Glaselefant (Glass Elephant) and Butterfly House, Maximilianpark

Maximilianpark occupies the site of the Maximilian colliery in Hamm. According to Wikipedia, the mine opened in 1904 and closed as early as 1917; attempts to restart it in 1920-1921 and 1940-1944 came to nothing, the British Army of the Rhine then used the site from 1953 to 1968, and the installations were partly demolished in 1978. Among the remains was the coal washery, which the park dates to 1902.

According to the park, the idea of the elephant was born on 30 June 1981, when the artist Horst Rellecke visited the grounds of the future garden show with his gallerist. The washery was converted in 1983-1984 using a steel-and-glass greenhouse structure, and the work became the emblem of North Rhine-Westphalia's first Landesgartenschau, held on 22 hectares from 14 April to 30 September 1984. The site was kept as a park after the show.

The glass elephant has become the symbol of the city, which has placed replicas of it in its streets. A major renovation was completed in 2009 for the state's NRW-Tag celebrations: LED lighting has since allowed it to change colour, and it takes part in autumn light shows set to music. At a date not given in the sources consulted, the park added a tropical butterfly house, which it presents as the largest in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The Glaselefant is less a new building than a metamorphosis: the structure of the coal washery was capped and extended by a steel-and-glass greenhouse construction that forms an elephant 53 m long, 18 m wide and 35 m high. The park even gives the animal's proportions: tusks 7 m long and eyes 2 m across. A glazed lift rises inside the trunk, a staircase serves the rear, and a viewing platform opens at a height of 29 m.

The figures vary between sources: the Wikipedia article on the park speaks of an elephant about 40 m high with a platform at 35 m, while the article on the work itself gives 35 m and 29 m, as the park does. Since the 2009 renovation, LED modules able to reproduce the full colour spectrum have lit the structure at night.

The butterfly house, about 250 m to the south-east, is a tropical glasshouse of about 450 m², kept at 26 °C and 80 per cent humidity, where streams and ponds wind between rainforest plants.

Inside the elephant's head, a palm garden provides the setting for ten kinetic objects by Horst Rellecke, nine of them operated electrically from a control desk. Their names convey the humour of the ensemble: 'Palmenputzer' (the palm cleaner), 'Gottesanbeterin' (the praying mantis), 'durstige Huhn' (the thirsty hen), 'Rüsselflieger', 'Mechanischer Bergmann' (the mechanical miner), a nod to the site's past, 'Raupe Sisyphos', 'Seerose' and 'Elefantenbörse'. The sources consulted do not list the palm species.

The butterfly house shows up to 80 species and subspecies from the tropical regions of South and Central America, Africa, Asia and Australia, all bred on specialist farms. The park mentions in particular the Atlas silk moth ('Atlas-Seidenspinner') and Hamadryas amphinome. With no natural enemies, the butterflies live longer here than in the wild.

The Glaselefant stands at the heart of Maximilianpark in Hamm; the ride up the glass trunk and the view from the platform are the high points of a visit, followed by the palm garden and its automata. The butterfly house, about 250 m away, opens only in season, and a visit combines easily with the elephant. In autumn, light shows set to music turn the elephant into a coloured beacon. The park's 22 hectares, laid out on the former colliery for the 1984 garden show, invite a longer walk.