 |
| A photo of The Waisenhausplatz Site |
NOTES Compiled by Dr. Stella Barrows, NISG
PFORZHEIM
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Pforzheim has been
known for hundreds of years (since the mid-1700s) for its jewellery and
watch-making industry, and it sports the nickname of ‘Goldstadt’ (Golden City).
1969 saw the establishment of the first workers’ union, the “Pforzheim
Gold(-metal) Craftsmen’s Union”.
The city, with its
population of 120,000 is at the confluences of the
rivers Würm and Nagold and the rivers Nagold and Enz.
Due to its location, it is often called the “three-valleys town” (Drei-Täler
Stadt) or the “Gateway to the Black Forest”. This geological land formation
could be why sonic phenomena have been so prevalent here.
Pforzheim was
settled by the Romans at the Enz River in around 90 AD. These colonists
constructed a ford, shortly past the confluence of the rivers, for their
military highway. Due to this strategic location, Pforzheim later became a
center for the timber-rafting trade, which transported timber from
the Black Forest via the rivers Wuerm, Nagold, Enz down
the Neckar and Rhine then across into Europe. Much of
Amsterdam was initially built with timbers from the Black Forest.
Archeological surveys
have unearthed several artifacts of Roman origin, with settlements located near
to where the Roman road connected the camps
of Argentoratum (nowadays Strasbourg in France) and the
military camp at Cannstatt (now a suburb of Stuttgart).
The Upper Germanic Limes borderline of the Roman
Empire crossed the Enz River and this place was known as Portus (meaning
“river crossing, harbor”), which is believed to be the origin of the first part
of the city’s name “Pforzheim”.
The Nine Years
War (1688–1697) caused tremendous destruction in Southwestern
Germany. Pforzheim was occupied by French troops on 10 October 1688. The town
was forced to accommodate a large number of soldiers and had to pay significant
amounts of money to the French. When the army unit was about to depart early in
the morning of 21 January 1689, they set many major buildings on fire, including
the palais, the city hall, and vicarages. About 70 houses (one quarter of all
houses) and part of the town’s fortifications were destroyed.
WAISENHAUSPLATZ
The
Waisenhausplatz, where Sounding Space #023 is situated, is an area in the
center of Pforzheim between the Enz, Deimlingstraße and the street Am
Waisenhausplatz. It is built on the Stadttheater, the Congress Centrum
(Stadthalle) and the Parkhotel. Waisenhausplatz is the open space between
Stadttheater and the River Enz. A remnant of the wall and a stone-framed lawn
is on the site and are the location of the former orphanage and watch-making and jewellery factory, which gives the
place its name. The wall we can see on the site here was part of the orphanage,
destroyed by an air raid on Pforzheim on February 23, 1945.
This site is extremely near to the meeting point of two rivers, the Enz and the Nagold. This might, in part, explain the intense sonic emanations – great, forceful and repetative stimulation can be a causal factor for an energetic eruption event.
METEROLOGICAL FACTORS
On 10 July 1968 shortly before 22:00, Pforzheim and its surrounding areas were hit by a rare tornado. It had strength F4 on the Fujita scale. Two people died and more than 200 were injured, with many buildings damaged. Across the town between Buechenbronn ward and the village of Wurmberg the storm caused severe damage to forest areas.
GEOGRAPHY
Pforzheim is part
of Baden-Württemberg, a state in southwest Germany, east of
the Rhine, which forms the border with France. It is the confluence of
three rivers and is lies inside three valleys. We posit that alluvial
deposits from the water may be a factor in the transmission of proto
historic sounds from surrounding ancient settlements, which date to
nomadic humans from the Mesolithic, to Neolithic farmers and, as previously
mentioned, the Roman Empire.
Geological
connectivity through the Rhine and the Enz Valleys suggests that we might
expect to detect Reflection Phenomena, as geological sound ‘flows’ along the
riverbed via underwater Transmission Layers. Atmospheric imprinting within the
surface geology of the area is expected to be a significant influence on the
background sound profile in the Sounding Space.
NOTE: there is
fascinating research into post-glacial river morphology being undertaken by Dr
Wolfgang Lovejoy into this field in his popular science book: Meander
With Me Awhile! Adventures in Alluvium.
GEOLOGY
There is an
enthralling geology to this area, with a nearby Flourite-quartz vein deposit
about 7.5km SE of the City, hosted in bunter-sandstones along the suture zone
between the Moldanbian and Saxothuringian unite of the Hercynian fold belt. The
vein trends East-North-East. It is either vertical or dips steeply to the
North. There is a significant fluorite and barite mineralisation. Cataclasis
and remobilixation of fluorite and repeated phases of mineralisation on ‘megaslickensides’.
Various phases of fluorite generation from 160 Ma to 100 Ma, the youngest of
which yields barite of 30-35 Ma.
The municipality of
Pforzheim itself is mainly built on red sandstone and the Black Forest
(Schwarzwald), the main mountain range of the state, rises east of the Upper
Rhine Valley. The Black Forest Mountains mainly consist of sandstone on top of
a core of gneiss and granites.
ALLUVIAL FORCES AND FLOURITE FORMATION
The River Enz is 106km long. The valleys of the
Enz, Rombach and other western tributaries of the upper reaches are
characterised by glacial cirques from the last ice age.
Early data from
this newly-discovered sounding space in South Western Germany, (Sounding Out
Europe: Sonic Phenomena on the Continent - Denny and Lathenby,
forthcoming) suggests that sonic phenomena on this site are the result of a
unique combination of geological and man-made conditions. Here we
experience a striking confluence of crystalline loop induction in glacial
gravel deposits, amplified, possibly by the nearby Mühlacker Broadcasting
Transmission Facility.
Flourite (Calcium
Flourite) belongs to the Halide mineral group. These are well-known for their
ability to trap sonic phenomena within their crystalline structures, a
phenomenon explained by Dr Stella Barrows in her seminal paper Rocking
Radiophony – Crystalline Induction in Sonic Geology.
The ‘icing’ on the site’s sonic geology ‘cake’ in Pforzheim (if you will forgive the pun) is the remarkable variety of sonically-active deposits laid down in this area during the last Ice Age. The Glaciation allowed an ice sheet spread south into the region, diverting its three rivers to near their present positions.
The ‘icing’ on the site’s sonic geology ‘cake’ in Pforzheim (if you will forgive the pun) is the remarkable variety of sonically-active deposits laid down in this area during the last Ice Age. The Glaciation allowed an ice sheet spread south into the region, diverting its three rivers to near their present positions.
There is a remarkable abundance of sonically-responsive fluorite in the ancient sandstone surrounding this City. The radiophonic susceptibility of this type of rock to the loop induction of proto-historic sonic phenomena is well documented by NISG.
As Denny and
Lathenby suggest, the geology in this area may have effectively turned the
entire area into a huge Crystal Set radio receiver, additionally charged by the
underground concentrations of fluorite.
One would assume
that this were enough to explain the abundance of proto-historic musical,
industrial and conversational sonic phenomena found in the area, such as the
‘singing’ of the ancient Enz riverbed, the ‘bells’ recorded from beneath nearby
churches, music from concert halls, or the geological historical echoes of the
Nine Years War.
In Waisenhausplatz,
next to the River Enz, sonic geology collides with the wonders of atmospheric
flouridic electromagnetism and long distance radio communication, creating what
we might think of as a ‘sonic sponge’ that has absorbed centuries of sound. It
is with great excitement that we invite Citizen Scientists to explore these
wonders through Ear Trumpet technology.
