s with German backgrounds had a collective gasp. The City Archives building in Cologne collapsed. The building was a modern construction dating to 1971. It was the largest archives collection in all of Germany and one of the largest north of the Alps. It housed 65,000 irreplaceable documents, thousands of maps, over half a million photographs, and records of emigrations from Germany, many leading to the USA.The city of Cologne, the fourth largest in Germany, has had known settlements (Roman) dating back to 38 BC. Historical records about these times were also a part of the collection. The oldest known document in the archives, though, dated back to 922 AD. The amount of information that can be recovered appears to be very small. An undamaged nearby basement is providing a passageway into some of the materials in the cellar, but most believe the loss is substantial. Priceless materials housed in the museum include original manuscripts from Karl Marx, as well as some or all of the collection of German Nobel Prize winne
r of Literature, Heinrich Boell. Eberhard Illner, a former long-time department director in the archives was quoted as saying, "We are talking here of about 18 kilometres of shelves of the most valuable archive material."As of my current writing, only two people are still thought to be missing from an apartment in an adjoining building. Parts of each adjoining building were also brought down. Suspicions that nearby subway work are thought to be the preliminary cause; however, this is not yet known decidedly. Cracks in the building began appearing up to two years ago, and evidence that the building was sinking was apparent even as of last week. A nearby church's steeple started to lean significantly (about 3 feet) in 2004, and it is now having to be stabilized to keep it from also crumbling. Engineers were brought out to look at the cracks, but they were deemed not a safety issue at the time.
Witnesses to the event said it reminded them a lot of watching the 9-11 footage of the buildings collapsing with all the dust and debris in the air. Some described a sense of earthquake prior to the collapse, while those within the building heard significant groaning and were able to get out before the building fell in.
The effort to search for the remaining missing people is being complicated by the instability of the surrounding ground and the rubble pile itself. Concrete is being pumped into the area so that heavy equipment can remove roof debris. At that point, then the search can begin. Rescue dogs have been reported to have already indicated possible victims, but details on this are sketchy at best.
The word for the day is collapse (of a building): der Einsturz (ine shtoorts where "ine" is pronounced like in "nine").
The question for the day goes back to yesterday: Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
