Cultural Heritage Awards for Marburg and Munich

Bildarchiv Foto Marburg and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (Central Institute for Art History) in Munich are together being awarded the Cultural Heritage Award of the European Commission / EUROPA NOSTRA. This high-ranking distinction is being given to the two art history institutions for ensuring and digitally publishing the historical "Farbdiaarchivs zur Wand- und Deckenmalerei" ("Color Slide Archive on Wall and Ceiling Painting") which was created between 1943 and 1945. This stock of digital images contains nearly 40,000 photographs of fresco cycles and wall decorations in churches, monasteries and convents, castles and other secular buildings in Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia and the Czech Republic. The photographic campaign was an attempt by the Nazi regime to document the permanent wall and ceiling decorations of around 480 major architectural monuments in the face of allied air attacks. The archive of color slides preserves the last, and often the only, color views of important works of art before they were destroyed in the Second World War.
Press release:
http://www.zikg.eu/main/2007/pm/pm-europa-nostra-preis-2006.pdf