Museum der Natur und Umwelt Cottbus

Description

The Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst - Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus is located on Mühleninsel in Goethepark in the Mitte district of Cottbus and occupies a historic power station that is a listed building.

Originally, Cottbus already had its first power station on the Mühlgraben in 1902. With rising demand for electricity, the need for a second plant became apparent at the beginning of the 20th century; plans from 1914 were, however, shelved because of the First World War. From 1920 the city obtained additional electricity from the Trattendorf power station, but in 1926 decided once again to build its own diesel power station. The selected site lay between the Mühlgraben and the Amtsteich, and construction of the switch house and the machine hall began in April 1927. The switch house commenced operation in mid‑January 1928; on 17 February 1928 the plant was connected to the municipal electricity supply network and it was officially inaugurated on 1 April 1928. In 1959 operations were discontinued as a result of lignite mining in the region; from then on the city received power from the Lübbenau and Vetschau power stations and from the Schwarze Pumpe gas complex. After its decommissioning the building served as a workshop for a regional energy supply company. It has been a listed building since 1975. Following an extensive refurbishment between 2005 and 2008, the dkw. Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus moved into the former power station building in May 2008; in 2017 it merged with the Museum Junge Kunst Frankfurt (Oder) to form the present institution.

The building is a reinforced concrete construction faced with clinker bricks with low‑pitched gable roofs; the walls between the load‑bearing reinforced concrete elements are executed in masonry. The façade displays tall bands of windows with pilaster‑like projections and profiled window surrounds. In the machine hall an overhead crane with a 19‑metre span and a load capacity of up to 30 tonnes has been preserved. The three‑storey switch house has pointed‑arch windows along its long side; the stair tower on the east façade is pierced by tall, pointed window openings and during operation also served for feed‑in via an overhead line. The basement walls are constructed of reinforced concrete up to ground level, with the walls above executed in masonry.

Technically, the machine hall housed marine diesel engines with an output of about 1,500 PS that drove a direct‑current generator; in addition, converter sets for transforming direct current into alternating current were installed. The foundation was prepared for a second engine set. The switch house accommodated the switches for the 20 kV line from the Trattendorf power station and, separately, the switches for the city's 3 kV substations. After decommissioning the technical installations were dismantled.