A lookout tower like from an old knight’s castle – district of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald

. Admittedly, if you have the urge to climb even higher, the Eichelspitze viewing tower on the Kaiserstuhl is a sportier choice. The steel skeleton tower, built in 2006, offers a great view with a fitness effect when you climb to the visitor platform at a height of 28 meters. The listed Neunlindenturm in the district of Ihringen is more modest: only half as high, but also with a magnificent view of the Breisgau Bay, the Black Forest and the neighboring Kaiserstuhl region north and south of the Neunlindenbucks and the Totenkopf mountain.

Even the ascent, for example from Ihringen or Bötzingen on the paths of the old district boundaries leads from small monument to small monument. Old boundary stones with coats of arms and the year 1773 prove that even then, great importance was attached to documenting the exact course of the boundary and thus ownership. At the beginning of 1900, the builders or clients for the tower, the Kaiserstuhl section of the Black Forest Association, apparently had their own vision of what a lookout tower should look like. Although other local groups of the Black Forest Association had already commissioned steel skeleton towers at the end of the 19th century – such as the Hochblauenturm in 1895, also 14 meters high, or the Hochfirstturm in 1890, which was 25 meters high – the decision was made to build a building whose height, proportions, facade structure and crenellated viewing platform were very different reminiscent of a medieval castle.

The documentation by Meinhard Fleig from the local group does not reveal anything about this. But there are excerpts from the minutes of the Breisach local group, according to which the idea for the tower construction was presented and recorded for the first time at the general assembly of the Karlsruhe section of the association on May 9, 1886.

It took fourteen years to lay the financial foundations, around half of the lump sum of 8,500 marks demanded by the commissioned architect. The municipality of Ihringen provided the property free of charge. “The acquisition of the necessary construction capital in excess of the amount of the current tower construction fund in an approximate amount of 4200 to 4700 marks is to be taken up by the board on behalf of the section at the Volksbank in Endingen and the Sparkasse Breisach”, says the log book. In the end, the actual construction costs turned out to be almost 10,000 marks higher than planned. Thanks to the section’s thrift, many donations and the support of the main association, the debt was paid off as early as 1909.

In the years that followed, the nine-linden tower underwent a number of structural additions. With the advent of aviation, a flying beacon, i.e. warning lighting, had to be set up there from 1910. For this purpose, the tower was given a wooden structure in the 1930s. It was dismantled in the 1960s – the neighboring radio tower on the Totenkopf to the west, first a steel lattice mast, later the concrete transmission tower in its current form – towered over the Neunlindenturm anyway.

However, the tower did not return to its original shape. In his more mature years, he received a permanent reinforced concrete support corset at ground level. A hard-to-read inscription next to the entrance is reminiscent of a renovation in 1952. On the other hand, an information board inside is far better and more informative: all participants and donors of the steel spiral staircase installed in 2005 are listed.

Responsibility for the beautiful tower had already been transferred to the Ihringers by their Breisach colleagues in 1984 – as part of a ceremony with notarial transfer agreements and, very fitting for a medieval-looking tower, with fanfare sounds from the Kaiserstuhl heralds from Ihringen.

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