Is Dresden being de-listed?

Which (German) World Heritage Site will be the first ever to be de-listed?

Computer simulation of the proposed bridge in Dresden

No World Heritage Site has until now been de-listed by UNESCO. Rumours in Lübeck at the latest UNESCO-conference were, however, ripe that the fate would soon befall the Dresden Elbe Valley.

The valley is a World Heritage Site in Germany. The valley, spreading some 20 kilometres through the city of Dresden, is a magnificent cultural landscape along the Central-European river Elbe. The landscape gained its heritage status in 2004 due to the fact that it is part of the urban area as well as part of the natural river banks and slopes.  

A dividing bridge 

In 2006, UNESCO World Heritage Committee placed the site on its list of World Heritage Sites in danger and threatened to remove the Valley from the World Heritage List. Describing the committee's decision, the World Heritage Site reported that "plans to build a bridge across the Elbe would have such a serious impact on the integrity of property's landscape that it may no longer deserve to be on the World Heritage List.”  

City residents voted in 2005 in favour of the original bridge, set to cost 160 million euros. The official reason put forward was the need to cure suburban traffic delays, the unofficial reason to cure unemployment and the need for large contractors to win building contracts in order to survive the dwindling economic support from the West to the East.

Local debate later made a city council majority side with the conservationists. The government of Saxony rejected, however, a call to alter the bridge-building project in June. Saxony spokeswoman Evi Oerther said there would be no delays although the federal government has threatened to withdraw an economic subsidy to the project. This decision followed upon the ruling of Germany's highest court that the bridge might be build.  

All this is happening at the same time as a major scandal involving corruption, organized crime, child prostitution and illegal real estate deals has taken its first government victim in the Eastern German state of Saxony. High-ranking Saxon justice and police officials in Leipzig are reported to have teamed up with organized crime rings. Child prostitution, large-scale bribery and massive interference in court trials are just some of the things that Saxon state officials are being accused of.  

What with these Germans?  

Apart from some sites in former Eastern Europe, Germany is the only European country which has had several World Heritage sites being threatened with de-listing. One reason is imbedded in a legal dilemma. It is of course the German Federal State which has signed the UNESCO treaty. But German law constitutionally provides the 34 states or “Länder” with wide ranging possibilities of self-governance, hence the arrogance of the government of a Saxony, which is currently embroiled in other scandals. The bridge has become a Saxon symbol of “foreign” interference in local matters.

Further, recent research has shown that the Germans have a different idea of what heritage might mean. While the French are attached to their castles, palaces and churches, in short their tangible heritage, the Germans are infatuated with their history, their traditions, their way of life and their music.  

This might very well be the other reason while German officials are not united in believing that the status of a World Heritage Site is considered a blessing. Nothing pleases a people of engineers and craftsmen as much as high cranes, stout bridges and modern shopping centres.  

UNESCO member nations are to discuss the issue of de-listing at a meeting which runs from June 23 to July 2 in New Zealand.