What does inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List mean? The German press review mentions several memorial sites having acquired or wishing to obtain this title. Where we see that the historical charge of a place does not necessarily determine its universal value.
The Heiliger Sand, the old Jewish cemetery of Worms is inscribed on the list of world heritage of humanity.
Summary-
SchUM sites (Spire, Worms and Mainz)
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The river limes
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The Göltzschtal viaduct
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Peenemünde secret base
The Jewish sites of Speyer, Worms and Mainz
By inscribing the archaeological remains of the medieval Jewish communities that lived in the cities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz on the World Heritage List, UNESCO distinguishes for the first time buildings testifying to Jewish cultural life in Germany, underlines the daily Die World . The three Rhine towns, also known by the acronym SchUM made up from their Hebrew names – Schpira, Urmaisia and Magenza – have been the source of intense cultural influence for almost 250 years. Between the 11th and 14th centuries, the alliance of the three communities, nicknamed "Jerusalem on the Rhine", shaped Central European Judaism, Ashkenaz, by welcoming the greatest scholars. The religious buildings which testify to this past greatness are no more than vestiges, because from 1349 the pogroms will follow one another and destroy the buildings which however served as prototypes for the later community buildings in Europe.
In Speyer, excavations carried out from the end of the 19th century made it possible to rediscover the Judenhof, which had been forgotten in the meantime, consisting of two synagogues (one for men, the other for women), a yeshiva (Talmudic school) and especially of the oldest mikveh (ritual bath) underground preserved in Europe. The Worms Synagogue, which dates back to a house of prayer most certainly dating from the beginning of the 11th century, has not survived the numerous demolitions suffered over the centuries, the last one started during the pogrom of November 1938 and completed three years later. It was rebuilt in situ identical to the beginning of the 1960s. On the other hand, the cemetery of Heiliger Sand, on the ground of which approximately 2,500 tombstones remain, was only slightly destroyed.
In Mainz, it is also the old cemetery, the Judensand, which constitutes the only archaeological vestige attesting to the Jewish presence in the Middle Ages, all the rest having been demolished after the expulsion of the community in 1438. The current cemetery is however an elaborate rearrangement in the 19th and 20th centuries from 200 old red sandstone tombstones typical of the region.
The Jewish sites of Speyer, Worms and Mainz
By inscribing the archaeological remains of the medieval Jewish communities that lived in the cities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz on the World Heritage List, UNESCO distinguishes for the first time buildings testifying to Jewish cultural life in Germany, underlines the daily Die World . The three Rhine towns, also known by the acronym SchUM made up from their Hebrew names – Schpira, Urmaisia and Magenza – have been the source of intense cultural influence for nearly 250 years. Between 11
th
and the 14
th
century, the alliance of the three communities, nicknamed "Jerusalem on the Rhine", shaped Central European Judaism, Ashkenaz, by welcoming the greatest scholars. The religious buildings which testify to this past greatness are no more than vestiges, because from 1349 the pogroms will follow one another and destroy the buildings which however served as prototypes for the later community buildings in Europe.
In Speyer, excavations carried out from the end of the 19
th
century have made it possible to rediscover the Judenhof, forgotten in the meantime, consisting of two synagogues (one for men, the other for women), a yeshiva (Talmudic school) and especially of the oldest mikveh (ritual bath) underground preserved in Europe. The synagogue of Worms, which goes back to a house of prayer dating most certainly from the beginning of the 11
th
century, did not survive the many demolitions suffered over the centuries, the last one started during the pogrom of November 1938 and ended three years later. It was rebuilt in situ identical to the beginning of the 1960s. On the other hand, the cemetery of Heiliger Sand, on the ground of which approximately 2,500 tombstones remain, was only slightly destroyed.
In Mainz, it is also the old cemetery, the Judensand, which constitutes the only archaeological vestige attesting to the Jewish presence in the Middle Ages, all the rest having been demolished after the expulsion of the community in 1438. The current cemetery is however an elaborate rearrangement in the 19th and 20th centuries from 200 old red sandstone tombstones typical of the region.
The limes fluvial (Lower Germania and Danube)
What is limes Roman? As Die Welt explains , originally the term (whose plural is limits ) does not describe a border, but a path, the one that the legions traced in the forest to flush out the enemies from their hiding place. It is therefore part of an offensive strategy, implemented by the Emperor Domitian against the Germanic people of the Cats in 83 AD. The limes does not become a border zone until the 2
th
century, under Hadrian, in order to delimit the Roman Empire, which represents the civilized world, from the Barbaricum where there was no river to constitute a natural border. Contact zone, it results in the construction of permanent fortifications:watchtowers, forts, camps. Remnants of these "frontiers of the Roman Empire" stretch across Europe today from Scotland to the mouth of the Danube.
Several of its segments are already World Heritage sites:Hadrian's Wall in northern England, the limes Upper Germania between the Rhine and the Danube in Germany, and the Antonine Wall in Scotland. Two new sections are now added:the limes Lower Germania (from Remagen to Xanten) and the limes of the Danube (in its German, Austrian and Slovak parts only). Unlike the English ramparts and the 550 kilometers of continuous stone or palisade fortifications of the limes from Upper Germania, the two new segments are limes rivers, the water having moreover helped to preserve the remains which are almost entirely still buried underground. It is their place in the landscape that makes them unique, with Unesco saying it is particularly interested in "how the Roman Empire, as a military power, reacted to different landscapes, to different peoples in the various regions he occupied ". In addition to forts, blockhouses, towers and camps, there are roads, river facilities (ports, naval base, canal, aqueduct), as well as civil establishments:towns, cemeteries, sanctuaries, an amphitheater and a The Archaeological Park of Xanten, which shows a partial reconstruction of the Colonia Ulpia Traiana, is part of it.
The largest brick bridge in the world
Emblem of the Vogtland region, in the Land of Saxony, the Göltzschtal bridge, was opened to rail traffic 170 years ago, on July 15, 1851. This multi-arched viaduct, one of the first in Germany entirely designed from static calculations, is a technical masterpiece that the region would like to see listed as a UNESCO heritage site, reports the Sächsische Zeitung . It is indeed the largest brick bridge in the world:more than 26 million elements make up the 81 arches of the work of art built on four levels. 574 m long, it spans the Göltzsch at a height of 78 m. Its construction began in May 1846, but the initial plans had to be modified, as no solid enough ground could be found at the bottom of the valley for the foundation of the pillars. For this reason, two large arches had to be added in the center, when the arches were planned to be uniform.
Built a few years after the opening of the first German rail link in 1835, it serves to connect the major cities of Saxony (Dresden and Leipzig) to those of Bavaria (Munich and Nuremberg). With its twin brother located a few kilometers away, the Elstertal viaduct, inaugurated on the same day and designed by the same visionary engineer, Johann Andreas Schubert (1808-1870), the Göltzschtal viaduct is one of the most imposing railway bridges and the most impressive of the German rail network, which has 25,370 in total. The long-awaited title will however depend on an effort to promote the valley towards tourists.
The Göltzschtal viaduct. © jggrz/pixabay
The base of Peenemünde has nothing to do with the heritage of humanity
Another German site would like to acquire the coveted title of world heritage as a place that bears witness to the technical history of the 20
th
century, and more precisely as the first site relating to the history of aerospace. This is the former secret army base of Peenemünde, located in the Land of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. How can the cradle of the famous V2 rockets claim "outstanding universal value " wonders, however, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , which proceeds to a refutation in order of the legend peddled by the engineers Walter Dornberger (also general of the Wehrmacht) and Wernher von Braun post-war, according to which Peenemünde would have been the cradle of aerospace.
It is with full knowledge of the facts that researchers have developed rockets intended to become weapons of mass destruction, within the framework of a secret research program which was initiated as early as 1930 with the aim of finding substitutes for the heavy artillery and aviation, prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1934, the army's armament office began developing liquid-fueled rockets at the Kummersdorf base near Berlin, before the test center was moved to Peenemünde in 1937. As early as 1936, it was established that the Aggregat 4, which would later become "retaliation weapon No. 2" (Vergeltungswaffe 2, V2), would be a rocket with a range of 250 kilometers capable of carrying a one-ton warhead. The first V2 rocket hits the London suburb of Chiswick on September 8, 1944; the next day Dornberger and Braun were decorated with the War Merit Cross.
The production of V2 also results from the exploitation of tens of thousands of slaves, 20,000 of whom died. What is the relationship with space travel? Admittedly, the rocket reaches an altitude of 90 km before hitting its target, but it has nothing to do with a space vehicle. Talking about "advanced technology ", as the Minister-President of the Land, Manuela Schwesig, did while acknowledging that Peenemünde "is also inextricably linked to the inhumane ideology of the Nazi system ", it is to give substance to the legend. A listing on the world heritage of humanity is incompatible with the memory of the horrors committed under National Socialism.