Cultural heritage

The "Cultural Heritage" working group conducted a critical review to develop an overview of the methodologies and opportunities of HAdW academic projects HAdW regard to cultural heritage in research. The following perspectives and objectives guided this process:

1. Status Report
2. Discussion and Criticism of the Concept of Cultural Heritage
3. The Academy's Responses to Criticisms
4. Strategies for maximizing the visibility and sustainability of internal academic research

On June 13, 2022, a report was HAdW at the HAdW board meeting and approved there.

With over 180 research centers worldwide, the German academies’ research-based approach to cultural heritage is unique in both its breadth and depth. Through their own competitive and purely science-driven excellence initiative, the academies strive to make valuable and rare materials, as well as complex subjects, accessible to researchers and the public in a patient, thorough, and sustainable manner. The following principles and objectives guide this effort.

1. Assessment

The topic of “cultural heritage” is gaining momentum. In 2018, the EU designated the “Year of Cultural Heritage”; academic programs on the subject are being established; in Germany, there are at least twenty collaborative projects on the topic, as well as UNESCO chairs across Europe. The eight academies of science, jointly funded by the federal government and the states, have also made research aimed at preserving cultural heritage a central part of their work. Following a highly competitive selection process, they are tapping into historical resources from various cultures—which have previously been either untouched or only partially explored—through long-term projects, primarily in the humanities and social sciences, lasting an average of 15–20 years, known as the Academies Program. Around 900 staff members work in this internationally unique, openly advertised program, which comprises a total of 123 projects across 181 research sites and involves an annual budget of approximately 70 million euros. The selection of topics and materials is governed solely by the criteria of excellence and academic freedom. Furthermore, cultural heritage is the focus of many academic lectures and working groups at the academies.

Like almost all research institutions, the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities HAdW) conducts basic research, sometimes in collaboration with other academies. Among other things, it produces encyclopedias, notably the German Legal Dictionary or the Goethe Dictionary; complete works, such as those of Karl Jaspers; detailed commentaries on literary works by authors such as Malalas or Nietzsche; extensive editions of correspondence from the early modern period; inscriptions from Buddhist China, European antiquity, or the Middle Ages; literary cuneiform texts from Assyria; pre-modern documents from Nepal; broad topics such as the spatiotemporal migratory movements of hominids from 3 million to 20,000 years ago; the structures and functions of temples in ancient Egypt or monasteries in the European High Middle Ages. This foundational work is only possible through patient engagement with the subject matter. What is needed is precisely the work of cataloging and analyzing fundamental linguistic phenomena (e.g., in dictionaries) or specific texts relevant to the cultures under study (in editions) or concrete sites and material cultural artifacts (in excavation projects and the handling of objects)—this is exactly what defines these projects. Such an approach requires a longer timeframe that extends beyond the typical duration of project funding—which is usually only a few years—because otherwise the necessary expertise cannot be developed, and thus the goal of thoroughly cataloging large corpora or collections of materials will not be achieved.

By engaging with such subjects, these projects—and thus the academies—make a very specific and, in this respect, indispensable contribution to a genuine understanding of one another in the 21st-century world, both synchronically and diachronically. Indeed, much of what truly constitutes cultural heritage is systematically compiled, presented, and made available for further research. But precisely in this form, it is not only respected as the heritage of specific groups, but also understood as part of the universal heritage of human civilization(s), as a unique form of tangible and intangible wealth, as a central repository of knowledge for the future, for science, and for the public, and as an indispensable contribution to the documentation of humanity’s cultural memory.

2. Discussion Points

However, given its focus, the Academies Program also finds itself at the center of a growing debate and criticism of the concept of cultural heritage. On the one hand, there is the broad scope of the term “cultural heritage,” which can encompass almost anything. The UNESCO list alone is long. It encompasses objects (e.g., buildings, monuments, artifacts), knowledge (texts, traditional medicine), places (cities, landscapes, historic towns, archaeological sites, ruins, parks, and gardens), as well as practices (craft techniques, dances, music). Within this diversity, a distinction has also been made since the 1980s between “tangible” (buildings, objects, manuscripts) and “intangible heritage” (festivals, songs, literature, rituals, theater, dances, oral traditions, languages), cultural heritage and natural heritage, and official (state) and unofficial cultural or natural heritage.

This dramatic increase in regulations and declarations regarding cultural heritage has led to a particularly significant intrusion of the past into the present. This has given rise to a wealth of knowledge of considerable economic significance, encompassing not only academic institutions but also museums, libraries, monuments, galleries, archives, and digital and analog collections, and continually leading to new research projects and conferences. Not least, cultural heritage is a factor in the attractiveness of locations and tourism.
Of course, these activities themselves are historically conditioned. Prepared by ideas from the Enlightenment and historicism, the concept of cultural heritage emerged in the 18th and especially the 19th century alongside many of the aforementioned institutions, which are now widespread worldwide. In particular, museums and archives shaped by the nation-state go hand in hand with the methods of typological, geographical, and chronological classification and organization—which are also characteristic of modernity—to which extensive databases contribute significantly.

This now ubiquitous practice of remembering, collecting, organizing, and preserving historical material is, in its abundance, a phenomenon of modernity. In a certain sense, cultural heritage becomes a mirror of a present perceived as fragile. It is rooted in a fear of irrevocable loss, destruction, obliteration, and oblivion—a fear that, according to a widespread understanding, seems to be inscribed in modernity through the constant economic and scientific demands for change and renewal.
The topic of “cultural heritage” thus faces a series of challenges: its broad definition, which makes clear distinctions difficult; the concept of infinite preservation, which, with digitization, scarcely allows for forgetting; the Western origin of the concept in conjunction with a corresponding understanding of globalization, which often disregards non-Western attitudes toward the past; the danger that cultural heritage will be used for political activities, such as iconoclasm, or the sometimes politically contentious question of who cultural heritage actually “belongs” to, which leads to restitution and copyright issues relevant to academia.

3. Responses from the academies

Through its specific focus, the Academies Program addresses these recurring points of criticism. Thus, the HAdW its sister academies agree with the principle that cultural heritage serves to ask, in the present, what should be preserved for the future from the past. In the broadest sense, this refers to what has been handed down from the past, which continues to exert an influence in the form of “cultural memory” and shapes fundamental patterns of perception and behavior in the present, not least to prevent undesirable developments. In their work, however, the academies set significantly more specific parameters by focusing on larger resources in order to grasp broader contexts and explore the material in depth. For them, there is no collecting without scientifically guided, exemplary cataloging using diverse methods and possibilities, without a high—and thus rare—level of expertise. This form of critically cataloging and compiling limits any claim to completeness.

Furthermore, the academies do not shy away from the question of who owns cultural heritage. On the contrary, they foster international collaboration, develop the material together with colleagues from the countries of origin, and thus pursue a kind of “shared heritage” and “shared scholarship,” in which their own traditions and those of others are explored through international exchange and dialogue. In this way, research is also largely removed from political or populist influence. In principle, the projects adopt a universal or global (rather than Eurocentric) perspective, which necessitates engaging with complex phenomena of entirely different (and initially foreign) cultures. These cultures stand in spatial, temporal, or normative distance from us. In opposition to culturalist and identitarian tendencies that allow only those who belong to a particular group to engage with such phenomena, the Academy members and project staff seek to explore these phenomena for themselves and others using the tried-and-tested methods of science, which are open to innovation per se. Given the aforementioned distance and the resulting hermeneutic challenges, this also requires perseverance and great patience in dealing with what is initially very foreign or necessarily unknown—upon which, after all, no particular perspective should be imposed.

Long-term projects are therefore not merely “playgrounds” for renowned scholars, but arise through diverse forms of collaboration and—another rarity in the academic process—are critically monitored by committees composed of members from other research institutions and international experts who offer an informed outside perspective. Furthermore, because the research centers must constantly address questions of cultural and societal relevance through a rigorous selection and review process, they do not proceed from an assumption of the intrinsic value of cultural heritage or a naive preservationist dogma. Through the publication of the research results of the Academy’s projects, cultural heritage often becomes visible and globally accessible for the first time, particularly in open digital formats.

4. Outlook

The long-term projects are working to make their findings available to both the research community and a broader audience by ensuring maximum visibility and sustainability, for example through permanently accessible publications and databases of the highest quality.

So, while we as an academy insist that we are already meeting the demands made of us from various quarters, we should now (and in full awareness of certain shortcomings) emphasize more clearly that we can better harness the potential inherent in our work and make the contribution mentioned even more effectively. To this end, we propose:

• to coordinate the various projects and research centers even more closely with one another, particularly in light of the inevitable specialization;
• to digitally connect them with one another, both within and between the academies, while, where possible, breaking down digital silos and seeking interoperable solutions; to keep research results openly accessible even beyond the duration of a project; to create synergies, for example through “Linked Data” and ontologies connected to CIDOC CRM, and/or to make greater use of the opportunities offered by the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) or other consortia;
• to make a special effort to involve stakeholders from the cultural circles we focus on in such networks;
• and to engage in fundamental and current debates and theories regarding the challenges facing cultural heritage;
• to continue to make our work visible in the public sphere (and even more so than is already the case);
• and, in particular, to speak up when our expertise allows us to better understand a specific current (political) situation.

Narrator:

• Hans-Joachim Gehrke
• Axel Michaels

Other members:

• Barbara Beßlich
• Peter Eich
• Markus Enders
• Miriam Haidle
• Thomas Holstein
• Lothar Ledderose
• Stefan Maul
• Axel Michaels
• Bernd Schneidmüller
• Florian Steger
• Christoph Strohm
• Dieta Svoboda-Baas
• Sabine Tittel
• Albrecht Winnacker
• Bernhard Zimmermann

• Hans-Joachim Gehrke (internal link)
• Axel Michaels (internal link)
• Sabine Tittel (internal link)