KulturGutRetter: Emergency management for threatened treasures of our history!

KulturGutRetter: Emergency management for threatened treasures of our history!

April 29, 2025 marks the start of an important series of lectures at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. The Institute for Architectural and Art History invites you to the lecture "KulturGutRetter. Developing an emergency response unit for cultural heritage in times of crisis", given by Dr.-Ing. Katja Piesker, scientific director and head of the architecture department at the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), will be held. This event is part of the “Heritage under Pressure” series, which addresses the serious threats to cultural heritage.

Particularly in crisis situations, museums, monuments, collections and archives are exposed to a variety of dangers. These include natural disasters, fires, accidents and other crises. In order to protect cultural heritage in such moments, the KulturGutRetter project was launched. This project, supported by the DAI, the Leibniz Center for Archeology (LEIZA) and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), aims to provide emergency care for endangered cultural heritage.

Effective crisis management and protective measures

KulturGutRetter focuses on developing equipment, software and minimum standard procedures (MSP) to enable professionals to take effective action in the field. This includes damage assessments, recovery and emergency care of mobile and immobile cultural heritage. These strategies are crucial for sustainable protection in times of crisis.

The sustainable preservation of cultural heritage requires not only practical measures, but also systematically developed and quickly available information. Like that DAI emphasizes, monument registers and digitized museum inventories are central instruments for securing and preserving these values. However, in many archaeological areas such information is often insufficient, which makes effective protection work difficult.

The role of digitalization in the protection of cultural assets

Digitalization plays an essential role in preserving cultural heritage. One example is the archive on the archeology of Sudan, which was compiled and digitized by Friedrich Hinkel. This archive forms the basis for a digital register of monuments in Sudan that supports both research and monument preservation. As the DAI further notes, digitalization is proving to be a profitable investment by providing modern remote sensing methods and documentation tools for the inventory and monitoring of endangered archaeological substance.

The open source documentation system iDAI.field, which was developed at the DAI, is not only used for excavations, but is also used in monument preservation damage documentation and has been translated into numerous national languages. Such technological advances are crucial to the efficiency and effectiveness of cultural property protection and are an integral part of the discussions during the lecture series.

Anyone interested is warmly invited to take part in the lectures, which will be held in English. The lecture will be held in lecture hall B of the central lecture hall building (ZHG) on the central campus of the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. It is a chance to delve deeper into the challenges and solutions in the field of cultural heritage.