Laboe Naval Memorial, Naval memorial tower in Laboe, Germany
The Laboe Naval Memorial is a 72-metre brick tower rising from a broad base, its facade pierced by narrow recessed windows in vertical rows. It was designed by Gustav August Munzer, whose simplified expressionist form was built from 1927 to 1936. A hall of remembrance and the museum submarine U-995 stand near its foot.
In 1925 former petty officer Wilhelm Lammertz proposed a memorial for the 34,836 Imperial Navy sailors lost at sea in World War I. The foundation stone was laid in 1927; the tower was finished in 101 days in 1929, but the economic crisis halted work until 1933. Completed and inaugurated on 30 May 1936, it was taken over by the German Navy Federation in 1954 and rededicated in 1996 to sailors of all nations.
The name Marine-Ehrenmal combines Marine (navy) with Ehrenmal, the German word for a memorial to the dead. Since 1954 the site has been run by the Deutscher Marinebund, and the nearby U-boat U 995, a Type VII vessel, opened as a technical museum on the beach in 1972. Since 2008 the memorial has belonged to the Straße der Monumente network.
The platform offers wide views over the fjord and the Baltic Sea, especially when the sky is clear. Visitors can walk through the exhibition rooms and enter the submarine that sits beside the tower.
Three stones on the grounds remember American submarine crews, German and Australian naval encounters, and cooperation between German and Japanese forces at sea. These markers stand away from the main paths and often go unnoticed by those who stay near the tower.
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