In the brain of Lady Liberty.

Then, the masses of tourists in New York waiting for: On U.S. Independence Day is the interior of the Statue of Liberty re-opened - including access to the tiny crown. blogs ONLINE correspondent Marc Pitzke got by the authorities have been granted a preview.

 

New York - The Lady of the brain is hollow. A low, crooked, humid room. 22 floors above the water, held together by a narrow steel beam skeleton, riveted and clad with ultra-thin copper skin. The visitors reached via a steep spiral staircase, 354 narrow steps.

The 25 windows that highlight the crown, open to the harbor, and who is inclined to the vertical wall courageous vorlehnt may even left a piece of skyline view. Down below is a tiny keeper, like a toy soldier.

At least the windows are now glazed. Previously, they were not. As the first and only crawls 1929 Mr. Ralph Gleason called through to to commit suicide. Then he changed it, tried to reverse, but slipped out, "shot down and crashed it on the chest of the statue from", as the New York Times reported. He landed 90 meters deep in the dead grass.

As two helicopters low vorbeiknattern vibrates the claustrophobic enclosures, in which ten people just fit. The sloping ground is buzzing under our feet. The stuffy room in the crown is not for people with fear of heights.

The bend head for a look at the crown

Man hangs diagonally on the port, whose toot and sail through the muffled clatter only 2.4 millimeters thin copper layer penetrates. The fragile veins of the right Statuenarms are up close to see, even the handle of the torch, and when the head bends, one of the seven-pointed crown of the seven continents and the seven seas represent - depending on whom you believe .

"If you were a terrorist want to put a sign," ponders Darren Boch hosted by the National Park Service, "the Statue of Liberty would be certainly a good goal." Purely hypothetical of course.

Almost eight years, it was closed, the interior of the mythical statue of Liberty - that "the most important landmarks of our nation," as Boch says, a brawny man, himself something of the rise pants. After the attacks of 11 September 2001 it was simply considered too risky, especially since the only access to the head and crown - two small, interlocking intricate iron stairs - no longer fire demands. Here comes in the case of emergency as soon not go.

On 4 July, the National Day, this highest vantage point in the middle of the New York Harbor is now reopened. A date so symbolically as the monument itself: The statue was a gift from France on the centenary of the independence declaration of the 1876th The podium is already since 2004, reopened after a 20-million-dollar renovation. The alcove in the crown remained closed until now. The National Park Service had blogs online, but now rise up the stairs.

In 214 cases in New York

A Coast Guard boat named "Lady Liberty III" promoted early in the morning a handful of workers and employees of the Park Service, National Park of the competent official, from Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan across. First stopover is Ellis Iceland, until 1954 the main focal point for immigrants, now a museum island. From there it's only a few minutes to Liberty Iceland, where the Statue of Liberty greets incoming ships.

This island, then still called Iceland's Bedloe and location of a fort, the French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi 1871 at the first visit as the home of his mammoth statue chosen. After some back and forth and some Fehlentwürfen - a version of the statue held the torch in his left hand - the project was finally underway.

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Legend Editor Joseph Pulitzer gathered a large part of the funds for the US-funded, 50-meter-high sandstone plinth. The rest came through, inter alia, lotteries, and a poetry competition. When the pedestal was completed in 1886, the masons threw silver coins into the still wet mortar.

The statue itself - 46 meters high, 204 tons, "shoe size 876" (Boch) - was assembled in Paris, then again in 350 parts disassembled and in 214 crates shipped to New York. The right arm with a torch was already on the 1876 American Century celebration came to Philadelphia. U.S. President Grover Cleveland - who as governor of the financing had resisted - the monument was opened on 28 October 1886.

"Take breaks if you do not get more air"

"This place has for me a very personal significance," said Darren Boch. "My grandparents came to Ellis to Iceland, from Sicily and from Germany. The statue was the first thing they saw their new home." Four out of ten Americans, they say here, its pedigree can be physically connected to Ellis Iceland and "Lady Liberty" sign over.

These memories can be found today in a museum at the base of the statue immortalized. From there it's steep upward, step by step. A park medic gives a brief introduction. "Watch your head on," he says. "Look where you are. Take breaks if you do not get more air."

Initially, the staircase is still wide, it soon narrows, finally it is used for narrow, steep, dizzying spiral. Slowly it climbs through the scaffold high, between the deeply anchored in the foundation, curved, winding, kreuzvernieteten steel makers through which the bronze outer wear like an oversized cake baking.

Previously it took two hours until it had reached the top, as hundreds of visitors while in the narrow ascent ballten. Who had even started, could not go back. "That," recalls Boch, "were not all always overwhelming."

Controversy over the steep victory

On the contrary. The reopening of the crown met with fierce resistance of the Park Service. At a 2007 hearing Congress said its Deputy Director Daniel Wenk, Bartholdi's statue had "never intended as something that you could climb." When the statue in 1933 in the custody of the Park Service went Liberty Iceland had fewer than 200,000 visitors a year. 2006 was more than 2.5 million - even though the spiral staircase to the statue, so Wenk, only to maintenance personnel thought was, "not for ongoing, everyday ascent.

The only way to climb safely to the disaster, would be considered by the Park Service, a new, 22-storey tower next to the statue, with a gangway at the top. This keeps the office of course for "unacceptable". But Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner - the next year, perhaps for the New York mayoralty candidate will - drummed relentlessly for a public access to the steep staircase.

So now, a compromise was found: From 4 July is the crown only in groups of ten can be climbed, the participants are using the online reservation selected. "This is a very intimate, safe experience," Boch hopes. "Random group of people, when climbing on the freedom to talk."

Interior, U.S. Ken Salazar announced the reopening of the crown in early May for a visit in person at Liberty Iceland. Previously, he had even completed the 354 levels. His breathless, enthusiastic Conclusion: "Fantastic!"