The Asparagus - Frankfurt's forgotten TV Tower

by - Sunday, April 09, 2017

One building that stands above the rest in Frankfurt -and over all of Germany, for that matter- is the telecommunications tower, also known as the Europaturm (Tower of Europe), located in the district of Bockenheim, slightly north of the downtown area. 

At 331 meters (1,086 feet), only the TV tower of Berlin is higher than Frankfurt's Europaturm, although this is largely due to a higher antenna, not the structure of the building as such. Especially at night, you couldn't miss the Europaturm's conspicuous red light above the turret if you tried. 

The locals never refer to the tower as the Europaturm anymore than the world refers to Elton John as Reginald Dwight or Lady Gaga as Stefani Germanotta. Most common is the nickname 'Asparagus of Ginnheim' (Ginnheimer Spargel), which is misleading, since the building itself is actually in Bockenheim, not the Ginnheim district that is immediately identified with the region north of the Autobahn 66. Even so, people mostly denounce the Asparagus as being little more than a high antenna these days, its status long diminished by satellite technology. Fiber optic cable, not video, killed the radio star, if you will. Even worse, the building itself has been closed to the public since 1999. 

The tower is run by a subsidiary of the Telekom, which runs almost every TV tower in Germany. Telekom itself, of course, is not in the entertainment business, although you can make a hard case that it enables it as much as anybody. Whereas years ago, in the 80's and 90's, the Asparagus hosted a discotheque (the Sky Tower) and a restaurant, the times have changed, since the building was officially labeled as a highrise by the authorties. Translated, this meant that it was subject to highrise laws, most notably those dealing with the nasty 'f' and 's' words, as in fire safety. The inside of the turret was gutted of anything that could even remotely be considered a fire hazard. Personally, I can't think of one thing that could catch fire in a discotheque, can you? (hint: booze, lots of it)

Say bye, bye, public. People now can only wonder what the view from the 227 meter high turret might look like today. My understanding is that the tower only exists as a backup, in the unlikelihood the fiber optic cable network should fail. Such is life for antennas in the 21st century.

Certainly, Telekom says, they wouldn't mind tenants in the tower. Since the place was gutted long ago, this would only translate to an initial investment of, oh, millions of euros. That's quite a startup cost for any business. Add to it that certain modifications would have to be met to satisfy fire safety standards, such as a water and exhaust air supply, a kitchen, plus personnel quarters, not to mention a fire exit. Suddenly, that red carpet rolled out by Telekom looks like some emergency room, where some business just hemorrhaged money on it. 

Poor Asparagus. One day a happening place, the next little more than a ghost town closed to the public. Higher than the Eiffel Tower. Higher than any structure in Germany. Higher than Big Ben, St. Peter's, and the Arc de Triomphe combined. And what do you have? A Disneyworld without the rides, a brewery without the suds, an ocean without a beach. 

Or simply 'tote Hose', as the Germans would say (literally: dead pants), as in nothing. 

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