O szansę utrwalenia historycznego dorobku

• Authors: Polak Tadeusz

Title variants

EN

FOR THE CHANCE OF PRESERVING THE HISTORIC HERITAGE

• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

The latest half-century of the history of material culture in Europe can be divided into four distinct periods, when one looks at it from a viewpoint of monuments' conservator. The first period is the period of the World W a r II, which was fought on the territory of whole Europe destroying historic centres of towns and burning thousands of historic structures. In that period cultural heritage of European n a tions got impoverished, museum collections were grossly d e stroyed and culture — multilated. Millions of people were killed and the world created by them also disappeared. The year of 1945 brought liberation and peace as well as the counting of losses, destructions, hopes and needs for newly- emerging life. The second period was characterized by a rapid civilizational and investment acceleration in the fifties and sixties. Unfortunately, it brought a serious threat to historic structures of architecture and building. Historic centres of towns, historic heritage of the countryside and natural environment of the man were put in danger. One can list a t this point numerous examples of drastic demolishing of entire quarters that survived the ravages of war or ruins that could still be reconstructed. Countryside buildings, harmonously inscribed into landscape, were infringed in order to introduce modern structures, which multilated the environment built by generations. This is a generally known phenomenon which takes place irrespective of a geographical position or a socio-political system. This is the price of civilization and industrial development. This is the price paid by the man for his en d e a vour to rapidly reconstruct war damages and to fulfill his dreams of a better life. The third period covers the seventies, which can be given the name of a rational attitude of the society to d e g ra dation caused by war and development of civilization. One can mention here numerous international congresses, local meetings a t which the existing endangerings were an alysed and evaluated. That period was also the time of a close-up of ecological ideas and assumptions of the protection of historic heritage. In many cases these problems were treated together. In the professional field of the protection of monuments this progress may be defined by means of two characteristic documents of international na ture, namely the Charter of Venice (1964) and the Warsaw Recommendation (1976), adopted later by the General Assembly of UNESCO in Nairobi. Thousands of social committees were established which worked out programmes expressing public opinion. All this impeded markedly the process of destruction carried out for the sake of superficially conceived development of civilization. After adopting by UNESCO, IC O M O S and other international organizations of ap prop ria te documents, it may be said without ex ag g e ra tion th at there have been drawn international formulas of such notions as historic heritage. These notions cover both the Acropolis in Athens, medieval European and Asian towns, traditional buildings in the countryside of France, Poland or Puebla in Mexico. The methods and rules of technological and conservation procedure have been specified, though it is still necessary to strive for their popularity and implementation. This period can be summed up in the following way: we know now what, how and why to protect. The fourth period covers the eighties. At that time an a ttempt was made to implement conservation guide-lines that had been checked before in practice with good results, though on a small scale. A p a rt from a broad social support in Europe and non-European countries, the guide-lines on the protection of historic heritage have found their expression not only in legal documents of international standing but also in local and govermental programmes. Professional literature quotes numerous examples which can give rise to optimism, despite unavoidable losses in historic heritage caused by disintegration of the material from which people raised their houses, castles, churches and factories. While not belittling significant achievements of all European countries in the protection of cultural values one has to say that conservation practice both in Poland and in many other European countries has revealed a b a rrier, underestimated so far, which effectively hampers our activities in the field of the protection of historic heritage. This is a technological barrier. There is now much understanding for the need to protect historic centres in a complex way. Financial resources necessary to take up work on a broad scale are av ailab le. Already today they are proportionally bigger than professional labour force trained to solve these problems, i.e. qualified teams o f craftsmen who would know traditional technologies. Also, there is not enough traditional materials which would guarantee a proper execution of conservation work. W e hope that the process of detante will allow to increase the means allocated fo r a broadly conceived sphere of social life. W e also awa it a relative increase in financial resources for conservation work, training of craftsmen and production of traditional materials necessary to carry out conservation work. This hope seems logical. There arises a question in what way a technological barrier can be broken down. W h a t means and activities should be taken up in order to use up the inflow of financial resources expected as a result of relaxation of tension and until now en gaged in armaments, for the sake of rescuing historic achievements of the man? I represent Poland, the country where despite socio-political determinants existing in Europe and in the world neither money nor technological means are spared for the protection of cultural property. The evidence of this policy is the reconstruction of towns and historic structures, destroyed during the war, in their historic form. Therefore, on the basis of Polish experience I wish to put forward a few proposals for further consideration : — training of craftsmen in disappearing professions, needed to carry out conservation work, should be taken up on a broad scale; — production of traditional building materials should have its place in governmental programmes; — I propose to establish a centre of necessary information, which would look after, inspire and inform of activities in the field of applying technological and conservational te chniques and production of adequ ate building and conservation materials.

• Publisher: Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa
• Journal: Ochrona Zabytków
• Year: 1986
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 169-171

Dates

published

1986

Contributors

author

Polak Tadeusz

• dr, dyrektor naczelny PP PKZ

Identifiers

ISSN

0029-8247