The Leaning Tower of... Suurhusen?

Look at the photo above.

What do you see?

It's the new leaning tower world champion, to be named as such in next year's Guinness Book of World Records.

The 15th-century church tower's ascension to the top of the heap was noted in today's Washington Post story by Craig Whitlock, which follows.

Church Tower Lists Toward Tipping Point, If Not a Title

German Town's Landmark Outleans Pisa's, but Record Goes to Yet Another Rival

Compared with this town's 625-year-old crooked church, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a model of rectitude.

Ever since it was built out of stone in 1382, the Church of Our Beloved Ladies by the Mountain in Bad Frankenhausen has been listing gradually to the east. Undermined by a porous geological foundation, the 184-foot-tall church tower has been falling over, sometimes as much as an inch or two a year. Townspeople have been accustomed to its lopsided shadow for centuries and, until recently, the church attracted little outside attention.

Two years ago, however, someone got out a measuring tape. Over time, villagers discovered, the tip of the spire had toppled more than 14 feet from where it was supposed to be, outleaning Pisa's more famous tower by about six inches.

A wave of civic pride quickly swept over Bad Frankenhausen, pop. 9,000. Burghers have been walking around with their chests puffed out since.

Henry Hunger, the deputy mayor, said locals are used to the sight of visitors gawking at the tower, their heads askew as if they can't believe what they're seeing.

"You go up to them and explain, 'No, no, it really is crooked,' " he said. "It's the image of the city. It's always been there, and it's always been crooked. Plus, it just dominates the skyline."

The tower [below]



is perched on a hillside on the edge of town and looks like it could keel over in a stiff breeze. Locals insist the structure is sturdy and say no one has abandoned the row of tidy homes sitting about 75 feet from the tower's base. At least not yet.

Engineers have noticed that the speed with which the tower is falling has picked up recently, with the spire now moving 2.4 inches a year. At that rate, it could reach a tipping point in the next decade or so, though nobody knows for sure.

As a result, local and state government officials have agreed to spend $1.5 million to try to stabilize the tower. Contractors started work over the summer and have wrapped the tower with temporary anchors and cables.

"We're going in very small steps and we're being very, very careful," said Juergen Ahlers, site manager for the contractor overseeing the project. "Essentially, we're going to grab it, lift it and push it back a bit."

The ground under the church is riddled with deep cracks and fissures. Engineers decided the only way to save the leaning tower would be to reinstall it on a flexible base. Plans are to straighten it slightly — about two feet — and see what happens.

Ahlers said he expects the tower to keep falling a couple of inches each year, even after the repair job. He predicted that it will have to be yanked back every 10 years or so. "We'll never be able to completely stop the tilt," he said.

Previous fix-it attempts have met with mixed results.

In 1759, a fire burned the steeple, so craftsmen built a new spire that curved in the opposite direction, hoping to make the tower look straighter than it really was. In 1911, the town tried propping up the tower with giant poles, but somehow that made things worse. In 1935, engineers strapped four giant iron belts around the building; architects say the tower likely would have crumbled otherwise.

The tower has been closed since 1984, but city officials hope to reopen it next year after the stabilization project is completed. Their aim is to lure thousands of tourists eager to climb up the winding steps to the belfry and drink in off-balance views of the surrounding landscape.

That vision, however, has some obstacles. Unlike Pisa, Bad Frankenhausen is located in a remote corner of eastern Germany and doesn't rate a mention in many tourist guides. And then there's a question of how long the Church of Our Beloved Ladies by the Mountain will be able to hang on to its crooked distinction.

Although residents don't bring it up, the stabilization project will straighten the tower just enough so that it will no longer lean as much as Pisa's, at least until it starts falling again. The Pisa tower, which is roughly the same height, was fixed in place in the early 1990s.

Just as worrying is the emergence of other challengers.

About 270 miles away on Germany's North Sea coast, the village of Suurhusen boasts that its 15th-century church tower is the crookedest on the planet. Residents cite a different measurement, saying that the base of their tower is askew by 5.17 degrees, compared with 3.97 degrees for Pisa and about 4.4 degrees for Bad Frankenhausen.

Even better, Suurhusen's village elders revealed this month that they had won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, which plans to list their tower as the leaning world champion in next year's editions.

The announcement caught people in Bad Frankenhausen by surprise and left many steamed. They pointed out, rightly, that Suurhusen's tower is only half as tall.

"It's ridiculous," said Baerbel Koellen, head of an association dedicated to preserving the tower. She said the group had scheduled an "emergency meeting" to decide how to respond.

"We always knew about their church," she sniffed. "But we didn't see them as competition. There's no question that ours is more crooked."

Ahlers, the contractor, dismissed the rival claim too, saying that measuring the angle of tilt from the base was misleading.

"You cannot compare these two churches," he said. "It's like comparing boxers in the lightweight category with heavyweights."

Guinness Book officials haven't done much to clear up the controversy. Olaf Kuchenbecker, a Guinness representative from Hamburg, said the World's Crookedest Tower was a new category and acknowledged that record keepers hadn't visited Bad Frankenhausen.

"This is not an absolute, by any means," he said. "If another group thinks it has a more crooked tower, the group is free to apply to us for consideration."

Meanwhile, the citizens of Bad Frankenhausen have another worry.

According to local folklore, the tower will remain standing as long as jackdaws — a black, crow-like bird -- keep nesting in the steeple. Problem is, no one has seen jackdaws flying around the church in years.

"They've left Frankenhausen," Koellen said. "I don't know why."

....................

Below,

the dethroned champion.