Stamp point 199 / Bismarck Tower

The Bismarck Tower is located south of the Ballenstedt district of Opperode on the Stahlsberg (270 m above sea level).

The may­or of Bal­len­st­edt sug­gest­ed the con­struc­tion of this Bis­mar­ck Tow­er on Octo­ber 18, 1913, at the cen­te­nary cel­e­bra­tions of the Bat­tle of Leipzig. On Novem­ber 2, 1913, the loca­tion was deter­mined and the “Work­ing Com­mit­tee for the Erec­tion of a Bis­mar­ck Mon­u­ment on the Stahls­berge near Bal­len­st­edt” was found­ed under the chair­man­ship of Dis­trict Direc­tor Dr. Knorr. Pro­fes­sor Wil­helm Kreis from Düs­sel­dorf was also cho­sen as the archi­tect of the Bis­mar­ck Tow­er, as Kreis had already designed sev­er­al award-win­ning tow­ers, such as the “Twi­light of the Gods” design. He designed the tow­er as an obser­va­tion tow­er with a fire bowl. 

The cer­e­mo­ni­al lay­ing of the foun­da­tion stone took place on June 14, 1914, short­ly before the out­break of the First World War. Due to the war, the con­struc­tion work could not be ful­ly com­plet­ed and as no fur­ther work was car­ried out until 1929, the tow­er was in dan­ger of falling into disrepair. 

On July 12, 1929, the chair­man of the Bal­len­st­edt branch of the Harzk­lub, Höhne, who had also been a mem­ber of the work­ing com­mit­tee 15 years pre­vi­ous­ly, took up a sug­ges­tion made by dis­trict direc­tor Pietsch­er. He had sug­gest­ed that the Harzk­lub branch asso­ci­a­tion should com­plete the obser­va­tion tow­er and make it acces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic. The orig­i­nal design was mod­i­fied and sim­pli­fied by the con­struc­tion man­ag­er, gov­ern­ment and build­ing coun­cil­lor Dr. Ehrlich, so that the tow­er could be inau­gu­rat­ed on May 20, 1931. 

After the Sec­ond World War and dur­ing the GDR era, the tow­er was left to decay and had to be closed due to dam­age in the 1960s.

After the polit­i­cal change, the tow­er was ren­o­vat­ed in 1994/ 1995 with state funds and the view­ing plat­form can be accessed via an inter­nal staircase. 

The tow­er can be reached from Opper­ode via the cir­cu­lar route around the Stahlsberg.

N51.71425 E11.25879