ThyssenKrupp Magazin

108 OBERRIED
Nothing betrays the existence of the unique treasure of German intellectual life
that is buried deep in the ground, hidden in the middle of a forest in southern
Germany. The white-blue sign behind the barred door is inconspicuous, with
nothing to indicate that cultural goods are kept under special protection here. The visitor
almost feels as though he has entered the Kyffhäuser, the maze of caves in which
the Emperor Barbarossa resides, waiting to return.
In reality, the visitor has entered the Barbara underground shelter in Oberried,
near Freiburg. The facility is no less than the “central storage place of the Federal Republic
of Germany.”
With his shoulder-length hair, Roland Stachowiak of the Central Office for Civil
Protection may bear some similarity to the medieval red-beard, but in the Barbara
shelter this administrative official charged with the “protection of cultural goods” becomes
a tour guide. Wearing a helmet and a yellow jacket he marches ahead, 500
meters (1,650 feet) in all, through air that is 10 degrees centigrade and has a relative
humidity of 75 percent.
“The real storage gallery starts behind this steel door,” Stachowiak says. Once
he has adjusted the combination lock, he needs two strong arms to open the 1.5meter-thick
steel door that was built by Thyssen Industries three decades ago. A
few more steps and the treasure trove, 100 meters in length, reveals its treasures.
CULTURE IN IN-SITU REINFORCED CONCRETE BEHIND STEEL DOORS
It is, of course, a different kind of treasure trove, and anyone hoping to find invaluable
relics of long-gone eras here will be disappointed. Instead, about 1,300 stainless steel
containers are stored on two levels, firmly closed, and differentiated only by a code.
The containers are filled with films, microfilmed archive material with a unique value
and, according to the sign, “of special significance to German history and culture.”
Each of the containers, which are made of V-2-A stainless steel, contains 24,320 meters
of microfilm, meaning that nearly 32 million meters of film showing more than 700
million documents are stored in this shelter below the Schauinsland hills.
The project appears strange, almost spooky, but Stachowiak stresses just how
serious it is. “The Hague Convention of 1954 is an international agreement for cultural
protection,” he explains. “The Federal Republic of Germany signed the convention
in 1967. The first documents were stored in the Barbara underground shelter in 1975.
The gallery itself was lined with in-situ reinforced concrete and secured with pressure
doors. From the start, very high technical demands were applied to the steel containers.
After all, the microfilms in the containers had to be protected from adverse out-
Under the Hague Convention of 1954,
the Barbara underground shelter
is reserved for the storage of objects
with cultural signifigance.
Roland Stachowiak of the Central Office
for Civil Protection ensures that
the cultural documents are safely moved
to their final place of rest.
History’s final
place of rest
side influences.” Anybody wishing to find out more about
these containers has to travel quite a distance from the
shelter – to the small town of Haiger, about a 90-minute
drive north of Frankfurt, where the UCON company makes
the containers. Klaus Kettner, responsible for sales of remolding
technology at UCON, apparently knows every last
detail about his company’s highly sophisticated cylindrical
container, as he calls it.
“We procure the pre-cut parts from ThyssenKrupp
Nirosta in Dillenburg,” just a few kilometers down the
road, he says. “The material has to be suitable for deep
drawing, with a high heat treatment. At a depth of 350
millimeters per side, we have to draw a relatively deep
corpus for the upper and lower parts. It is important that
the material does not break during the drawing process
without annealing. For this purpose, we have built special
tools that are unique to our company. Thanks not least to
this exclusivity, we have supplied the containers for the
Barbara storage facility in Oberried for many years.”
It is a matter of course that the containers are stored
in airtight and climate-controlled conditions in the shelter.
No sound from the noisy outside world enters, and apart
from the staff and some experts few people come around
to this hidden cultural treasure. The strict simplicity of the
area, which receives heavy snowfall in the winter, can be
impressive – the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-
1976) called the region a “creative landscape” where “all
of this pushes and shoves and swings through everyday
existence up there.”
Could there be any better place for culture to take a
rest, in line with DIN standards for at least 500 years? Stachowiak
asks rhetorically. The micro films may even last
for 1,500 years, he says, adding laconically that “we certainly
won’t be able to check that.”
From the start, provisions were made to ensure that
the microfilms remain undisturbed from all outside
TK Magazine | 1 | 2004 |