With around 3,500 hectares, Wilhelmsburg is one of the largest inhabited river islands in Europe. A large number of measures were needed to protect the residents before it was completely embanked for the first time. The first dyke work had already begun in the middle of the 14th century. The construction of the Ernst-August-Scheuse with two pairs of ebb and flood gates, which completes the entire dike, was completed in 1861; Wilhelmsburg, which belonged at that time, was still part of Hanover. With the permission of the then King George V of Hanover (1819-1878), the lock was named after his son - Crown Prince Ernst August (1845-1923); as well as the subsequent canal and the new dike. In 1925 the canal in what was now Prussian Wilhelmsburg was widened and at the same time the lock was converted into a barrage lock. With the Greater Hamburg Law of April 1, 1937, the independence of Wilhelmsburg passed to Hamburg as another district in the Hamburg-Harburg district. In 2008 it was assigned to the district of Hamburg-Mitte. Also in 2012 the areas around the canal and the lock are (still free) port areas; until 2005, the Office for Electricity and Port Construction was responsible for this. After that, in the course of merging the port-related responsibilities of various Hamburg authorities, the Hamburg Port Authority as an independent public-law institution (HPA) became the successor to the office and responsible for Hamburg's port areas as a whole - including this important inland waterway to Wilhelmsburg and the areas of IGS and IBA. In 2009, those responsible at HPA felt the urge to change - and built a new lock as a 26 million euro project without considering the preservation of the historical industrial monument. The reason for this was the understandable flood protection and with it the need to regulate the water level between the Ernst August Canal and the tide-dependent Spreehafen. The much smaller new lock building with a highly modern lock keeper's house - with folded sheet metal panels and tilted glass elements - was completed at the end of 2011.