The presentation will introduce into the problems after the collapse of the Historical Archive building in Cologne in 2009, where about 90% of the holdings were either lying beneath the mountain of rubble or among the debris in the underground railway shaft outside the building. Withmore than 500.000 photographic and 5000 audiovisual objects among the salvaged holdings. And each item needs a thorough cleaning and adequate repackaging and at least in many cases, further restorative measures will need to be taken. It is estimated that all in all, more than 6000 man years will have to be put in for conservation alone. So processes for mass treatment in the restoration of these materials and an exchange of experiences in the realisation will be needed and set up in the speech. The general workflow distinguishes between a first phase of basic conservation and restoration measures which can be taken with all items, regardless of their state of identification. Later on, more sophisticated (and costly) restoration processes will be priorised with respect to collections, individual value of the object in question and availability of sponsorship.
The presentation will take a look at the perspectives for the work in a new organized studio for conservation and restoration of photographic and audiovisual materials at the branche Office in Wermsdorf (Germany). Apart from normal processes of conservation and restoration, the possibilities of the reconciliation of negatives and damaged photographs will be presented and different ways of re-using these negatives will be shown. The presentation will point out the possibilities and problems of cooperations with other institutions to make use of available records - in case of live recordings - from other archives, too.
