Monitoring Group: Preventive Monitoring as Major Task of ICOMOS
According to the World Heritage Convention of 1972 one of the most important tasks of ICOMOS is its work as advisory body of the World Heritage Committee and of UNESCO. This concerns mostly the evaluation of monuments and historic sites already on the World Heritage List or considered to be eligible for that list.
Beyond that, each national committee of ICOMOS in cooperation with all institutions dealing with the protection and conservation of monuments has a particular responsibility for the monuments and historic sites in its country. Given this responsibility, some national committees have developed special initiatives for the monitoring of the state of conservation of World Heritage sites in their countries. The monitoring group for the German World Heritage sites is made up of more than 50 experts, among them also ICOMOS colleagues from Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg and the Czech Republic. The members of this monitoring group, who are in charge of individual World Heritage sites, are admitted by the board of the national committee of ICOMOS Germany upon recommendation by the group. The monitoring group also has a steering committee elected every three years; it consists of the speaker, three representatives and the president of the national committee.
A more comprehensive description of the work of the monitoring group can be found in the essay "ICOMOS and the World Heritage Convention" by Michael Petzet, originally published in German in UNESCO-Welterbe in Deutschland und Mitteleuropa (ICOMOS – Journals of the German National Committee, vol. LVII; see also under Publications).
The members of the steering committee are at present:
- Dipl.-Ing. Frank Pieter Hesse (speaker of the monitoring group)
- Prof. Dr. Sigrid Brandt
- Dr. Dörthe Jakobs
- Bernd Paulowitz (coopted)
- Dipl.-Ing. Christoph Schwarzkopf
The monitoring group drew up Principles for its Work, the latest version of which was approved by the annual meeting of the monitoring group on 23 March 2019 (see English translation).
For the World Heritage monitoring ICOMOS Germany entered into agreements with the Vereinigung der Landesdenkmalpfleger in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Association of Federal Conservationists) and the German UNESCO Commission. The agreements can be found below as attachments (in German only):
Vereinbarung von ICOMOS Deutschland mit der Vereinigung der Landesdenkmalpfleger (VdL) vom Mai 2021
Vereinbarung von ICOMOS Deutschland mit der Deutschen UNESCO-Kommission e.V. vom 3.3.2022
