Emergency plans in museums in Germany - Museo Guggenheim ...

Emergency plans in museums in Germany
HANS-JÜRGEN HARRAS
State Museums of Berlin.
ABSTRACT: “It is fortunate that disasters do not occur every day in museums and galleries.
The very rarity of them can lead to a situation where we hope for the best and are reluctant to
prepare for the worst! Forethought and planning can prevent an emergency becoming a disaster
and minimise the injury and damage to people and collections.” (Bryan Dovey)
Some museums in Germany have experienced disasters and damage - natural caused or human
caused. The awareness is just growing that there can something more be done to fulfil one of the
most important functions of a museum – to preserve the cultural heritage.
Flood, fire, theft, vandalism and other dangers threaten museums. The level of preparedness in the
various museums is different from one to the other. There are some efforts to get the museums in
Germany together on the way to a higher level of security for the buildings and collections.
The flood in 2002 is one of the important incidents that figured out a mighty natural threat – not
only to museums. Something has changed since these horrible weeks. It is not only a task for
museums, mostly for the whole regions. The collaboration with the local authorities and governing
bodies has changed since then.
Another disaster was the fire in the Library of Anna Amalia in Weimar which destroyed a huge
amount of valuable books and manuscripts.
The State Museums of Berlin have their own experience with fire – in the Museum of Contemporary
Arts - Hamburger Bahnhof. Also this case from 2003 is explained in some details. It shows a better
preparation against the danger of fire and how it has worked.
The daily threats of theft, intrusion and other human caused incidents require also being prepared.
The author explains some measures which help to reduce the risks, how to prepare for and to react
in emergency situations.
Introduction
Let me start with a quotation. Bryan Dovey, a former Chairman of ICMS said once:
“It is fortunate that disasters do not occur every day in museums and galleries. The very rarity of them can lead to a
situation where we hope for the best and are reluctant to prepare for the worst! Forethought and planning can prevent
an emergency becoming a disaster and minimise the injury and damage to people and collections.”
We find in Germany like in other European countries a lot of different types of museums: painting galleries, sculpture
museums, museums of arts and craft, historical museums, archaeological museums, natural museums, museums of
modern art, scientific museums and far more. These museums are located in historical museum buildings – more and
more of these buildings are restored and renovated -, as well as in modern buildings, in castles, fortresses and others.
Like museums all over the world the museums in Germany do their daily work: The museum employees do their
scientific research, restore collection objects, maintain the permanent exhibitions, take care of the collections and
visitors and create special exhibitions – often with a big success. Those special exhibitions attract a lot of visitors who
want to see these exhibitions. Artworks can be seen there in completely new arrangements and combinations.
Paintings, sculptures and other museum items have to travel for being exhibited in special exhibitions in other
museums. To give a lot of loans to museums all over the world is a daily task. But it is also a threat to the museum
items. Let me point out some more threats:
A lot of activities are organised in and around museums: concerts, operas, meetings, dinner parties, sometimes without
a connection to the museum and its collection, only to have the party on a special and unusual location. Those events
gather many people for a short time in a limited space. The preparation for these events needs mostly much more time
than the event itself. Special lightning must be prepared, mobile stages have to be build, the caterer prepares food and
drinks which have to be served during the event and there is never enough time to do all these things in a calm way.
Doors in the museum have to stay open because electrical cables have to lie across. Fast running ways for the waiters
have to be free for them and others. But these are not the only threats to the museum items inside of the building.

Sometimes visitors of events like mentioned before change their behaviour after having some alcoholic drinks and that
is not every time an advantage for the museum.
Museums are often located in historical buildings, others in modern buildings. All kind of museum buildings have to be
maintained with different kind of measures, small and big. Renovation and restoration work in a museum while it runs in
the same time in the building its exhibition, its storages and workshops needs a lot of measures to guarantee the level
of security. You can find often surprisingly new ways into the museum over the scaffold on the outside of the building.
Welding requires special monitoring of the workplace and the surroundings. Escape ways can be closed during the
maintenance work. The fire brigade or other helpers find an unusual situation in and around the museum in case of a
fire alarm or in another emergency situation. There are visitors every day in the exhibitions in the museums. The most
of them wants to see the exhibition, to rejoice themselves in the paintings, sculptures, installations and other items.
Some visitors are also interested in things behind the scene. But unfortunately those interests can cause damages.
Luckily there is mostly not a bad intention behind the interest.
On the other hand there are also – luckily seldom - other visitors who are going to damage exhibited items or who want
to steal something from the museum. If we look into the history of museums we find many cases of attacks against
exhibited items. Paintings were destroyed with knifes or attacked with acid. Other items were stolen during the night
hours or taken away during an armed robbery. To mention some examples from Germany and from other countries: I
am sure you remember the intrusion into the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, when the famous salt pot called
“Saliera” by Cellini was stolen during the night. The thief entered the upper level of the museum over the scaffold on the
facade of the museum which was not properly protected. He smashed and opened a window of the showroom and
destroyed the showcase in the exhibition room. Doing this he triggered an alarm on the intrusion alarm system but the
guards thought that it was a false alarm and didn’t react as they had to do. The result was that the thief escaped
undiscovered. Fortunately the stolen Saliera was found after some month and returned to the Kunsthistorisches
Museum.
The Munch museum in Oslo experienced a more dangerous case in the summer 2004. Two paintings were stolen
during the opening hours by some gunmen. The police arrested some suspicious people after that and took lots of
investigation but it needed very long until the paintings were found in August 2006. The famous painting “The Scream”
was so badly damaged that it is not possible to restore it.
Stolen objects return mostly to the museum. The amount of stolen objects is small compared to the amount of objects
of the collection as a whole. So from my point of view there are much more dangerous hazards for museums and
collections than robberies and thefts: Fire and flood, which can destroy a big amount of museum objects in a short time.
And burnt objects can’t return to a collection. May be they can get replaced with a copy, a second issue or anything
similar. But the original which is burned is away with all its information, its history, its secrets and aura.
The Anna-Amalia-Library in Weimar was burnt by a really big and destructive fire which started in the evening hours of
2nd September 2004. A big part of the collection of books and paintings got lost by the flames. Another part was
damaged by the fire and extinguishing water. Around 50.000 books from the 17th and 18th century were burnt, also 35
paintings from the 16th – 18th century. 62.000 books were saved, a lot of them partially damaged. Many employees
and others came to help in that bad situation. The fire brigade needed actually five days till the fire was completely
extinguished. The fire was probably caused by a defective electrical installation. The wooden building construction and
the wooden interior, the galleries and the stairs between the galleries accelerated the spread of fire. The fire brigade
wasn’t able to get close to the fire because of the enormous heat. They could only fight the fire from the distance for
long time. Irony of history: Without the fire it was planned to start with the restoration of the building five weeks later.
The planning engineer had proposed an automatically extinguishing system but he didn’t get enough acceptances for
his proposal before the fire. These opinions were completely changed after the fire.
Austria, Czech Republic and Germany were affected in 2002 by heavy rain falls in the mountains and consequently
there were big damages from a flood which has never been seen for more than hundred years. The famous Dresdner
Zwinger, the State Art Collections in Dresden located in the middle of the town and close to the river Elbe were under
water. Paintings and sculptures from storages in the underground floor had to be evacuated in very few hours. There
was not enough help from the authorities in the first hours. Hospitals and other buildings where human life was in
danger were more important. But a lot of employees of the State Art Collection were alarmed. Employees of the
Ministry for Art and Science in the neighbourhood came to help. 23.000 objects were moved in very short time and
these 23.000 objects were saved. All the paintings could be evacuated from the underground floor to the upper levels
into the exhibition halls.
Only six of them which were too big for the remaining transport ways had to stay there. Like five rolled paintings they
were hanged under the ceiling of the cellar floor. This was good enough to keep them away from the water for the
whole flood. The smaller damage of the paintings from this situation could be fixed after that. But many other objects

like around 50 baroque frames, building interior, machines and technical systems in the underground floor were
damaged or completely destroyed. The THW (Technisches Hilfswerk) gave a lot of support with hydraulic pumps to
lower the level of water inside of the museum buildings. Soldiers of the Bundeswehr protected the buildings as long as
the intrusion detection system was out of order. The spontaneous collaboration of a lot of people led to a very good
result. The museums in Germany and other cultural institutions learned an important lesson from this case: You cannot
do everything by yourself in natural caused case of emergency. You need the right network, connections to all those
who are able to help and assist you. That means connections to other local cultural institutions as well as the local
authorities, the army, companies with helpful equipment and many more. Museums, libraries, archives and similar
institutions which house a lot of objects of history, culture and art have the same problems. If they collaborate with each
other they can achieve much more success than alone. They can share a lot of facilities like additional storage in a
climate controlled state. Transport capacities, people who know how to handle sensitive objects of art can get together
in the place of emergency.
Skilled workers like restorers exchange their experiences: What can be done in which case, which methods could be
helpful just now. The connection to local authorities, to the fire brigade, the police, the universities and others plays an
important role. The responsible employees of those institutions can get familiar with the situation in the museum, library
or archive before an emergency. It is much easier to find the right decisions in case of emergency if they know about
the circumstances of the collections, of the building, about how to handle works of art properly. It is very helpful to train
situations which can lead to disaster before such situations become real. It can be painful and exhausting but it will be
helpful if one needs these experiences. Nobody knows before when a disaster will happen. The simulation of possible
solutions against the influence of such enormous amounts of water in Dresden and other cities of the flooded areas
lead to a lot of protective solutions like new walls, water barriers, renaturisation of land zones which can be used for
being flooded to give the water a defined way and area to reduce the destructive power of the water.
The Konferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen in Germany, a collaboration of important cultural institutions arranged
some meetings in recent years to the main objective of security, prevention and emergency planning. A lot of museums
attended these meetings and consequently the emergency planning in many cultural institutions got a good progress.
Some publications were issued by the organizers with guidelines for possible measures against various threats,
containing also a bibliography and contact details of specialists in the different fields of security and prevention. I see it
as some first steps in the right direction. But from my point of view it would be necessary to concentrate such issues in
a centralised institution. It is not as easy as it seems because culture is in Germany a task in the sovereignty of the
federal states.
The “Association for loss prevention” VdS in Germany has published a guideline for the generation of plans for
evacuation and rescue of art and cultural objects – VdS 3434. The aim of the guideline is to help to create suitable
emergency plans for the various cultural institutions. Panic, helplessness and chaos should be avoided by having a
plan what to do to give a structure to the necessary activities. The emergency plan has to cover the measures of the
first 48 hours after an emergency. The field of application for the guideline are all those institutions like museums,
libraries, archives, churches, galleries, art depositories and others. What do these institutions have in common?:
They house mostly unrecoverable collections of assets with a very high value. The collections and items have a high
sensitivity to external influences like light, humidity, temperature and others. Those influences come together every
time with the hazards of an emergency. They endanger the items and objects of the collections. We find a lot of curious
guests on the fences around the locations of emergency. It could be possible that there were also some suspicious
person among them. It is not possible to watch and monitor them all during their movement around the place or
building.
The guideline VdS 3434 recommends specific measures before an emergency:
Do a risk assessment for your museum. Find the weak points in constructive and physical matters, in organisational
matters and others. Then improve at first the constructive conditions in your building to minimize risks. What can be
done: For example: Make the doors and windows stronger that they are resistant against attacks. Divide the building
into fire compartments or smoke fighting compartments. Then install technical systems which could recognise hazards:
A fire alarm system, an intrusion alarm system, a video surveillance system and others. Make sure that a hazard can
be recognised very early - before it causes a bigger damage and before the constructive devices get destroyed which
give the real protection. Organisational measures have to guarantee that an alarm which has been triggered on the
technical systems can reach the right recipient, a guard or anyone else who is able to react in appropriate time and
appropriate way, who knows what to do, who can organise the proper counteraction. Procedure instructions should be
written in an emergency plan.
Who has to be alerted? Members of museum staff, fire brigade, police, the director of the collection. Because the
guards can get overstrained with such a situation we have in the State Museums of Berlin a call-on duty around the

clock for members of the security management. They will be alerted also as soon as possible by mobile phone, can
give support at first on the phone and have to hurry to the place of emergency to take the lead.
During opening hours of the museum: Visitors have to be evacuated, museum staff too. Guards in the exhibition halls
have to guide the visitors to the escape ways and have to care in the same time for the security of the exhibited
objects. Panic has to be avoided. Handicapped persons have to get supported.
Depending on the hazard and situation the fire brigade and police got already automatically alerted (by direct line of the
fire alarm system for example). When they arrive to the museum they have to find a responsible person who can give
them the necessary information about what has happened, where are the ways to enter the building to find an easy
way to the location of the hazard. There has to be a special key which opens all locks of the doors for the fire brigade.
A map of the building and its surroundings with information about doors, water supply, electrical supply, dangerous
devices like workshops with poisonous liquids, electrical main distribution boards and more has to be handed over. Fire
plans for all floors of the building are helpful too. Such plans can include information about the content of the rooms
(sensitive museum objects, exhibition rooms and others). It can help the fire brigade or others to be as careful as
possible and to minimize the damage of objects. The priority of objects which could be evacuated can be signed in
such plans for permanent exhibitions. This is not really possible for temporarily exhibitions. I know how difficult it is for
curators of collections to set a priority for art items. Every object is important for the museum. But the fire brigade is not
able to decide in case of fire. They need a decision before.
In the case of evacuation it is absolutely necessary to make documentations about what is evacuated, where it is
stored now, best with photos and written notations. It is helpful to contact the insurance company as soon as possible.
The insurance companies have specialists who can give a valuable support in emergency cases. After the emergency:
An analysis of harmful substances which can damage the rescued objects or the objects which remained in the building
should be done as soon as possible to avoid further damage. We have some very helpful collaboration in groups of
specialists like restorers from museums in the neighbourhood for emergency cases. Lists with phone numbers of those
specialists get updated every half year. Security for objects – rescued or remained in their place – has to be organised
or installed, constructive measures as well as security patrols or interim storage facilities. Teamwork with insurance
company, local authorities and specialists from the museum staff is required for the continuation of rescue, preservation
and restoration. Communication to public media has to be done through only one line. All inquiries from journalists,
broadcast and television service have to be answered from one dedicated spokesman, not from others. Otherwise
there will arise lots of rumours and presumptions.
I am going to give you a report about a fire in one of our museums. It happened in the Museum of Contemporary Art
Berlin – Hamburger Bahnhof on 27th July 2003. An alarm from a motion detector of the intrusion alarm system in an
exhibition room was triggered at 7.45 p.m. A smoke detector in the same exhibition room triggered an alarm some
moments later. The fire brigade was automatically alerted and arrived 6 minutes later. The smoke vent of the room was
opened already. Lots of smoke came out of it. An LED on a display in the security control room pointed out the floor
and the area of the building where the fire alarm was triggered. A card which displayed the way from the security
control room to the location of fire, appropriate to the number of the smoke detector, was handed over to the fire
brigade. Fortunately the museum building was equipped with modern fire resistant facilities like automatically closing
fire resistant doors. These doors were part of the boundaries of the fire compartment. They got closed automatically
when the fire detection system triggered an alarm. Some artworks of modern art were exhibited in the affected part of
the museum. In this case it was a room-in-room installation there, covered with an inner ceiling. Some passage ways
between the exhibition halls were closed from this installation. I show you some views of the artwork taken of a former
installation of this artwork. Other than shown here the candles were not lit in our exhibition. The fire started inside of the
installation room.
Because of the ceiling of the installation the smoke couldn’t get out and couldn’t reach the smoke detector. One of the
walls of the installed room broke down – that was the intrusion alarm – and then the smoke came out and triggered the
fire alarm on the smoke detector. In this time it was not a small fire anymore. Lots of smoke came out of the fire and
filled the rooms of the fire compartment. It didn’t last very long but the impact of smoke was really visible in all the
neighbouring rooms. The guards had alerted many people of the museum staff, the security department, the director
and the spokesman. So it was possible that nearly all of the objects from the exhibition in the neighbouring rooms could
be rescued very fast. These objects were carried into the next fire compartments in the same museum building. There
were the same climate conditions and the intrusion detection system and fire detection system was still working there.
The analysis and restoration for these objects could start very fast. The damage of the facilities in the affected fire
compartment is shown in the next pictures: There are the remaining rests of the motion detector which triggered the
first alarm, also the melted rest of the smoke detector above the room installation. The glass ceiling with artificial
lightning was completely destroyed. Parts of the glass panes remained in the ceiling construction in a very dangerous
way – like a guillotine. Also the glass ceilings in the neighbouring rooms were damaged from the hot smoke. The room
without the installation on the next day showed a lot of damage. Luckily the fire brigade used a method to foam up the

extinguishing water with compressed air. So they didn’t need a lot of water and the damage for the museums building
caused by water was small. The police and the fire brigade searched for long times for the reason of the fire but it
remained unsolved.

Conclusion
What I can recommend in summary from my experiences is the following:
- Take in account that unexpected and unwanted events can happen every time.
- Be prepared to react immediately in the case of emergency.
- Train the necessary measures for emergencies with your staff.
- Look for communication and collaboration with local partners in time.
- Prevention is the most important challenge.
About the author
He was born on 4 th April 1957 in Dömitz, Germany. After school and service in the army he studied communications
engineering, finished as diploma engineer.
He worked as development engineer for some years in various companies. He started a job 1990 in a company which
installed security systems (Ristow GmbH). He was the head of the Berlin office for four years. During this time he was
involved in the installation a lot of security systems in museums in Berlin. So he was able to collect many experiences
of the specialised requirements in museums. The company was sold 1993 to Cerberus, Switzerland.
He started his job as Head of Security in the State Museums of Berlin – Foundation of Cultural Property of the former
State Prussia in 1995. He is responsible here in sixteen of the biggest museums in Berlin for the security systems and
for the guards in the exhibition halls and guards who monitor the buildings. He also provides support to other
professionals as an advisor in questions of security from other museums, especially in Germany.
He became a member of ICMS/ICOM 1997 while the annual meeting was held in Berlin. He was later elected as an
ordinary ICMS Board member 2001, started as Secretary of ICMS 2003 and was elected as ICMS Chair in 2007. He is
also active as the Head of the Vocabulary Working Group of ICMS.
Hans-Jürgen Harras
Staatliche Musen Berlin
Referat Sicherheit
Tel.:0049-30-266 2900 / Fax:0049-30-266 2969
Email: h.j.harras@smb.spk-berlin.de