

The Coordination Office for the Preservation of Written Cultural Heritage (KEK) coordinates and optimises the preservation of original written materials and thus makes a significant contribution towards safeguarding our cultural memory. Nearly all historical documents – such as books, certificates and records – are made of paper. And that paper is severely threatened: over time, it becomes brittle, deteriorates and, in the worst case, becomes irrecoverable.
Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, we pursue one central objective: to permanently preserve the cultural heritage stored across Germany as written legacies from the past. To that end, we were established in August 2011 within the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and have been based ever since at the State Library of Berlin.
Written documents are threatened as a function of their materiality as well as due to external factors. Water, dirt, mould, and pests, but also chemical degradation processes, consume their physical substance. This is compounded by the threat of unforeseen disasters such as the fire at Weimar's Duchess Anna Amalia Library in 2004, the collapse of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne in 2009, and the fires at the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro in 2018 and at the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris in 2019, which vividly demonstrated the vulnerability of cultural heritage.
The duty of permanently protecting written cultural heritage from these dangers and preserving it for the long term lies with archives, libraries, museums and their affiliated institutions. Yet, all too often, the expertise or the financial resources required to store and safeguard written materials in the best manner possible is not in place. Compounding the challenge, historical holdings in Germany are dispersed across all the states and divided amongst various institutions. The quantity of threatened material is immense. In light of this dispersion and the magnitude of the endeavour, successful preservation can only be achieved on a collective basis that transcends both Land and disciplinary boundaries. And this is where we enter the picture.
Since 2011, we have been the centralised contact point for coordinating preservation efforts throughout Germany. This encompasses a broad spectrum of duties:
Together, the KEK's pilot project funding programme and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media’s special programme have supported around 850 projects to date and invested roughly €18.5 million of funding in preservation efforts. Since 2015, the theoretical and strategic foundation of our work has been the National Recommendations for Action, an initial comprehensive report on the state of written cultural heritage in Germany that systematically assessed institutions' significant needs in this area. With our network-building initiatives, we have considerably bolstered cooperation and expertise in recent years. We receive ongoing specialist support for our funding projects and strategic planning efforts from an expert advisory council composed of specialists from the archive and library sector.
The KEK was established at the initiative of the former cultural commissioner Bernd Neumann, and is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) and the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States (KSL). The BKM contributes €500,000 annually towards the KEK's basic budget. The German states (Länder) contribute a further €100,000 per year via the KSL.
In 2021, the states' share was increased to 150,000. In 2021, the BKM contributed a total of €3.5 million towards the KEK's core finances and the KEK two funding programmes: the pilot project fund and the BKM special programme.
The BKM Special Programme for Preserving Written Cultural Heritage, launched in 2017, enables archives and libraries to deacidify, clean and protectively package large quantities of documents and books. The funding programme was launched in 2017 with extra-budgetary funds of €1 million. The total funding amount was increased first to €2.5 million in 2018 and then to €4.5 million altogether in 2019. In 2020, €3.8 million of extra-budgetary funds were granted to funded projects, and around €2 million were disbursed in 2021. A requirement for support via the BKM special programme is co-financing of at least 50 %, which is usually covered from Land-level funds.
Our work is assisted by a seven-member expert advisory council consisting of representatives from the archive and library sector. Under its bylaws, the advisory council supports the coordination office with the gradual implementation of the National Recommendations for Action. In addition, the advisory council makes recommendations on project funding. The board members are appointed by the BKM in consultation with the KSL and serve a three-year term.
The current members of the expert advisory council:
Representatives of the BKM, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder, the KSL, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the State Library of Berlin can attend meetings of the expert advisory board as guests.
Past appointees to the expert commission have included:
As the sole interdisciplinary and inter-Land body operating in the field of preservation, we serve numerous functions. Situated at the intersection between specialists, institutions and the political sphere, we are the central point of contact for the administrative duty of preservation on the national, Land and municipal levels. In accordance with the National Recommendations for Action, we systematically gather professional and strategic questions around preservation in archives and libraries and develop strategies for future cooperation. Our core responsibilities can be grouped into four areas.
Since our establishment, financially supporting projects for the preservation of written cultural heritage has played a central role in our work. We allocate our budget to two funding programmes:
We help to promulgate (specialist) information on preservation within professional circles, among policymakers and at institutions.
We raise strong awareness of preservation issues among professionals, politicians and the public:
We create spaces and forums for cooperation across German Länder, professional disciplines and funding bodies and also financially support data sharing in the realm of preservation.
Preservation is a system-critical component of preserving heritage in archives, libraries and other institutions that archive and make available written information from the realms of culture and scholarship. The key elements of our strategic approach are formulated in the National Recommendations for Action (2015). In addition to taking stock of damage and threats, the paper lays out and defines a framework of responsibility for the library sector to coordinate reconcile multiple surviving copies of materials created since 1851. Complementary to this, a multi-stage model identifies key elements of a national regulation on the transmission of heritage. To coordinate efforts to protect written cultural heritage throughout Germany, we are working with partners to develop strategies and concepts, which currently centre on the following areas:
Preservation programmes and initiatives exist on both the federal and Land levels. The existing measures, many of them short-term, are insufficient to permanently and effectively protect all the documents that are at risk of sustaining irreparable damage throughout Germany. In the long term, preservation can only be successful on the basis of a national strategy. The KEK is laying this foundation. As we do so, we are building upon an integrative approach in order to create synergies and synchronise the parallel activities taking place on the Land level. At the same time, we offer a platform for dialogue among initiators.
Photo credits © Freies deutsches Hochstift, Frankfurter Goethe-Museum, Sonja Gehrisch