Editing Müggelturm (section)

== Today’s tower ==
That same year the ''Berliner Zeitung'' launched an architectural competition for a new construction, which attracted 32 designs. These were exhibited to the public in August 1958 in the Köpenick city hall and a month later in the newspaper's pavilion at the ''Friedrichstraße'' train station. The opinions expressed by visitors in a book made available for the purpose confirmed the choice of the jurors. The proposal by a student collective from the ''Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee'' headed by Jörg Streitparth, Siegfried Wagner and Klaus Weißhaupt won the competition and after modification it formed the basis of the new construction. An oval ground plan was originally intended for the tower, but this was changed to today's quadratic form for reasons of cost.

The foundation stone was laid on 6 October 1959 and on 20 August 1960 the topping out ceremony was celebrated. The tower was opened on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1961. The construction of the new Müggel Tower was significantly supported by public involvement and donations. As part of the German Democratic Republic's initiative calling for voluntary, charitable work (“Nationale Aufbauwerk”), the public contributed 130,000 Marks and 3,700 hours of work.

The 29.61 m high tower of reinforced concrete has nine storeys with panorama windows and a platform which can be reached via 126 steps. Along with its auxiliary buildings it reflects a modern approach in contrast to the eclecticism of the previous construction and is an early example of [[East Germany|DDR]] architecture in the style of socialist classicism. The gastronomy area includes a restaurant, a wine tavern and sun terraces. The new tower again became a centre of attraction for Berlin's populace, with an average of 240,000 visitors annually. Especially on holidays such as Pentecost there were large crowds in the tower and gastronomy area. A lack of maintenance effort continues to plague the area. In 1996 the tower itself was fully renovated with EU financing amounting to one million DM, but more work remains to be done.

In a restaurant flower window can be found the [[triangulation point]] “1st order Müggelberg,” which is important for Berlin and German [[geodesy]] as it defines the zero point of the coordinate network for Berlin topographical maps. The stone is also a memorial to [[Johann Jacob Baeyer]] (1794–1885) who was born in Müggelheim and is known for his role in determining central European longitude and latitude degree coordinates. He also used the Müggelberg hills along with measurements of the city of Berlin to determine the elevation of the immediate surroundings, such as the height of Köpenick's St. Laurentius church and the Gosener mountains. Since the stone and its precise location as a surveying point is protected, it cannot be moved without the consent of the [[Berlin Senate]] (''Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung'').

[[File:Berlin Mueggelturm SE.jpg|thumb|The Müggelturm in 2009]]