Secret State Archives and State Library once again receive funding to preserve written cultural assets
Press release from 09/18/2020
Special funds from the Coordination Centre for the Preservation of Written Cultural Heritage (KEK) are once again being used to support projects at the SPK: The Geheime Staatsarchiv PK will restore and digitise the estate of the architect Franz Schwechten. The Berlin State Library is continuing the mass deacidification of its general print holdings.
The Secret State Archives has taken the 100th anniversary of Franz Heinrich Schwechten's death in 2024 as an opportunity for the restoration project. Around 5,600 architectural plans were cleaned, restored, repackaged and digitised as part of the conservation measure, which was funded with almost 50,000 euros. The architect Franz Heinrich Schwechten (1841-1924) is considered the most distinctive representative of the architectural style of the Wilhelmine era. In addition to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, his main work, he created the designs for numerous other buildings in Berlin. These included the reception building for Anhalter Bahnhof, the remodelling of the old Philharmonie in Bernburger Straße, a factory building for AEG in Wedding, the Schultheiss brewery in Prenzlauer Berg, the Apostle Paul Church in Schöneberg and the former Haus Vaterland on Potsdamer Platz. Over 5,000 plans with sketches, drafts and construction drawings as well as watercolours and photographs from the Schwechten architecture studio were recovered from under the rubble of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was destroyed in an air raid in 1945. The documents were transferred to the Secret State Archives in 1950. Due to the burial, the state of preservation of some of the plans is poor. The tracing paper used for the architectural drawings often shows mechanical damage and flaws, and water damage, mould and heavy soiling have also been found.
At the Berlin State Library, around 27,000 volumes are being mechanically deacidified with the 100,000 euros in funding. The majority of books published from the mid-19th century until the 1980s were made from 'acidic paper'. At that time, industrial paper production mainly used material containing wood pulp, which initially browned over the years and later disintegrated. The process is stopped by neutralising these papers; since the 1990s, this has been carried out in a mechanical mass process. Added chemicals raise the pH value in the alkaline range with a long-lasting effect. However, mass deacidification is only truly sustainable if the other conservation conditions for the holdings are also optimised. This includes, first and foremost, standardised storage in air-conditioned stacks, as is the case at the Berlin State Library at all its locations on Unter den Linden, Potsdamer Straße/Kulturforum and the Friedrichshagen storage stacks.