The creator of the program thought to solve the problem of population explosion and settle Europeans in an Africa that would have a moderate climate and have a full electricity supply from dams that would be placed in what is left of the Mediterranean Sea, in the author's opinion, the refugee crisis shows that the situation today is exactly a mirror image
Article: Dr. Ricarda Vidal, University College London
Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris recently proposed buying a Greek island and giving refugees from the Middle East and Africa their own country.
Although Sawiris himself refers to his plan as a crazy idea on Twitter, it pales in comparison to an earlier proposal to change the situation in the Mediterranean that was supported in the first half of the XNUMXth century and was seriously considered by heads of state, and for a certain time by the United Nations. The initiative was called Atlantropa and it included the partial damming of the Mediterranean Sea and the creation of the Euro-African supercontinent.
Atlantropa was the brainchild of the German architect Herman Sörgel who tirelessly promoted the project from 1928 until his death in 1959. The experiences he had in the First World War, the economic and political crises of the 1973s and the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany convinced Soergel that another world war could only be avoided through a radical solution to the problems of unemployment and the population explosion in Europe, as well as to the energy problem (and it should be noted that Soergel had been saying these things for many years before the Saudi oil crisis of XNUMX). Because he placed little faith in politics, Soergel turned to technology.
Dams would cross the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles and eventually also between Sicily and Tunisia, each of which would operate enormous hydroelectric power stations and form the basis of the new supercontinent. In its final state, the Mediterranean Sea was supposed to split into two basins, with the western basin being 200 meters lower than sea level and the eastern 660 meters. "An area of XNUMX square kilometers will be drained along the shores of today's Mediterranean Sea, an area larger than the territory of France.
(And in the process they would also have expanded the State of Israel to the west by several kilometers and perhaps would have solved many security and political problems here, AB)
After the treatment of the Mediterranean Sea was completed, the plan included dams across the Congo River and the creation of Lake Chad-Congo, which Sorgula hoped would have a moderating effect on the climate in Africa and make it more suitable for European settlers. Sorgal, whose proposal aligned well with the colonial and racist attitudes of the time, planned to enslave the resources and land of Africa at the disposal of Europe, a continent with endless spaces that could house the European multitude.
While Sorgal's proposal may sound absurd to our ears, it was taken seriously by architects, engineers, politicians and journalists at the time. Atlantropa Archive The Deutsches Museum in Munich preserves the architect's drawings of new cities, the dams and bridges of the future continent as well as letters of support and hundreds of articles about the project that attracted the popular German and international press, as well as geographic magazines and specialist magazines for engineers.
What made Atlantropa attractive was the program's vision that peace could be achieved not through politics and diplomacy but through a simple technological solution. According to these maps, the energy produced by the hydroelectric plant in Gibraltar will supply the entire electricity consumption of Europe and Africa. The power plants will be operated by an independent body that will be able to cut off the current of electricity to any country that threatens peace. Moreover, Sorgal calculated that the maintenance of the system would be so expensive that no government would have enough money left to finance war equipment.
Surgal, who trusted that the common people of the European nations longed for peace, devoted a large part of his work to the promotion and dissemination of the project through the popular press, radio programs, lectures, exhibitions and conferences, and even poetry and the Atlantropa Symphony. He hoped that the mass support would allow him to get the backing of the politicians. Not surprisingly, in the eyes of our time, cooperation between nation states seems even more utopian than the "technological dimension of Atlantropa" as expressed by the UN World magazine published in New York in 1948: "Harnessing Gibraltar for the benefit of humanity seems like a dream, but in the twentieth century, even cooperation Action between countries - seems possible"
So much for the vision, and hence, the consequences that Dr. Vidal sees for these days: "In 2012, when the Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarded the prize to the United Nations in recognition of its contribution to peace in Europe, the hope then expressed by UN World seems to be a distant dream again. While Sorgal envisioned Europe flourishing thanks to the peaceful merger with the African continent, we are faced with the opposite picture when people from all over Africa and the Middle East seek asylum in Europe. Now is the time to prove that the Nobel Prize was indeed due to the organization, it is time to show solidarity and unity. Instead, it seems that the European Union is torn apart due to its inability to reach a common solution for the housing of the refugee groups (whose number, according to the author's estimation, will reach at most 0.11% of Europe's inhabitants, and there are many who would disagree). And she concludes: "The unification of Europe in light of the refugee crisis looks more utopian than Sorgal's plan to dry up the sea."
The article was first published under a CC license on the website - The Conversation
(Editor's note - the article was published as is, according to the terms of the CC license
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Since there is a new technological invention called desalination of sea water with the help of reverse osmosis, and also another invention of utilizing solar energy, the sea has a flood of water, so today it is possible to turn any desert into a flourishing area.
The problem is only economic and political.
A much better solution to the same problem: since the moon is made of cheese, you can solve all of Africa's food problems by mining cheese on the moon and growing it over Africa. The little that reaches the oceans around the continent will feed the fish and provide a food source for those who are allergic to dairy products. Now seriously: why would the drying up of part of the Mediterranean cause a different rainfall regime over the Sahara? The desert will simply grow. I would think that the flooding of the Katara basin in Egypt might benefit from the introduction of a source of moisture to the west of the delta, which would perhaps cause rains over the delta.
For those interested in a detailed and deep bar; There is a 'Making History' podcast on exactly the topic of Atlanthropa
warmly recommended
Those who feel an urgent need to start an earthworks operation on a cosmic scale are suggested to start with something less pretentious and more useful: to open the "drift plug" that fills the Syrian-African rift between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea and thus extend the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba to Almagor, north of the Sea of Galilee. The advantages: 1. National security: a buffer between Israel and the eastern Arab countries along 80 percent of the eastern border. 2. Recreational culture: opening of over 300 kilometers of bathing and recreation beach, at least 10 times the shores of the Sea of Galilee today. 3. Maritime transport: Every point in Israel will be less than 50 kilometers from a coast, on which a port for goods and tourism can be established, in the east or in the west. 4. Marine archaeology: turn Tiberias and Beit Shean into world diving sites, including falafel stands and crackers. 5. Follow-up plan: the digging of the sea canal that will connect the Syrian-Israeli Gulf to the Haifa Bay, including the passage of ships on the "Suez Bypass" route and easy accessibility of oil tankers from Saudi Arabia and infiltrators from Jordan to the Mediterranean countries. 6. Looking for another crazy project? there is! Excavate the "continental shelf" along the coast of Israel to the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. The goal: to cause the current of the depths that comes from the west and brings cold water to the east of the sea to rise to the surface near the Israeli coast, instead of 200 kilometers to the west, and thus cool the shallow "pool of coastal water", which is responsible for a significant part of the summer heat in Israel. Think about the effect of lowering the temperature of the sea water in the summer from 25-27 degrees to only 20-22 - how much money we will save on air conditioning! The system is open for proposals, what to do with all the sand we take out of the sea? We have already thought about artificial islands for Off-Shore banking, and about sand castles using the purchasing group method.
Why did Sawiris treat his plan to buy an island and house the refugees on it as a crazy idea?
Sounds like a good idea.
Read about the "Messinian event" on Wikipedia
The German architect Hermann Suergel suffered from two syndromes. One is the German syndrome. The second - the architectural syndrome.
The German syndrome means: we Germans can solve whatever we see as a human problem, by mobilizing German power. The architectural syndrome means: any given constructive situation, it is possible and desirable to change with the methods of architectural planning. The built to break and the unbuilt to build. And so it returns, God forbid, to the glory of architects and architecture.
Today it seems that the main global problem is the problem of Africa and not the problem of Europe as Herman Sorgal thought. Africa is bleeding and licking its wounds after about 350 years of American-European colonialism that robbed its natural treasures and destroyed and killed and corrupted its social structures.
The only thing that can help Africa recover from the colonialist destruction are huge investments by the West in education, in the economy and in rooting the values of democracy in African societies. It is a project of enormous dimensions and many years. It seems that only the UN can lead such a move, with the participation of all Western countries, primarily the United States and Western Europe. It is possible that the same is true for Arab countries
Although in the Arab countries the problem is many times more difficult and complicated, in view of their hold on the culture of extreme Islam, which denies progress, education and democratization. Africa first.
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Very interesting article but:
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