Salvage operation after Cologne archive disaster

Irreplaceable documents pulled from rubble, but 15% still missing

By Christine Hoffmann | Web only
Published online 17 Jun 09 (News)

The ruins of the building of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne Severinstrasse after its collapse

COLOGNE. Many irreplaceable documents dating back to the Middle Ages have been saved following the collapse of the city archive in Cologne on 3 March. Two people died when three buildings fell into a hole caused by structural faults in the tunnelling for a new underground line.

The archive in the centre of Cologne housed 65,000 original documents, more than 100,000 maps, 50,000 posters and 818 estates and collections on nearly 20 miles of shelf space. Up to 85% of the archive collection has so far been pulled from the rubble, but restoration work could take over 30 years to complete. About 25% of the retrieved items have been torn apart, and efforts will be made to piece them back together using software that was developed to restore shredded documents from the East German secret police, the Stasi. The remaining 15% is immersed in groundwater at the site of the collapse.

Since the disaster, firefighters, archivists and hundreds of volunteers have been working almost non-stop on what has become a massive archaeological dig. “It is sensational that everything is still somehow there,” said archive director Bettina Schmidt-Czaia.

As well as the restoration, archivists face the immense task of recataloguing the incoherent documents and paper-shreds. The archive took possession of the literary remains of Nobel Prize-winner Heinrich Böll only a few weeks before the building collapsed.

Cologne’s historic archive, which survived World War II completely intact, was described as the richest municipal record collection in northern continental Europe, including decrees by emperors, lists of medieval residents and centuries of merchants' records. One item recovered is the 1180 edict, signed by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and with his personal seal still dangling from it, granting Cologne’s citizens the right to build a city wall.

Regional elections are set for 30 August and it is unlikely that a decision about a new location for the archive will be reached beforehand. It will take at least five years before a new building can accommodate salvaged items, which are currently divided between various interim storage facilities.