'Art Protection' in World War I and the Historiographies of Art and Culture in the First Half of the 20th Century. Stakeholders – Networks – Concepts.

Wars spare neither civilians nor cultural values – on the contrary, both are often deliberately targeted and exposed to aggression. The destruction and looting of cultural assets, which are an integral part of national heritage and identity, is an established part of hostile war tactics, used, among other things, to justify territorial expansion. Russia's current aggression against Ukraine provides an extreme example of this. Such conduct is a clear violation of the provisions of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954, an augmented version of the Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land ratified in 1907. The effectiveness of this first international treaty aimed at protecting cultural property in the event of war was sorely tested a few years later, during the First World War.
The conference aims to examine, in a comparative manner, the strategies and practices of dealing with cultural heritage in the different theatres of the First World War. We want to discuss the preliminary stages and longer-term effects of the concepts developed at the time, as well as the eventual appropriation of cultural assets for the purpose of shaping identities and/or geopolitical goals in the following decades.

Krieg schont weder Zivilisten noch Kulturgüter – im Gegenteil sind beide immer wieder gezielter Aggression ausgesetzt. Zerstörung und Raub von Kulturgütern, die als Bestandteile des nationalen Erbes und der nationalen Identität gelten, gehören zur Kriegstaktik ebenso wie die Instrumentalisierung von Geschichte zur Rechtfertigung territorialer Annexionspläne – Russlands Angriffskrieg gegen die Ukraine liefert dafür ein drastisches Beispiel.
Ein derartiges Vorgehen ist ein klarer Verstoß gegen die Bestimmungen der Haager Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten von 1954, einer erweiterten Fassung der 1907 ratifizierten Haager Landkriegsordnung. Die Wirksamkeit dieses ersten völkerrechtlichen Abkommens zum Schutz von Kulturgut im Kriegsfall wurde schon wenige Jahre später, während des Ersten Weltkriegs, auf die Probe gestellt.
Die Tagung will die Strategien und Praktiken des Umgangs mit dem kulturellen Erbe auf den verschiedenen Kriegsschauplätzen des Ersten Weltkriegs in vergleichender Perspektive untersuchen. Zu fragen ist nach den Vorstufen und nach den längerfristigen Wirkungen der damals entwickelten Konzepte, ebenso wie nach den möglichen Vereinnahmungen für identitätsstiftende und/oder geopolitische Ziele in den nachfolgenden Jahrzehnten.

Monday, 13.05.2024
4.30 p.m. Welcome/Registration
5.00 p.m. – 7.00 p.m.
Introductory remarks: Robert Born, Ewa Manikowska, Beate Störtkuhl

Keynote: Paul Zalewski (Frankfurt/Oder): Ante bellum. Preliminary remarks on heritage and disorder
Moderator: Arnold Bartetzky (Leipzig)

7.00 p.m. Reception (buffet)

Tuesday, 14.05.2024

9.00 a.m. – 10.45 a.m.
Comparisons I
Chair: Sigrid Brandt (Salzburg)

Solène Amice (Paris): Protecting French cultural heritage in a European war. A case study
Ceren Abi Mc Greevy-Stafford (Washington): Protection of cultural heritage in the Ottoman Empire and the First World War
Sebastian Willert (Leipzig): Monument protection in conflict. Stakeholders, strategies and structures of the German-Ottoman wartime monument protection between 1912 and 1923

10.45 a.m. – 11.15 a.m. Coffee break

11.15 a.m. – 1.15 p.m.
Comparisons II
Beate Störtkuhl (Oldenburg): Structures of “Kunstschutz” in the German General Governorate of Warsaw and in the Austro-Hungarian Military Governorate of Lublin – a comparison
Martina Visentin (Udine) / Michael Wedekind (Bremen): Art historians in wartime operations in Northern Italy: The German and Austrian Art Protection Groups in occupied Friuli 1917–1918
Robert Born (Oldenburg): German and Austrian “Kunstschutz” initiatives and archaeological activities in occupied Ukraine

1.15 p.m. – 2.30 p.m. Lunch-break

2.30 p.m. – 4.15 p.m.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire I
Chair: Paul Mahringer (Vienna)

Tomáš Kowalski (Bratislava): The breakthrough in the Carpathians: The impact of the First World War on the territory of present-day Slovakia
Barbara Kristina Murovec (Florence): Protecting lives by protecting bells. The treatment of the cultural heritage during the First World War in Istria, Carniola and Carinthia
Eszter Balázs (Budapest): Did the Hungarians adapt “Kunstschutz” during the First World War in the Dual Monarchy?

4.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m. Coffee break

4.45 p.m. – 6.00 p.m.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire II
Marzena Woźny (Cracow): Protection of the archaeological heritage in Western Galicia during the First World War. Practice and theory of conservation
Olha Zarechnyuk (Lviv): Networks of heritage preservation: The case of Lviv during the First World War

6.30 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Panel discussion
The protection of cultural property during armed conflict between national patrimony and transnational cultural heritage: Reflections on the historical and contemporary impact of concepts developed during the First World War

Stefaniia Demchuk (Kyiv), Stephanie Herold (Berlin), Ewa Manikowska (Warsaw)
Moderator: Christian Fuhrmeister (Munich)

Wednesday, 15.05.2024
9.00 a.m. – 10.15 a.m.
Propaganda
Chair: Fani Gargova (Frankfurt/Main)

Klāvs Zariņš (Riga): Visualising conquest: German occupation, colonial fantasies, and the Kurland Ausstellung in 1917–1918
Kristina Jõekalda (Tallinn): The afterlives of a 1918 propaganda exhibition: The Livland-Estland-Ausstellung

10.15. a.m. – 13.15 a.m.
War and its aftermath
Chair: Beate Störtkuhl (Oldenburg)

Gáspár Salamon (Budapest; Berlin): Preservation or modernization? The reconstruction of war-damaged settlements in Upper Hungary during the Great War
Cosmin Minea (Bucharest; Brno): The creation of national artistic heritage by saving artworks: The activity of Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș (1872–1952) during and after the First World War in Romania

11.30-12.00 a.m. Coffee break

Ewa Manikowska (Warsaw): Inscribing “Kunstschutz” in the history of library heritage preservation
Hilja Droste (Bonn) / Gernot Mayer (Vienna): Trophies – evidence – educational material: The handling of photographs from times of war

1.30 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.
Concluding discussion

To support the organization, please register your participation before 10.05.2024 by e-mail at: kunstschutzeuropa-uni.de

No conference fee will be charged.

Venue: Collegium Polonicum, ul. Kościuszki 1, Pl 69-100 Słubice

Conference organised by: Robert Born, Beate Störtkuhl (Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte des östlichen Europa, Oldenburg), Ewa Manikowska (Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warsaw), Paul Zalewski (Professur für Denkmalkunde, Europa Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder)

Funded by the German-Polish Science Foundation/ Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung, Frankfurt/Oder (Project 2020-11)