The forgotten archive: history workshop criticizes the town of Dorfen

Created: 07/01/2022, 09:00

By: Timo Aichele

A mass of archive material is waiting in Dorfen for professional processing.

(Iconic image) © Franziska Kraufmann

The history workshop criticizes Dorfen's handling of historical materials.

A new proposal is now before the City Council.

Dorfen

– archives are local history memories.

In Dorfen, however, a veil of oblivion lies over these memories - especially in view of the coming year celebrating the 1250th anniversary, the history workshop does not consider this to be tenable.

In an open letter to Mayor Heinz Grundner and the city council, club representatives Georg Wiesmaier and Heidi Oberhofer-Franz demand that a decision from 2016 is finally implemented.

At that time, the city council unanimously voted in favor of the proper storage of the archive material, the creation of a directory and better accessibility as part of the budget deliberations, Wiesmaier and Oberhofer-Franz complain.

However, after the resolution was not implemented, it was made again in 2018 and 2019 without any changes and passed unanimously.

Now it's that time again: The GAL faction makes the demands of the history workshop its own in a new application.

At the beginning of 2022, the topic was addressed as part of the budget deliberations.

The budget for this year is 41,000 euros.

"Nobody from the administration and nobody on the side can do that," explained Grundner at the time, speaking of a "Herculean task".

The main archive is currently in the building yard.

In addition to the files, there is a local history department that includes photos and material collections, among other things.

Former mayor Hermann Simmerl (87) takes care of it as a volunteer archivist.

According to Grundner, the planned 41,000 euros will be used to create storage facilities such as cupboards and shelves.

"Creating a position for a graduate archivist will be excessive," said the mayor and spoke of the possible use of a student assistant.

After all, according to the Bavarian Archives Act, it is a municipal duty.

The main focus here is the proper safekeeping of files.

The use of volunteers is common.

After the first consultations, a professional analysis by an archivist was available at the end of 2018 - but, according to the history workshop: "As far as we know, neither the city councilors nor the city archivist knew about this study until recently." The history workshop has already viewed the report .

Accordingly, there are no directories in the city archives, neither in paper form nor digitally.

Some of the archive material is not stored properly.

Some of the written material lies in a disorderly manner in moving boxes and is therefore not accessible.

Posters are unpackaged and disorderly, they are not listed.

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"Since the end of November 2021, the history workshop in Dorfen has been trying to work towards improvements in the situation described above, including in talks with the mayor and the archivist," write Wiesmaier and Oberhofer-Franz.

However, their suggestions for immediate improvements without having to extract the archive from the building yard were not taken up.

Voluntary work is, of course, legally possible and, for example, in Taufkirchen, there is an exemplary solution.