Preservation of documents in Berlin’s Federal Foreign Office
Protecting what is valuable: Neschen is regarded as the inventor of self-adhesive products for the professional repair and protection of books and documents. We are proud to say that these products are used in libraries, archives, and museums internationally. Books that are often taken out of the shelf or are regularly borrowed from the library eventually suffer damage. These damages can range from torn or loose pages to damaged book spines. Replacing books can create significant additional costs for libraries. Since prevention is always better than repairing the damage, it is a wise decision to protect or strengthen books and papers. This increases durability and saves costs.
Images courtesy of: The Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin
Protecting history | Preservation of documents
Besides being used for books, our products are also used to repair and protect important documents. Many of the filmoplast® line of products have a special composition that works perfectly with the chemical composition of aged paper, and the aging resistance of several products has been assessed and certified by the Foundation for Paper Technology (PTS) in Munich.
filmoplast® R ,for example, is used in the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. The Political Archive is almost like a “memory” of the German Foreign Service. Twenty-seven kilometres of shelves containing diplomatic documents since 1871, including 35,000 international treaties and countless personnel records, bear witness to history. The material is accessible to everyone within the framework of the legal provisions. In the public reading room with 32 seats, more than 1,000 visitors per year inform themselves about historical contexts.
Images courtesy of: The Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin
The archive also holds its own restoration workshop, in which employees process damaged archive materials. These include 75 meters of shelf space for fire-damaged files from World War II. The experts bring the archive records into a condition that protects them from further decay for as long as possible and allows them to be worked with.
Images courtesy of: The Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin
Important historical documents, which were partially damaged by fire during World War II, have been sealed with filmoplast® R to preserve them from further damage. Since the mid-1990s, the staff of the restoration workshop has been using Neschen filmoplast® R for their work.
filmoplast® R is a wafer-thin, transparent, technical Japanese paper for mass conservation. It is also an ideal material for the preservation of modern papers and newspapers (for wood pulp papers, approx. from the middle of the 19th century). Wood pulp papers contain acid (lignin), which attacks the paper from the inside. Thus, valuable documentation of our past will destroy itself. When encapsulated in filmoplast® R, the magnesium carbonate in the adhesive neutralizes acids and prevents migration through the adhesive layer into the filmoplast® R paper layer, thus stabilizing the encapsulated document. Due to the low thickness of the material, filmoplast® R is hardly visible. The paper character of the original is preserved. Encapsulated book pages can easily be put together again as a book.
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