Heritage in danger: archive documents Ukrainian buildings

Culture - Heritage in danger: archive documents Ukrainian buildings

Mountains of rubble, a collapsed dome, destroyed columns and damaged paintings - looking at the pictures of the famous Transfiguration Cathedral in the old town of Odessa after the bombing reveals the full destructive force of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. The famous Orthodox cathedral is the most prominent of the historically significant buildings that have been photographed and documented for over a year as part of a project supervised from Marburg and Hanover. Its destruction has "struck at the heart of Ukraine as a cultural nation", says Christian Bracht, Director of the German Documentation Center for Art History (DDK) - Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, to the German Press Agency.

In the project, the DDK has been working for over a year together with scientists led by Ina Blümel from the Leibniz Information Center for Science and Technology (TIB) and 17 Ukrainian photographers to photograph and document such buildings. There are historical models for this activity from the time of the First and Second World Wars, when culturally significant buildings were also deliberately destroyed in some cases, says Bracht. Back then, too, photographers were sent out to take pictures of monuments and - in keeping with the times - describe them in analog lists. During the two world wars, the DDK itself took on this task on behalf of the German military administration in countries such as Belgium, France and the Baltic states.

The increasing destruction of historical buildings in Ukraine shows just how explosive and important the current project "Documenting Ukrainian Cultural Heritage" is. Local photographers have so far documented around 250 potentially war-threatened buildings with a total of 3,700 exterior and interior photos in cities such as Kiev, Odessa, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia. It is not known how many of these have actually been destroyed so far, but it is foreseeable that their number will increase as there is no end to the war in sight, says Bracht. This is another reason why the scientists would like to see the project receive longer-term funding instead of just three months on average, as has been the case to date. The project will be funded by the German Federal Foreign Office until the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, Bracht does not want to name the documented buildings - the aim is not to give the Russian aggressor the opportunity to "use them to build a military map, so to speak, in order to plan attack targets". The work, which is taking place under dangerous and difficult conditions in view of the Russian attacks, is being coordinated on site by a Ukrainian scientist. In addition to the bombardments, the participants in the country also have to reckon with repeated power cuts and therefore have to interrupt image processing in the digital photo lab or uploading via the internet for long periods of time, as Bracht explains.

The images are taken with digital cameras and special lenses, and the professional quality is ensured by technical inspection methods at the DDK. The buildings and their features are stored in a database based on scientific and technical standards. The long-term storage of the images and data will then take place on the server systems of the University Computer Center of the Philipps University of Marburg. If the buildings are destroyed, the images will serve as a sound basis for reconstruction, scientific documentation and cultural remembrance.

Another central component of the project is the special open source software Wikibase, which enables local citizens, activists and photographers to contribute to the emergency documentation of the buildings in the long term. Blümel's team at TIB Hannover 's Open Science Lab is responsible for this part of the project. The photographs and associated data will later be published on the Internet as a kind of "national monument portal", as Bracht says. However, for the reasons mentioned, this will only happen after the end of the war. Culturally significant buildings are vulnerable targets for an opponent of the war who explicitly questions and attacks the cultural identity of a country and its population.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian architectural project Skeiron is pursuing similar goals to the project of the scientists from Marburg and Hanover. The group uses modern technology to create digital replicas of Ukrainian architectural monuments. Ten of the graphically elaborate and virtually accessible models were recently on display in an exhibition at the Baukunstarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dortmund. These included the neo-Gothic St. Nicholas Cathedral in Kiev, the monumental Cathedral of the Annunciation in Kharkiv and the partially destroyed airport building in Donetsk.

This project, which was launched in March 2022, also aims to safeguard Ukraine's architectural and artistic heritage and preserve memories from the destructive influences of time, as the group writes on its website. The digital models should also make it possible to reconstruct the buildings at a later date if necessary. The show, which allowed visitors to virtually immerse themselves in the buildings using QR codes, attracted a great deal of attention, said a spokesperson for the Baukunstarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen. The aim was not only to support the Ukrainian group of architects, but also to raise awareness of the fact that the war is also threatening Europe's cultural heritage.