A műemlékek sokszínűsége (A 28. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1998 Eger, 1998)

Előadások / Presentations - NÉMETH Györgyi: Monument protection in large industrial establishments

middle of the 19th century. And then we have not mentioned the need to keep objects which represent an emotional tie binding people, whose generations worked in the factory, to the plant even after most were made redundant. Due to the comprehensive nature of objects it is obvious that the tasks of monument protection are extremely complex. Taking into consideration that buildings, edifices, objects, technological devices and machines constitute an inseparable unity, the experts of monument protection must cooperate with museologists, historians, engineers and town plann in a more than usual close contact in order to select what is worth protecting and preserving. What may not be a problem with other monuments, in this case environmental pollution makes it necessary to involve environmental experts. The joint resolution of professional tasks makes it possible that the objects to be preserved will not be selected ad hoc but by maintaining the connections necessary to understand industrial production. Of course, it requires careful consideration and planning long term. However, resolving these professional tasks may only mean the easier part of industrial monument protection. The real difficulty lies in the other conditions, namely how it is possible to implement monument protection on different levels when production is being produced in a continuously changing manner required by the market in the plant containing the edifices to be protected. Production requires changes to or the destruction of buildings and the introduction of new technologies. It means that in the Diósgyőr Iron Works there was no way of preserving any of the blast-furnaces, following the examples ( Völklingen in Germany or Uckange in France, after the production of crude iron had stopped, because the new)v introduced so-called solid lined steel production needed the blast-furnace as raw material. This again is onl^ part of the problem, since there is the issue of ownership. Up to the last decade of its existence the Diósgyőr Iron Works had always been in state ownership. Privatisation, however, did not spare the factory either, and following several scandals it is nearly fully privately owned today. In addition, the factory has been divided to several small units, therefore there are many owners. It is not easy to agree on a rational monument protection programme with so many owners representing different interests, especially when they themselves struggle with various financial problems and cannot clearly see the value of promoting the preserved history of the plant. Then we have not mentioned that the colony, having belonged to the factory, first became council property and then it was sold to the residents. Although the local authority enacted the protection of the buildings, it was in vain, since it had no means to make the residents keep to the measures. The question arises whether these issues could not have been more carefully considered so that protection would not become nearly impossible and certain values even in an economic sense would not be destroyed. Protection was made more difficult by the fact that the decline and change of heavy industry and the accompanying unemployment cause social problems that lead to dismantling and taking the still movable contents. Several of the local authorities reacted to the squatters who occupied the neglected flats in the residential blocks by knocking down the buildings thus getting rid of the occupants. Being aware of so many difficulties it may not have to be mentioned that the efficiency of monument protection requires financial means. Beside objects that could be utilised only for cultural purposes it may be a solution to find functions for other preserved edifices whose financial gain would ensure the perpetuity of culture and buildings under the national monument protection. All this, however, can hardly be implemented without the participation of the state. It is also worth considering that the protected monuments may promote the revival of the area, to use a fashionable word revitalisation could also boost tourism. Economic structural changes, which caused the decline of traditional metallurgy al) over the world, havr raised similar problems in other countries, too. Several ways have been worked out in the United States, Germany and Sweden to preserve historically valuable objects and edifices and to rescue those which have not been destroyed. However, it was in France that they found a solution, which is different from all the