LINK

GERMANY (see also List of Individuals)

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3.6.1873 Koblenz/D - 25.6.1952 Murnau/D

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Ernst Link studied civil engineering at Lausanne and Aachen Technical Universities to graduate in 1895 at Hannover University. He was a Regierungs-Bauführer first and in 1900 Regierungsbaumeister. Link actively rehabilitated Vistula River in Danzig in today's Poland and then collaborated in Aachen with Otto Intze (1843-1904), the great German dam designer. Link contributed to the designs of the Ennepe, the Henne, the Hasperbach and the Oester Dams and to the harbors of Ruhr River in Ruhrort. From 1905, Link was the technical director of the Ruhrtal-Sperrenverein, a dam scheme erected in the Ruhr River mining valley. After Intze had initiated these works, Link was able to control both the floods of, and the scarcity in water resources of that important German region. Link submitted in 1925 a PhD thesis on the design of the cross-sectional dam shape to Aachen Technical University and retired in 1938. He was awarded the Honorary Doctorate in 1927 from TU Berlin.

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The Möhnetalsperre counts still to the largest dams of Ruhrtal. Link designed it, works were initiated in 1908 and the scheme was inaugurated in 1912. The Sorpetalsperre was designed in World War I; works were slowed down however due to financial problems and the scheme was taken into operation only in 1927. Whereas the dam on Möhne River was of gravity type, the other on the Sorpe was the first larger German embankment dam with a concrete core. With a height of 70 m and a length of some 700 m, the Sorpetalsperre was the largest German dam until the 1950s. All through his career, Link took interest in the hydropower potential of Germany. Link's name is closely related to the introduction of the triangular embankment section and the base drainage of gravity dams. Besides to storage schemes, he also proposed the erection of river dams such as on the Lenne and on the Ruhr Rivers.

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_{Anonymous (1931). Link, Ernst. Reichshandbuch der deutschen Gesellschaft 2: 1130-1131. P}

_{Link, E. (1910). Die Bestimmung der Querschnitte von Staumauern. Springer: Berlin.}

_{Link, E. (1913). Die Möhnetalsperre. Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 33(57): 372-376; 33(58):}

_379-382.

_{Link, E. (1925). Beitrag zur Querschnittsbestimmung der Staumauern. Dissertation. TH Aachen.}

_{Link, E. (1927). Die Sorpetalsperre. Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 47: 445-449.}

_{Nelihsen, W. (1984). Link, Ernst. Neue Deutsche Biographie 14: 627. Duncker&Humblot: Berlin.}

_{Prüss, M. (1952). Dr.-Ing.h.c. Ernst Link. Gasund Wasserfach 93(18): 536. P}