Heritage Protection Regulations in Germany and their Relations to Fire Safety Demands

Abstract

Historical constructions are an important value of the world's cultural heritage. Nearly each day, newspapers inform about fire damages in protected buildings. One reason is that historical constructions often are very fire sensible due to ancient building methods and easily flammable building materials. Therefore, fire safety regulations contribute in an essential way to the countries' heritage protection. Furthermore, they avoid personal injury, property loss and environmental damage. Heritage protection law tries to preserve historic buildings but, in Germany, it often collides with various safety requirements, such as on load-bearing capacity and fire safety. The paper analyzes recent German heritage protection regulations for preservation and reconstruction of historical buildings and shows the difficulties to balance the interests of heritage protection on the one side and safety aspects on the other side. The authors explain various concepts of fire safety in historical constructions as well as current German legal and technical fire protection regulations for historical buildings. On the example of fire safety demands, the authors show the difficult relationship between heritage protection and safety requirements. They conclude that safety regulations and historical structure protection should not be antagonists but rather collaborate in the interest of preservation of cultural heritage.