{"id":181,"date":"2025-06-09T10:46:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T10:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/?p=181"},"modified":"2025-06-09T10:46:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T10:46:21","slug":"corona-folgen-fuer-festungsmonumente","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/sachartikel\/corona-folgen-fuer-festungsmonumente\/","title":{"rendered":"Corona consequences for fortress monuments"},"content":{"rendered":"

How the coronavirus pandemic is affecting fortress museums and monuments<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Factual article, published in the excursion guide Westwalltag, July 2020
Author: Dirk R\u00f6der<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coronavirus pandemic has severely impacted our lives and work in many areas and has probably changed them forever. Fortresses and businesses dependent on tourism have experienced and are still experiencing the biggest crisis imaginable, with far-reaching economic and sometimes existential consequences. Those who were hit by the disease were often left with nothing but hope and the support of family and friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the instruments for overcoming the crisis were extensive: working from home, short-time working, closures, contact bans, social distancing and hygiene rules, government funding, studies, laws, research, concepts, regional initiatives, local aid and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the real absence of guests and thus tourist income has hit many monuments, operators and interest groups hard and has had a lasting effect. Ongoing costs for energy and property maintenance had to continue to be paid, and freelancers lost their income from one day to the next. Managers and operators had to familiarise themselves with new laws and regulations and had additional administrative work to do when applying for short-time working and subsidies, deferring and extending ongoing projects or cancelling tickets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order not to be forgotten, newsletters, posts, video clips, online quizzes and puzzles as well as virtual tours were produced, but did not generate any revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who wanted to reopen first invested in protective and hygiene measures and disinfectants and reorganised staff schedules. The tour guides became pandemic experts and safety officers to enforce property rules. The situation was made even more difficult by regional differences in regulations and interpretations that were incomprehensible to guests from outside the region. Complaints management at locations with more than 250,000 visitors per year at least doubled. Operators of locations with small rooms wondered why all the effort was needed if a maximum of only 2 people were allowed in the property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, interest groups and volunteer operators have often fallen through the cracks when it comes to federal and state funding. And while the easing of restrictions since the beginning of June has led to limited visitor numbers again in many places, the entire event sector is still almost completely idle. Planned events, some of which have already been invested in, have had to be cancelled or postponed for the long term, and event partners that have been tied up may go bankrupt, taking the invested capital with them. The commemorative year marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, which particularly affects the fortress heritage of the Westwall, has been cancelled completely and often without replacement. Some authorities are currently holding on to the ban on major events for a period of two years(!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, and fortunately a but can be added, many borders have been reopened, restrictions have been eased and tourism businesses and museums recorded higher visitor numbers in June than in the same period last year in some cases. The hunger for leisure, holiday and adventure activities is unquenchable, especially close to home and with a sense of security. Those who cater to these target groups will soon see noticeable success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortress monuments have the advantage that they can be multidimensional places of experience and exert a certain fascination on many target groups per se. They also often offer good to very good conditions for \u201ecorona-safe tourism\u201c. The facilities are extensive and have many outdoor areas, are often decentralised and imply massive protection as a building (see also handout \u201eC19 consequences\u201c for fortress monuments, FORTE CULTURA e.V., 11.05.2020)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new coronavirus-related funding framework can enable sustainable investment in the location infrastructure and the development of new visitor and offer concepts. With the right management, regional tourism networks generally emerge from the crisis stronger, more synergetic and more collaborative. There is a general rethink of existing offers, which often leads to greater diversity and a mix of themes, genres and media. In particular, the development and implementation of digital worlds of experience in real visitor concepts, for example in the form of virtual or augmented reality, has accelerated rapidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interesting initiatives and solutions have been launched as part of the Europe-wide network for the FORTE CULTURA cultural route of fortified monuments. Approaches that can not only mitigate the consequences of the coronavirus crisis, but also have a lasting impact on cooperation and the future of visitor and experience concepts in fortified monuments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognising the crisis as an opportunity usually opens up new and viable paths. Dealing creatively with the situation, reflecting on the past, acquiring and utilising aid and funding and using them intelligently and sustainably can also create more flexibility and therefore security for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a fortress monument, you are not alone in this. Together with other networks (e.g. EFFORTS or the Liberation Route Europe), FORTE CULTURA promotes the perception of fortresses as an important European cultural heritage and thus also for aid that may not be achieved individually. The voices of currently 71 members from 17 European countries are likely to carry weight in some places.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wie sich die Corona Pandemie auf Festungsmuseen und Monumente auswirkt Sachartikel, ver\u00f6ffentlicht im Exkursionsf\u00fchrer Westwalltag, Juli 2020Autor: Dirk R\u00f6der Die Corona Pandemie hat unser Leben und unsere Arbeit in vielen Bereichen stark beeintr\u00e4chtigt und wahrscheinlich f\u00fcr immer ver\u00e4ndert. Festungen und vom Tourismus abh\u00e4ngige Betriebe erlebten und erleben immer noch die gr\u00f6\u00dfte vorstellbare Krise, mit weitreichenden […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sachartikel","tag-kulturerbe-festungen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183,"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eccofort.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}