Â
Every morning and afternoon shift on the shuttle bus which brings volunteers to a primary care center on the southeastern outskirts of Cologne. They shovel it through the moist, sandy remnants of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne and search for files and valuable documents in the accident in early March in a large crater disappeared.
The underground railway in Cologne had a disaster, the building of the archive, and two adjacent houses were completely destroyed. The volunteers include Bonner PhD student Geiecke Carola, 28
How many of them are volunteers in the hall ready or aspiring art historian. Besides the fact, it is good but for Carola Geiecke personally about much: your thesis is titled "Two groups of late medieval sculpture in Cologne Cathedral. With all the old bricks are in the Cologne disaster, documents disappeared in the depths, they work for their thesis needs. "This is an additional motivation, if one's own body is, how it is when important materials simply are not there anymore."
Working with protective clothing and breathing mask
Already for weeks, the volunteers early in the morning and drive by bus to the hall in Cologne-Porz addition to hand a piece of European history to save. Geiecke advertises also their fellow students for the unusual use of the study, so the number of helping hands continue to grow. From the University of Bonn were already around 150 volunteers in action.
"Of course, time goes on it," says Geiecke, but the sense was used. "We provide for future research is an important contribution and wish that the archive again as quickly as possible for researchers and students is available."
Geieckes girlfriend Julia Klemeit lies completely in a white protective suit and packed in special document prepared from acid-free cartons of paperboard. The PhD student wearing a breathing mask because the air in the hall is stifling heat and dust. More and more documents, the volunteers from the muck fish are mold infested.
Before packing, the papers in four hot-air drying chambers. Accordingly, it is warm in the hall, in their protective suits, the helper sweat. "This is really stressful, because we always return to the wagon with the archival herumschieben and boxes stacked," said Julia Klemeit.
After all, the two remain at the packing station, the psychological burden of the viewfinder saves, which is one floor down from the freshly delivered rubble work. "Here, at the end of the processing chain, we will no longer be confronted with personal belongings," says Klemeit. Two young men who were in an adjacent house the archive had lived, died in the disaster. Some volunteers moved here in Cologne-Porz have their private things, such as photo albums, from the damp sand.
Helpers from the University are urgently needed
2000 volunteers have been reported - but the archivists could Cologne
still use more help. The salvage work will be screening and even months. From the art historical discipline, as the two female students, the intervener should not be, says Max Plassmann archivist. "You have a certain enthusiasm to bring certain knowledge they need not."
What the volunteers have to know you can spot them quickly teach. First, the material as quickly as possible, roughly cleaned, dried and packaged. Only in half a year Plassmann and his colleagues can begin, the records and archival documents to re-arrange and restore.
blogs KNOW: HISTORICAL ARCHIVES OF THE CITY OF COLOGNE
History
The beginnings of the Archives of the early 12th Century. The town had important documents still room 1322 in a crate in the house of a patrician, but grew at the same time as development of Cologne free imperial city rapidly. When the Council 1406 to build the Town Hall tower decided that belonged to the building include an archive vault. It was the first, still preserved archive inventory created. The Second World War had outsourced archives survived without any losses. On the other hand, were still in the municipal offices store records from the time of the Weimar Republic since 1927 and about the Nazi era during the war had been largely destroyed. The house contains many treasures of the cultural, religious and administrative history. The inventory includes instruments rulers and numerous valuable manuscripts. Cologne is, according to historians, one of the most important archives of the German Hanseatic League, since 1593-94 with a decision by the Hanseatic day the doc!
uments and files of the largest office, in Antwerp, was in the safe walls of Cologne have been brought. dpa
Stocks
The archive includes documents from over a thousand years of Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, and history. With the appointment of Leonard Ennens first city archivist in Cologne 1857 was the expansion of the archive much on track. More than 65,000 documents from the region of Cologne from the year 922, 104,000 maps, 50,000 posters and approximately half a million photos. In addition, there are 780 estates and collections, including Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll stored worden.dpa
Earning money is not the helper, but who arrive from far away, which pays the city of Cologne accommodation and meals. Among the approximately 40 workers are on this day students from Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. Most come from the Unistädten but Cologne and Bonn.
Katharina Corsepius ensures that this power does not abreißt. The lecturer in art history at the University of Bonn estimated that only ten percent of the spilled and soaked some files could be saved. "It's really nice that the recruitment of new volunteers so far so good after the snowball system works," says Corsepius. They will also continue to intervene from the University of drumming.
Right next Corsepius a lorry is being loaded. He brings the rescued historical documents this week in the shelves of free storage rooms at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. In about a week to control the truck with the artefacts then the Staatsarchiv Munster. Done are the saviors of the historical archive is not.
No comments:
Post a Comment