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Article from Marioff News 27, February 2008
Jewel in Germany’s cultural crown shines again
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Night of September 2nd, 2004 |
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Lovingly restored |
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WEIMAR: The night of September 2nd, 2004, will long be remembered by the townspeople of Weimar and Germany’s custodians of culture and art. On that night a fire broke out in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library that would quickly grow out of control, damaging the building severely and consuming 50,000 books of a priceless total of 112,000. When the fire was put out, it was plain to see that the building’s third floor and attic were completely destroyed. It was the worst library fire in Germany since World War II, caused by an electrical fault.
In the days of the fire’s aftermath, some 900 townspeople helped to evacuate the tens of thousands of surviving books and works of art including medieval autographs, incunabula (rare books printed before 1500), globes, maps and Nietzsche’s private library. A priceless collection of materials related to The Tragedy of Faust was also saved. The author of this masterpiece of world literature, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, worked at the Anna Amalia as a librarian.
On October 24th, 2007, the library reopened after a complete restoration. Sixty thousand of its original volumes are safe on its shelves and thousands more are being restored. The painstaking work will continue through 2015.
The building restoration work was overseen by Klassik Stiftung Weimar, a firm specializing in the restoration of heritage buildings. As part of the restoration, Klassik was charged with selecting a modern fire protection system that would activate instantly upon fire outbreak and deal with it effectively. The system also had to be entirely harmless to people and environmentally friendly. Last and very importantly, activation of the system could only occur with an assurance of absolute minimization of collateral damage to the books, paintings, globes, furniture and the building itself.
After careful evaluation, the HI-FOG® Water Mist Fire Protection System was chosen to protect the library’s four floors, Rococo Room and tower. The library’s HI-FOG® system is a so-called “pre-action” system: the pipes are kept filled with compressed air and, if a fire is detected by the fire detection system, the water mist is ready for activation through the HI-FOG® sprinkler head in the precise location of the fire. The key to this is a special pre-action valve which prevents the general, uncontrolled activation of the system – due to human error, for example.
Three factors can be singled out as to why the HI-FOG® system was chosen. First, HI-FOG® water mist will cause an absolute minimum of collateral damage to the library’s delicate collection upon activation. Second, the system tubing is small in diameter – skilled installers can implement it unobtrusively. This leads to the third reason: Marioff’s considerable experience of heritage building installations and its understanding of the need for a delicate touch and creative thinking.
This was particularly evident when the installation work reached the library’s famously
beautiful Rococo Room. Here the Marioff engineers hid the HI-FOG® sprinkler heads artfully in cornices, making the system as invisible as possible as befits a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Twenty-two thousand German companies and private individuals have generously donated funds for the restoration, with a running cost now reaching 12.8 million euros. With the building itself restored and reopened, work has turned to the restoration of damaged books and the buying of replacements. The library staff estimates that, of the books destroyed in the fire, two of every three can be bought at auction or acquired from other collections.
With the building restoration complete and the rebuilding of the library’s collection underway, the custodians of the Duchess Anna Amalia library can devote themselves to their work with the knowledge that their library is under the best possible fire protection in the form of the HI-FOG® Water Mist Fire Protection System.
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