Libraries in Germany – Expert Discussion

A burning library and a collapsing municipal archive: the catastrophes of Weimar and Cologne have shown that the treasures of several centuries can be destroyed within a few hours. The Gottlieb Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover is taking precautions against this – with an emergency association and a rescue chute for books.

Two events have become symbols for catastrophes that annihilate precious holdings: at the beginning of September 2004 the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar went up in flames, and in March 2009 the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne collapsed. In Weimar the fire irretrievably destroyed 50,000 books and 37 paintings.

In Cologne the collapse of the municipal archive in the immediate vicinity of a subway construction site buried archive holdings of a thousand years, including the literary remains of composer Jacques Offenbach and Nobel Prize laureate Heinrich Böll, 1,800 medieval manuscripts and gospel books, 65,000 documents since 922 AD, protocols of the city council since 1320, about 2,500 sound storage media, films and videos, and 30 shelve kilometers of files and official records.

A good 85 per cent of these have been salvaged, but not rescued: 35 per cent have suffered severe damage and 50 per cent heavy to medium damage. Head of the Cologne Department of Cultural Affairs, Georg Quander, estimates that the restoration of the salvaged archive will cost approximately 380 million euros. That will be work for 200 restorers for the next thirty years.

Made more stable by firefighting water

The blaze at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library showed that the nineteenth century had already taken solid measures for fire protection. It was thanks to a fire door from 1850 that the conflagration did not spread farther: “It glowed red, but it held up”, says Assistant Library Director Jürgen Weber. Today the Weimar library has active fire-extinguishing systems and its fire precautions are state-of-the-art: “We’re always being asked about them by other libraries”, reports Weber. “Our fire prevention system sets an example.”

The restoration work has also shed light on questions that are of importance not only for Weimar. Professor Robert Fuchs and his students at the Cologne Technical College, for instance, investigated whether chemicals in the water used for extinguishing fires could be harmful or even dangerous for books and other holdings. Happily, says Weber, it isn’t. The surprising fact is that “the soaking even did the newer papers, which are acidic and decompose, good: they became more stable”. The older rag paper, on the other hand, suffered additional ageing from the dousing.

A rescue chute for cultural goods

On the night of the Weimar fire about 200 people formed a chain and relayed books, paintings and sculptures out of the Rococo Hall down through the staircase. The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover has now developed an incomparably faster rescue system in the rescue chute. Martin Brederecke, restorer at the Library, developed it together with a business that produces tarpaulins: “a milestone in catastrophe prevention”, as the Library proudly calls it.

In mid-2009 the rescue chute was presented to the public. Packed up, it hangs before the window of the manuscript collection in the second floor of the Library. The collection contains approximately 15,000 letters by Leibniz, which have been declared part of the UNESCO World Heritage. In ten minutes’ time, three staff members can inflate the twelve meter-long chute made of truck tarpaulins. Air-filled tubes form its framework, which holds an approximately one meter-wide roofed chute surface. At its end is an integrated collection basin.

The chute can carry up to 25 kilograms. “It’s a special design, precisely fitted to the window and the height of the building”, explains Brederecke. A chute like one of those used for airplanes would have been much too big: “It would hinder the fire-fighters at their work”. There have already been several enquiries from other libraries that want to buy a rescue chute.

No protection against the extreme case

What can we learn from the catastrophes in Weimar and Cologne? Martin Brederecke was among those who helped salvage the archive holdings in Cologne, along with 1,800 volunteers from Germany and abroad: “That was the most extreme of extreme cases”, says the restorer. “If everything here in Hanover were to burn down or collapse into a subway tunnel, then the chute too would of course disappear.” But in any case it is important, he says, to have the support of an emergency association. Cultural institutions in Hanover have joined forces in such an association so that they could help each other in the case of a crisis.

Such an association was also being planned in Weimar in 2004: “That was lucky, because we already knew each other and the right help then came very swiftly”, relates Jürgen Weber. But because of the Elbe flood in summer 2002, Weimar was “actually prepared against flooding”. Thus the catastrophes of Weimar and Cologne teach us that we have to expand our horizon of possible disaster scenarios.