to translate so by the time I heard, the story was in the past tense. In February of 2014 the Russian State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting agreed to the dismantling of the tower. On July 10th 2014 the Russian Ministry of Culture announced that demolition would violate the tower's protected status as a cultural monument. It was a stay of execution. But in-between these events was an outcry from historians, radio geeks and architects. More here.

Westerners may never have heard of it, but try to imagine that the Russian Federation had it's own Eiffel tower and you'll be on the right track. When the drama began the Committee explained their dilemma;  the aging tower had fallen into such irrevocable disrepair that it needed dismantled immediately so there could be any hope that it could be reassembled at a future date. People didn't like that answer. The Committee claimed the structure is on the literal verge of collapse. Petitions circulated.  One, drafted by historian Jean-Louis Cohen and photographer Richard Pare was sent directly to President Vladimir Putin.

The eye-catching tower was competed on March 19th, 1922. It was designed by Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov. It was not his only work. Shukhov built two similar towers stood on the Oka River The towers were a part of a 110kV three-phase AC transmission line. they were commissioned in 1927 and 1929. But the power lines were decommissioned in 1989.One of the towers was demolished and sold for scrap metal in 2005, possibly illegally. Now there is only one, and it is the world’s only diagrid hyperboloid transmission tower. A missing twin to the worlds only diagrid hyperboloid radio tower.

Shukhov originally planned for the radio tower in Moscow to be 360 meters tall. Material shortages led to a more conservative height of 128 meters. The towers were commissioned by Vladimir Lenin, the tower design consists of a series of stacked 25-meter hyperboloids of diminishing diameter. Shukhov built at least 200 towers using the design to hold up antennas or even water tanks. he was so expert with hyperboloid geometry that the U.S. Navy acquired Shukhov’s patents a to build lattice masts on ships.

So, about the radio connection. When the German critic Walter Benjamin visited Moscow in 1928, he noted the towers in his diary about "the enormous Moscow radio transmitter, whose shape is different from any other I have seen.” Another Russian radio blog noted the towers as a "legendary landmarks of radio broadcast[ing]."  It was true.It's hard to identify what stations broadcast on the structure. One Shukhov website listed off two early stations: an unnamed Moscow radiotelegraph station, and "Big Komintern." The latter was a 12 kW station that signed on in 1924. It was built by the Nizhegorodskaya Radio Laboratory (NRL.) It was celebrated at the time as a "trumpet of the radio revolution."