UNESCO World Heritage: Jewish ShUM cities and “Nasser Limes” honored

After the Darmstadt Mathildenhöhe, the health resorts of Baden-Baden, Bad Ems and Bad Kissingen, the UN Organization for Education, Science, Culture and Communication (UNESCO) now also has the Jewish cultural property in Mainz, Speyer and Worms as well as the Lower Germanic Limes as a new world heritage excellent.

With the so-called ShUM sites, Jewish cultural monuments in Germany received the world heritage title for the first time.

With the Lower Germanic Limes, after the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian, another gap in the desired overall protection of the border of the ancient Roman Empire has been closed. Museums like the Xanten Archaeological Park are expecting 20 percent more visitors after the award. Another link in the chain is the Danube Limes, whose inclusion in the World Heritage is being discussed further. The World Heritage Committee will meet until Saturday in Fuzhou, China, and online. Germany now has 50 world heritage sites. Only cultural and natural sites of "outstanding universal value" are designated as world heritage.

As a group, Speyer, Worms and Mainz formed the center of Judaism in Central Europe in the Middle Ages and were also called "Jerusalem on the Rhine".

ShUM is an abbreviation from the medieval Hebrew first letters of the cities.

"In the Middle Ages, Speyer, Worms and Mainz provided decisive impulses for the development of Judaism in Europe," said the President of the German Unesco Commission, Maria Böhmer.

An "unprecedented case"

“The three Jewish communities attracted scholars from near and far, they initiated pioneering reforms and set architectural standards.” But the history of the Jewish communities on the Rhine is also a history of centuries of persecution - from the pogroms of the Middle Ages to almost complete extinction of European Jewry in the Holocaust, ”said Böhmer.

After the discussion about the Danube Limes as part of the border of the Roman Empire had to be transferred to a working group the day before for procedural reasons, the award of the Lower Germanic Limes went smoothly. Both sections have been nominated individually as part of the serial World Heritage “Frontiers of the Roman Empire”. The 400-kilometer-long Lower Germanic Limes with its forts and legionary camps runs along the Rhine. One speaks there of the "wet Limes".

Applicants are the residents: The Netherlands as well as North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.

The border section begins in Rheinbrohl in Rhineland-Palatinate and ends at the North Sea in the Netherlands.

The border region was a center of ancient culture and the beginning of the cities in the Rhineland.

Roman traces include military installations, sanctuaries, statues and everyday objects.

The inclusion of the Lower Germanic Limes in the world cultural heritage is intended to close a gap between two already protected sections - the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes as well as Hadrian's Wall and another in Great Britain.

A decision on the Danube Limes can possibly be expected on Friday.

Since Hungary had withdrawn from the joint application with Germany, Austria and Slovakia at short notice, Unesco was faced with an "unprecedented case".

The International Council for the Preservation of Monuments (ICOMOS) pointed out that, excluding Hungary, around 400 kilometers of the Danube Limes and thus more than half of the border had been removed from the application.

The World Heritage Committee is composed of 21 elected signatory states to the World Heritage Convention.

As a rule, it decides annually on the registration of new cultural and natural sites in the World Heritage List and deals with the condition of the registered sites.

Because of the pandemic, the conference was postponed last year.

There are more than 1,100 cultural and natural sites in 167 countries on the World Heritage List.

51 of them are considered threatened.