Bettina Schmidt-Czaia

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Bettina Schmidt-Czaia 2012

Bettina Schmidt-Czaia (* 1960 in Gütersloh ) is a German historian and archivist . She has been the director of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne since November 2005, and head archive director since November 2006 .

Life

Schmidt-Czaia studied German and history for teaching at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and received his doctorate there in 1992 under Peter Johanek with a thesis on the Wiedenbrück collegiate foundation St. Aegidii et Caroli Magni in the late Middle Ages and early modern times ; from 1988 to 1993 she was also a research assistant at Monumenta Germaniae Historica . In 1997 she became archivist and in 2001 deputy director of the Lower Saxony State Archives in Osnabrück ; there she was also chairwoman of the staff council for five years. From October 1, 2002, until she moved to the Cologne City Archives in 2005, she was in charge of the Braunschweig City Archives .

The takeover of the management of the Cologne City Archives in 2005 fell at a time when the institution was understaffed for years and was already at the edge of its reception capacity. During the tenure of her predecessor, the city's establishment plan had been reduced from the original 67 positions (1973) to 26 (2005). Management and other managerial positions had already remained vacant for a longer period of time. a. those of the management of the restoration workshop. In the first six months of her tenure, Schmidt-Czaia filled three new positions, connected the employee workstations to the Internet and tackled the topic of archiving digital holdings. She established the use of indexing software and was able to expand the team to 38 employees by 2008 and increase the number of uses to around 6,000 uses. By 2009 the team had grown by a total of 19 new hires and the retro-conversion or digitization of the existing analog finding aids had been “massively” started. Talks about a possible new building due to the already exceeded storage capacity had started.

One of their most important concerns in the development of the city archive was and is the development into a “citizen archive”, ie the opening of the institution beyond the “traditional scientific user groups” to broader target groups.

Schmidt-Czaia witnessed the collapse of the city archive building on March 3, 2009; Since she was in the back of the building at the time of the accident, she was able to escape through the rear exit. As a result of the catastrophe, the tasks of archive management and employees fundamentally changed. After the immediate recovery of the archive material and the coordination of assistance, the focus has since been primarily on the preservation of the holdings, the restoration and restoration of the context of the holdings and, last but not least, the planning of a new archive building. In addition, there were additional requirements in the area of ​​public relations and the supervision of previous and estate donors who had their property destroyed by the collapse. In 2012 Schmidt-Czaia employed a total of 140 people, 70 of whom were involved in the inventory work in the so-called asylum archives, which had temporarily stored the recovered archive materials in their rooms.

The criticism that emerged from individual estate donors about their care by the archive was partly directed against Schmidt-Czaia personally. The accusation, formulated in an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2018, of not having taken adequate precautionary measures in the run-up to the collapse despite the emerging static problems of the building, was viewed by two members of the Federal Conference of Local Archives at the German Association of Cities as "absurd" and "downright perfidious “Rejected. The criticism reproduced in the above-mentioned report by the Süddeutsche Zeitung also referred to Schmidt-Czaia's controversial leadership style, just as it was in an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung just under a year earlier . a. "Brings with it a high level of personnel and resource wear and tear".

Schmidt-Czaia and her staff are now also using the experience gained through the changed working conditions, for example in rescue logistics, to provide help to other institutions, most recently in 2018 after the fire at the Brazilian National Museum in Rio de Janeiro.

Schmidt-Czaia lives with her husband in Cologne-Rodenkirchen .

Memberships

Bettina Schmidt-Czaia is, among other things, a member of the board of the Society for Rhenish History and the Braunschweigisches Geschichtsverein as well as the Board of Trustees for Comparative Urban History and the advisory board of the journal Geschichte in Cologne . From 2005 until the end of the project in 2008 she was a member of the Atlas Commission of the Historical Atlas of the Rhineland .

Schmidt-Czaia is also a board member of Architektur Forum Rheinland e. V.

Publications (selection)

  • The collegiate monastery St. Aegidii et Caroli Magni zu Wiedenbrück, 1250–1650. (Osnabrück historical sources and research, volume 33). Osnabrück: Association for History and Regional Studies Osnabrück, 1994, ISBN 978-3-9800335-9-6 .
  • (Ed.): Esterwegen 1223 to 1999. "Moor and heath only all around ...?". on behalf of the Esterwegen community. Esterwegen 1999, ISBN 3-00-004441-8 .
  • Wilhelm Reinhard von Scheffert, called Weisweiler (1586–1648) and the withdrawal of the Hessians from East Frisia. An Emsland landlord as Stickhausen Drost and East Frisian envoy to the peace negotiations in Münster and Osnabrück. in: Emder Jahrbücher, Volume 79, 1999, pp. 158–186.
  • Horst-Rüdiger Jarck with Annette Boldt-Stülzebach, Gudrun Fiedler and Bettina Schmidt-Czaia: From Otto to Phaeno. Brief Braunschweig national history for a European region. Appelhans Verlag , Braunschweig 2005, ISBN 978-3-937664-21-7 .
  • (Ed.): When you build a house, you want to stay. History of the Braunschweig Jewish Community after 1945. With contributions by Reinhard Bein , Gábor Lengyel, Jonah Sievers and Renate Wagner-Redding. (Quaestiones Brunsvicenses. Contributions from the Braunschweig City Archives, issue 15). Braunschweig 2005.
  • The citizen's treasure house filled with life - 150 years of tradition formation in the historical archive of the city of Cologne . Contributions to the symposium on the occasion of the 150th anniversary on October 19, 2007. In: Bettina Schmidt-Czaia (Hrsg.): Messages from the city archive of Cologne . tape 98 . Historical archive of the city of Cologne, 2011, ISBN 978-3-928907-20-0 .
  • (Ed.) And editor Everhard Kleinertz : files of the cultural administration of the city of Cologne 1880 to 1930, volume 2 (messages from the city archive of Cologne volume 101) . Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-928907-26-2 .
  • (Ed.): Welcome to old Cologne - history (s) around the city wall: Contributions to the accompanying program of the exhibition (messages from the city archive of Cologne, issue 103). Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-928907-36-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Press release of the City of Cologne of October 31, 2005 on Schmidt-Czaia's assumption of office at the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne , accessed on March 15, 2009.
  2. ↑ Advisory Board - Southwest German Working Group for Urban History Research. In: stadtgeschichtsforschung.de. Retrieved March 2, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Handling the archive. Much praise, but little action , Kölner Stadtanzeiger, March 11, 2009, accessed on February 25, 2019.
  4. ↑ Carl Dietmar: The city's memory is strengthened. In: ksta.de. May 9, 2006, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  5. ^ Letha Böhringer, Bettina Schmidt-Czaia, Claudia Tiggemann-Klein: The exhibition for the Cologne city anniversary and the public . In: Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Association of German Archivists eV (Ed.): The archivist. Archive journal . 61st year, no. 4 , November 2008, p. 377 .
  6. ↑ Interview. Inviting, functional and close to the people. In: rundschau-online.de. March 1, 2010, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b Interview with Bettina Schmidt-Czaia, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger of March 10, 2009, printed in issue no.59 of Wednesday, March 11, 2009, p. 27. Archive was our life on ksta.de, accessed on March 15 , 2009 March 2009.
  8. ↑ a b Ulrich Fischer: Collapse - Salvage - Perspectives . In: Bettina Schmidt-Czaia, Ulrich Soénius (Hrsg.): Gedächtnisort. The historical archive of the city of Cologne . Böhlau, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20490-7 , pp. 55-58 .
  9. ↑ a b Christian Hümmeler: Expert colloquium archive faced a better future. In: ksta.de. March 3, 2019, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  10. ↑ The future of the historical archive as a citizen archive. In: stadt-koeln.de. City of Cologne, accessed on March 2, 2019 .
  11. ^ Gisela Fleckenstein: The citizen archive . In: Bettina Schmidt-Czaia, (Ed.): Remembering the future. The Cologne Citizens Archive . Cologne 2014, p. 15-18 .
  12. ^ Carl Dietmar: Collapse Violent criticism of archive management. In: ksta.de. April 16, 2012, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  13. ↑ a b Everything in tatters. Chronicle of a Disaster , Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 19, 2018, accessed on February 4, 2019.
  14. ↑ Ernst Otto Bräunche, Marcus Stumpf: accusations and allegations. In: sueddeutsche.de. February 4, 2018, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  15. ^ Kölner Stadtarchiv - Ein Bild der Stadt , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 3, 2017, accessed on August 1, 2017.
  16. ↑ Manfred Reinnarth: National Museum in Brazil Historical Archive sends two experts to help. In: rundschau-online.de. September 12, 2018, accessed March 2, 2019 .

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Schmidt-Czaia, Bettina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian, head of the Cologne City Archives
DATE OF BIRTH 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Gutersloh