The Director-General of the State Archives, Dr. Margit Ksoll-Marcon, the Mayor of the City of Amberg, Mr. Michael Cerny, the Director-General of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Dr. Klaus Ceynowa, and the 1st Chairman of the Literaturarchiv Sulzbach-Rosenberg e.V., Mr. PD Dr. habil. Heribert Tommek, signed on 15. November 2019 at 10 a.m. in the Amberg State Archives the mutual support of archives and libraries in Amberg and Sulzbach-Rosenberg in emergencies (“Notfallverbund Amberg – Sulzbach-Rosenberg”).
According to the emergency associations Augsburg (founded in 2015), Munich (founded in 2016), Nuremberg (founded in 2016), Landshut (founded in 2019) and Bamberg (founded in 2019), the association Amberg – Sulzbach-Rosenberg is the sixth of this kind in Bavaria. From an archival point of view it should be emphasized that the depot of the Amberg State Archive in Sulzbach-Rosenberg is also part of the association.
The agreement includes: joint trainings and exercises, the preparation and exchange of emergency plans, and regular exchange of those responsible with each other and with external partners such as fire brigade and technical assistance.
For the hopefully never-ending emergency, archives and libraries provide mutual support in order to bundle resources and to ensure faster and more effective recovery and initial supply of the affected archives, books and exhibits. One of the most important tasks of the institutions involved is the protection of the cultural goods they hold against fire, water, external violence or other unpredictable events.
The past has shown that the employees of the individual institutions are often overwhelmed with large damage events without external assistance. Great catastrophes such as the Elbhochwasser 2002, the fire in the Weimar Duchess Anna Amalia Library 2004 or the collapse of the historical archives of the city of Cologne 2009 have shown this in an impressive way. Strong rains and flood events in the recent past led to a number of Bavarian nobility archives that were able to be managed with united forces. Fortunately, the institutions involved in Bavarian emergency alliances have not yet had to deal with major emergencies.
The fire of the Trausnitz Castle in Landshut remains on the 21st. In October 1961, the state archive Landshut, which was currently housed there, was seriously affected. At that time, the Bavarian archive administration had to make its own experience with a large fire disaster and damage to archives and building materials.
The emergency association Amberg – Sulzbach-Rosenberg, founded by the signing of this agreement, expressly invites representatives of other cultural institutions, such as museums, in Amberg and Sulzbach-Rosenberg to cooperate in the future.
For more information on the work of emergency associations in Germany, see: http://notfallverbund.de/
