Missing Link: The long-term memory of the Republic turns 50

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Where silver was once mined, there are now inconspicuous containers with millions of photographed documents in an old mine tunnel: the central mining site (ZBO) of the Federal Republic of Germany. This unique archive is 50 years old.

Around 400 meters deep, the Barbara gallery juts out into the Schauinsland mountain near the village of Oberried near Freiburg. The ZBO is located in the gallery, or more precisely in the side galleries running parallel to it. More than 1600 airtight, almost 80-centimeter-high stainless-steel containers are stored here in two-storey shelves around 50 meters long.

They contain microfilms, a total of 1.3 billion copies - including many unique historical documents such as the Treaty of Westphalia from 1648, Otto the Great's coronation charter from the year 936. Or Pope Leo X's threat to ban a certain Martin Luther, dated 15 June. 1520.

"The Barbarastollen is our nation's long-term cultural memory," says Ralph Tiesler, President of the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK). The BBK is best known for its NINA warning app and literally reminds the population of the event whenever test alerts are organized across Germany.

The Hague Convention

"Unfortunately, we see that in wars and armed conflicts, the destruction of cultural property is deliberately carried out to rob the attacked nations of their identity and thus demoralise them," says Tiesler, explaining the background to the microfilm archive in the Barbarastollen.

The Hague Convention, to which over 130 countries, including Russia, have committed themselves, exists to prevent this destruction. They are committed to "safeguarding and respecting" "movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of all peoples".

The convention also includes safeguarding important cultural property against the foreseeable consequences of armed conflict in times of peace. As the BBK is responsible for implementing the Hague Convention in Germany, it is also in charge of the Barbarastollen.

"Missing Link"

What's missing: In the fast-paced world of technology, we often don't have time to sort through all the news and background information. At the weekend, we want to take this time to follow the side paths away from the current affairs, try out other perspectives and make nuances audible.

• All our the "Missing Links"

Highest protection level for the Barbarastollen

The gallery is the only place in the whole of Germany that has special protection status under the Hague Convention. This is emphasised by three blue and white diamonds at the entrance to the gallery. Apart from the Barbara Gallery, only the Vatican and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in Europe have the triple protection mark of the Hague Convention.

The special status of the Barbara Gallery means that it is marked on all military maps, as it is strictly forbidden to fly over it. Even the German Armed Forces are not allowed near it. The containers in the ZBO are marked with a simple blue and white diamond, which can also be found on various historical buildings, archaeological sites, museums and archives throughout Germany.

Top secret: the construction of the ZBO

The Hague Convention was a reaction to the horrors of the world wars, especially the great destruction of cultural assets by the National Socialists. The Federal Republic of Germany acceded to the Convention in 1967, but had already been preserving important documents on film since 1961.

Archiving in the Barbarastollen began in 1975 as part of this federal preservation filming program. The work carried out on site in the preceding years was done in secret. Although the people of Oberried were aware that something was going on in the mountain, neither they nor local politicians or the media were informed at the time.

From 1978, the ZBO was listed in the UNESCO register of cultural assets worthy of protection, but even then it was not officially publicized in Germany. It was only in the early 1990s that the government officially announced the location – after several newspapers reported on it.

Constant climate, hard stone

The Barbara Adit is suitable for the ZBO for various reasons. Firstly, according to the Hague Convention, archives of this kind must be created underground. Secondly, the Schauinsland mountain is considered earthquake and nuclear bomb-proof due to its hard rock of gneiss and granite. The tunnel also offers a constant, damp and cold climate, both in summer and winter.

A constant temperature of 10 degrees Celsius and a relative humidity of 35 percent prevail in the containers themselves. In this way, the microfilms can be stored for 500 years without losing any information. No other medium offers longer and cheaper archiving.

In addition, reading out the information is basic: even in 500 years' time, all that will be needed is light and a magnifying glass. In contrast, it is already difficult to access the information on a 40-year-old floppy disk today, as digital storage and playback devices are changing too quickly. Apart from the fact that you should be able to tell from the outside that it is an information carrier. With microfilm, one glance is enough. Can young people today do anything with a floppy disk?

50 years of ZBO: "What defines the identity of our country"

According to the BBK, a globally unique procedure is used for the long-term preservation of cultural assets. The selected documents are filmed at 15 locations in Germany. A specialist company then uses a patented process to store them in the containers. In 2016, the billionth image was added: a copy of the first version of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949, making the ZBO the largest long-term archive in Europe.

At last Thursday's ceremony, a documentation of the customs of the Rhenish carnival and Alemannic carnival, which have been part of the intangible UNESCO cultural heritage since 2015, was added to the archive. "The Barbarastollen preserves what makes up the identity of our country – over generations," says BBK boss Tiesler.

In addition to the peculiarities of foolish goings-on, this also includes the construction plans for Cologne Cathedral or the results of the football World Cup – but above all some administrative procedures from German offices captured on microfilm. So is the Barbarastollen preserving not so much German culture as the history of German bureaucracy for posterity?

The archivists' basic problem

The chief archivists of the federal states decide what goes into the gallery –, which is not easy. Selecting what should be preserved for posterity is a fundamental problem for any archiving program. The guidelines for the protection of cultural assets, for example, speak of a "representative cross-section in terms of time, region, and subject matter". This leaves the archivist room for interpretation.

To facilitate the selection process, three levels of urgency have been introduced. As soon as all level 1 documents have been archived at the ZBO, the archivists can take care of level 2 and then level 3 documents. The problem: Level 1 also includes documents dating from after 1800. Logically, their number is constantly increasing, so that the archivists cannot keep up with archiving all level 1 documents.

32,000 kilometers of microfilm and no end in sight

The fundamental debate whether the effort involved in the Barbarastollen is worthwhile at all has, in any case, died down since 2009 – since the spectacular collapse of the Cologne City Archive. Countless documents fell victim to the mud of a subway construction site. At the time, around ten million images from the Cologne City Archive were stored in the Barbara gallery, which could at least be preserved in this way. Despite this, not a single container had to be opened, as documents are now increasingly being archived digitally.

In times of decentralized, digital data storage, the question therefore arises whether central archiving such as that in the Barbarastollen is still up to date. After all, the storage density of a microfilm is not all that high. Microfilms with a total length of over 32,000 kilometers are already stored in the Schauinsland mountain. Even if the films can be stored for 500 years, is there even enough space in the tunnel?

Backwards for archiving purely digital documents

So wouldn't a digital backup be cheaper? Wouldn't it also provide more security? After all, the number of documents that only exist in digital form is also increasing. How should they be captured on microfilm? And above all, why? Technically speaking, wouldn't that be a step backwards?

Finally, the federal states are also getting ready to push ahead with digital archiving, for example via the Online Access Act (OZG) for the creation of digital administrative services. North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, includes the provision of archive records among these administrative services.

A digital backup of the ZBO would also make it possible in principle to make the documents publicly accessible worldwide, for example to promote historical research. Of course, legal requirements such as personal rights or limitation periods would have to be observed – not to mention the effort involved in digitizing the microfilms, whose sources are only available in analogue form, and enabling standardized online access.

But perhaps one or two football fans would like to look up in the "Online-ZBO" who played alongside Helmut Rahn in the 1954 World Cup final.

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