Intangible Heritage
The idea of Intangible Heritage is based on the fact that not only material goods such as churches, buildings and other elements of the cultural landscape are worth to be protected. For buildings there are corresponding laws for monuments, which are established to guarantee the protection in many countries. Also for documents with outstanding value the UNESCO already presented 1992 the program Memory of the World. Only in the year 2003 the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was signed. One objective is to establish a representative list in which the intangible heriatage of mankind is listed. Elements, which are listed here, are to be specially protected by the national states similar to the world heritage convention. In the convention the tearm »Safeguarding« is used, which is standing for a number of measures e.g. like documentation and research. The procedure for the admission to the list is regulated by an intergovernmental committee, to which the national states can submit their suggestions. Another objective of the convention is the promotion of international cooperation in this field.
The following questions are rising at the moment:
- Similar to the world heritage list: How can parameters for the evaluation of the different level of priorities be defined? (Outstanding Universal Value)
- How can the protection of intangible heritage be secured, if e.g. a local tradition becomes extinct, because humans, who practice it, become extinct?
- How can the long existing world heritage list be linked with intangible heritage? Often buildings in the world heritage list do have intangible heritage, too.
- On which level will Elements of intangible heritage be protected?
