"Thurnau Declaration" on the Establishment of an Industrial Heritage Region of Northern Bavaria

"Northern Bavaria has a long and rich industrial past, consisting of industries that are undergoing major changes. However, these developments and the industrial heritage itself have so far only been selectively anchored in a regional or local culture of remembrance and have not been adequately researched from a scientific perspective," says Prof. Dr. Martin Ott, Director of the IFLG. "This is to change with the establishment of an 'Industrial Culture Region of Northern Bavaria'." The initiative for this comes from the Institute of Franconian Regional History, the Museum of Industrial Culture Nuremberg, the Industrial Museum Lauf and the Porzellanikon (State Museum of Porcelain in Selb and Hohenberg a.d. Eger) - a network that came together as part of Nuremberg's application for the title "European Capital of Culture 2025". "Northern Bavaria is a very special region: due to the conditions already created in the Middle Ages and pre-modern times, a particularly diversified and globally relevant industrial landscape was able to develop here at an early stage, resulting in diverse relationships between town and country. This needs to be made much more visible to the people of the region as well as to the many guests," says Monika Dreykorn, director of the Museum of Industrial Culture in Nuremberg. "Industrial culture is rarely present today, but here there was once flourishing metal processing and mechanical engineering, electrotechnical and chemical industry, textile, porcelain and glass industry, mining, steel smelting, brewing, toy and shoe industry," enumerates the director of the Lauf Industrial Museum, Dr Christiane Müller, and explains: "This shapes a region, but must be kept alive." Anna Dziwetzki, director of the Porzellanikon in Selb and Hohenberg, adds: "The opportunities to use this industrial culture history for tourism, i.e. economically, but also socially and as a museum, are enormous and should therefore be more widely recognised. We would like to contribute to this."

The initiators would like to win business and politics as supporters. The Thurnau Declaration in wording www.iflg-thurnau.de