German Society for Pre- and Protohistory hands over petition against funding cuts

The DGUF has today handed over its petition against the cuts and the planned axing of the Federal State funding for archaeology and the preservation of ancient buildings and monuments in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) to Carina Gödecke (SPD), President of the NRW Parliament, and Michael Groschek (SPD), Minister for Building, Housing, City Development and Transport. More than 27,000 people signed the petition, including over 13,000 from NRW. This petition is thus the largest collection of signatures ever against cuts in the budget for the preservation of historic monuments in Germany.

Reconstruction of Homo neanderthalensis at Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany
[Credit: Erich Ferdinand/WikiCommons]

"The message has hit home," said Carina Gödecke. It would receive serious consideration in the 2014 budget deliberations in the autumn. The DGUF petition demands that the Federal State funding for archaeology and the preservation of buildings and monuments be neither axed nor cut. The NGO demands that, in the long term, the funding provided by the Federal State of NRW itself to support archaeology and the preservation of buildings and monuments be kept at the level of the 2012 fiscal year at least. In this year 11.3 million euros were available (lines 883 60 and 893 60 in the NRW Federal State budget of the Ministry for Building, Housing, City Development and Transport). The funding for 2013 has already been cut by 2 million euros.

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