Slovak News Back to the news
SDKU: Don't Export Cultural Heritage to Germany, We Can Restore It Here
Tuesday 23 March 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, March 23 (TASR) - The main opposition party SDKU-DS is against sending Slovakia's written cultural heritage to Germany to be treated and restored, as is being planned by the Culture Ministry, said head of SDKU's parliamentary caucus Stanislav Janis.
According to Janis, Slovakia is currently at a crossroads, deciding how to protect its cultural heritage - millions of books and archive materials in archives and libraries.
"There are two ways in which Slovakia can deal with its written heritage," claimed the opposition MP. The first is the solution proposed by the Slovak Culture Ministry, which wants to load the documents onto lorries and ship them to Germany, where they will be treated using tens of millions of euros drawn from EU funds.
The second way - preferred by the opposition party - is to build functioning technology in Slovakia and to set up a comprehensive workshop for preserving written heritage and then digitalising it. "(This means) not using EU funds in Germany and creating jobs there, but using them in Slovakia," said Janis.
The party favours the construction of an Integrated Preservation Centre (IKC) in Vrutky (Zilina region). "We want a centre that we'll be able to build within two years with the funds of the Operational Programme - Informatisation of Society. Cultural heritage needs to be protected also after the EU funds are used up," said Janis. In addition, the centre should create 80 new jobs directly, while dozens of others will emerge throughout Slovakia via connected services.
Janis thinks that efforts to save written heritage through private companies is nothing more than unpleasant trading with Slovak history. "Slovakia isn't a banana republic that exports its heritage beyond its borders," he said, adding that the IKC project has been submitted to Slovak Culture Minister Marek Madaric, who is ignoring it, however. "He announced a tender worth €170 million instead, and there is only one company in Leipzig, Germany that meets all the criteria," noted Janis.
Janis's party colleague Magda Vasaryova can't imagine Slovak archivists, who have been protecting these treasures for many years, giving them up and loading them on lorries bound for Germany. "Every single one of these books has to have a specific certificate to be exported. Who's going to do that? Is it clear that all the books will be returned?," she asked.
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
