The banner has eked out its existence in the editorial office of the FAZ for more than four decades.

A painted cotton sheet, about four feet by five feet, fastened to a roof batten with metal staples.

An object of low material but historical value, especially for Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region.

"No Runway West" is written in large black letters, including the signet of the opponents of the airport expansion.

A brittle piece of paper is pinned to one corner.

With the question "Have you already signed it?" it is asking for support for the referendum against the construction of the runway.

Matthew Trautsch

Coordination report Rhein-Main.

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The storage conditions were not as ideal as in a museum – just think of the fumes of nicotine that still swept through the editorial corridors in the 1980s.

But they weren't as bad as in a basement or shed either.

"No mould," states Laurence Becker.

The textile restorer is satisfied: the fabric and paint show no signs of decomposition.

The fact that the banner is dirty and the batten is worn adds to its value rather than reduces it: it is in the same battered condition that a reporter brought it to the editorial office from a field trip.

It was a day at the end of January 1982, ie at a time when the fight against the west runway at Rhein-Main Airport had reached its climax.

The local citizens' initiatives, which wanted to protect the forest from deforestation and the residents from aircraft noise, had allied themselves with the environmental movement that was emerging throughout Germany in the months before.

At the construction site for the runway, they had built a “village of huts”.

At the beginning of November 1981 it was cleared with a massive police operation, just under two weeks later more than 120,000 people demonstrated in Wiesbaden against the expansion project, 220,000 signatures for the referendum were handed over.

The Hessian state parliament rejected the request anyway, the runway was built and went into operation in April 1984.

From haute couture to protest banners

Now the banner has been handed over to the Historical Museum.

"It fits perfectly into our collection context," says Maren Haertel, curator for fashion and textiles.

A separate section is dedicated to protest culture in the museum's permanent exhibition.

Before the banner is taken to the depot, it is placed in a nitrogen chamber for four weeks.

This kills organisms that need oxygen.

The restorers were particularly interested in one insect.

"Four weeks - that's the reproductive cycle of a moth," says Becker.

The Historical Museum's collection of fashion and textiles includes 16,000 individual items – from haute couture to tablecloths and bed linen to protest banners.

Around 200 exhibits were on display two years ago in the special exhibition "Clothes in Motion", which drew a link from clothing to social movement and mobility in the period from 1850 to the Weimar Republic.

The collection also includes the models of Toni Schiesser, the grande dame of the Frankfurt fashion world, who ran the largest private fashion studio in Germany.

New objects are constantly being added, often from private owners.

Haertel and Becker open a gray box the size of a child's bed.

Inside lies a green and white dress, wrapped in tissue paper, decorated at the waist with pearls and stones.

It comes from fashion designer Uli Richter's prêt-à-porter collection and was bought in 1971 in a Frankfurt boutique.

The owner has given it to the Historical Museum, and soon it will be on display in the so-called 13th collector's room, where new acquisitions are regularly exhibited.

Information on the origin and history of the objects is important

It is not always easy for laypeople to judge which pieces are worth collecting and possibly showing.

"Many think: the older, the more valuable," says Härtel.

The age is not necessarily decisive, just as little as a perfect state of preservation.

The artistically hand-embroidered, hardly worn underwear from the great-great-grandmother's dowry box may look like new, "but apart from the embroidery that was common at the time, it's probably mass-produced - and there's a lot in our collection," says the doctor of art history.

For the curator, pieces that close gaps in the collection are of particular interest.

It is important that information on the origin and history of the objects is available.

"If something isn't recorded exactly, then it's difficult to work with it." Washing or ironing is out of the question for the sensitive textiles - "that would put a strain on the fabric," says Härtel.

Wrinkles can only be carefully smoothed out by putting weights on them.

That is why the textiles have to be stored in such a way that no creases form in the first place: spread out or possibly rolled.

If you were to put them together, there would also be a risk that, for example, applied paint would break.

In this respect too, the storage of the Startbahn-West banner in the editorial department was not so wrong: rolled up around the roof batten.