The collapse of the Cologne City Archive in March 2009 was let’s just say, sub-optimal. The building full of the archives came down during construction work on the city’s north south light rail tunnel, killing two people in the neighbouring houses and burying one of Europe’s most important municipal archives under rubble and mud. This was not some little local records office containing a few damp parish newsletters, but a vast collection preserving nearly a thousand years of Cologne’s documentary memory, including medieval charters, manuscripts, personal papers and administrative records of extraordinary value. Few cities manage to mislay their own past quite so dramatically and this was especially unfortunate given that it had survived the ravages of the Second World War.
What followed was a long and expensive salvage operation, with archivists, conservators and volunteers working to recover, freeze, clean and identify damaged material piece by piece, which is in my humble opinion very much heroic work. Millions of items were rescued, though often in fragmentary or filthy condition, and the restoration effort has taken years, with the city slowly rebuilding both the archive and its reputation after a catastrophe that became a byword for civic embarrassment.
The work to fix the archives is not yet complete, over €400 million has already been spent and restoration and the rebuilding of the collection will take decades more yet. However, all of the most important pieces of the archive have been saved and the losses have been minimised, but it’s not really an ideal situation.
I like the museum’s exhibit on this, it’s a fire exit sign from around 2000 which was salvaged from the collapsed building. It is beautifully understated as a representation of the disaster that took place here.