The title of European Capital of Culture 2025 not only links the cities of Chemnitz, Nova Gorica in Slovenia and Gorizia in Italy, but also their archives. Not least with a view to 80 years after the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the division of Europe, as well as 45 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the beginning of the enlargement of the European Union to include the eastern countries of the continent, they have jointly launched a long-term international and intergenerational project. The results will be exhibited in the cultural capitals this year.
In the past, Dr Paolo Cecconi, head of the Chemnitz City Archive as the authority for the permanent preservation of urban historical documents and as a member of the Local, Urban and Territorial Archives Section (SLMT) of the International Council on Archives (ICA), met with Dr Tanja Martelanc from the Nova Gorica District Archive and Dr Marco Plesnicar from the Gorizia State Archive for a constructive dialogue, initially online and later in person on site in the sister cities on the Slovenian-Italian border.
The collaboration between the three archives was and is aimed at presenting sources and direct evidence of the events of the second half of the 20th century and - thanks to the dialogue between the generations - documenting and safeguarding them.
The international project, in which the civil society of the three cities is also actively involved, is divided into two thematic blocks. The first thematic block, entitled "Archives beyond borders: a common European history", aims to digitally present a selection of historical documents from the three archives with the support of the Cassa di Risparmio di Gorizia Foundation. The documents reveal the effects of the division of Europe after 1945, both in the territory of the former GDR and on the former Italian-Yugoslavian border, with the resulting population movements and national borders as well as changes in local identities (for example, the renaming of the city of Chemnitz to Karl-Marx-Stadt). The documents also show the changes in the areas of reconstruction, healthcare, culture and education, the economy and society.
The second thematic block entitled "City Biography - History of Citizens", supported by and in cooperation with the "Kulturkirche 2025", aims to document the difficult process of European reunification and reconciliation in the three cities through a collection of oral memoirs from contemporary witnesses of the events from 1989/1990. In those years, the Eastern Bloc ended with German reunification and the disintegration of Yugoslavia with the emergence of new countries. Dr Paolo Cecconi: "The aim of this collection is to promote international understanding, particularly through the active involvement of schools and other local actors in the three cities, who will interview the witnesses, contextualise and artistically prepare the collected documents in class in order to present them to the citizens and finally hand over the collected material to the three responsible archives for permanent storage and future use."
The historical journey proposed by the three archives will actually be made visible to citizens in the various European Capitals of Culture in 2025: the collected and selected documents will be published digitally and in audiovisual festivals and exhibitions in cooperation with local institutions and associations. For example, the selected documents from the early years of the Eastern Bloc will be physically presented in the Smart Space of the Cassa di Risparmio di Gorizia Foundation. The memories of contemporary witnesses from the 1989/90 period will be presented at the end of November 2025 in the restored Garage Campus in Chemnitz. Publications of both sub-projects are also planned and are currently in the pipeline.
Dr Paolo Cecconi: "In summary, the European Capital of Culture 2025 project represents a unique opportunity not only to review and reorganise the archive's tasks and redefine its own operational strategy, but also to present the documentation collections at an international level, thus making a unique contribution to creating a sense of common belonging to the European family, reinforcing both the commonalities and the local cultural specificities of the individual nations, which are linked by centuries of shared history. In this way, the active participation of the new generations in particular (and not only) in learning about the creation of the European Union and the importance of active co-operation between all parts of a society for a future of peace and mutual understanding between different countries was also promoted in the best possible way."