Cologne flakes

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Cologne flakes is a technical and ironic collective term for small fragments of archival material that were destroyed in the collapse of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne in March 2009. They contain so little text that no direct conclusions can be drawn about their origin .

origin

The word creation comes from the journalist Dietmar Bartz . He used it for the first time in a report on the rescue work in Cologne in the daily newspaper on April 15, 2009. The term goes back to the Köllnflocken , an oatmeal product from the Peter Kölln company in Elmshorn , and also alludes to the lightness and innumerable flakes. In 2010 the archive management estimated the number of fragments at seven million. In 2016, the scope was given as 1900 boxes. Their manual development is hopeless. A project to assign them using image recognition software was in the development phase in 2018. “Köln-Flocken” has been an established term among archivists and restorers since it was first mentioned.

classification

Linguistically , as a play on words of ambiguity, “Köln-Flocken” is homophonic with “ Kölln- Flakes”. Rhetorically , the expression has a double character: With regard to the difficult task of the archivists, it is gallows humor , as a trivializing allusion to a tragic event, black humor . This arises from the non-normative punctuation. Psychologically , as a coping strategy through deliberate downplaying, there is dissimulation .

Citation

  • "Shreds. Torn off somewhere, not a piece bigger than the palm of my hand, much smaller, wrinkled, none of which fits in with others around it. (...) Some things are so light that the vacuum cleaner could stir them up and swallow them if the caretaker is not careful. Cologne flakes. "
  • “The devastating damage to documents has long been treated with Rhenish puns. Many of the scraps of paper that were torn from the documents when they collapsed, curl or pucker after drying. That is why they are now promptly only jovially called the 'Cologne flakes' on the Rhine. "
  • "'Cologne flakes' are the thousands of small fragments of files, parchment manuscripts, photos, etc., which will never be able to be assigned again."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dietmar Bartz: The largest puzzle in the world. In: the daily newspaper , March 2, 2010, online
  2. ↑ a b Dietmar Bartz: We don't read. In: the daily newspaper, April 15, 2009, online
  3. ↑ Maria Machnik: In Pulheim a giant puzzle is being reconstructed from “Cologne flakes”. In: Kölnische Rundschau, January 21, 2016, online
  4. ↑ Andreas Wyputta, Pascal Beucker, The hole of Cologne. In: the daily newspaper, January 16, 2018, online
  5. ↑ Ulrich Fischer among others: Torn - dirty - buckled. The restoration and conservation of the entire inventory of the historical archive of the city of Cologne after the collapse. State of play and perspectives. In: Der Archivar 1/2011, pp. 15–28, here p. 18, online. - Kirsten Krumeich: Preservation digital - Securing and identification of badly damaged documents. Colloquium of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library / Classic Foundation Weimar. Conference report, in: Der Archivar 3/2013, pp. 334–337, here p. 336. - Frank Neweling: Visit to the "Asylarchiv" . Friends of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne, December 30, 2010, online . - Rhineland Regional Association: cleaning, smoothing, pressing - LVR workshop prepares "Cologne flakes". Press release, April 18, 2012, online , accessed on March 4, 2019. - Documents from the Cologne City Archives return to the Rhineland , 3sat Kulturzeit-News from January 18, 2017, online
  6. ^ Klaus Detering: On the linguistic typology of the word game. In: Jongen, R./de Knop, S./Nelde, PH / Quix, M.-P. [Ed.]: Language, discourse and text. Vol. 1, Tübingen 1983, pp. 219-228
  7. ↑ Oliver Nord: The function of puns in advertisements. Heidelberg 1999, Chapter 231, online
  8. ↑ Hannelore Crolly: Memory now needs money. In: Die Welt , January 18, 2010, online
  9. ↑ Martin Hoernes: The destroyed memory of a city. In: Arsprototo . The magazine of the Kulturstiftung der Länder, issue 1/2010, p. 38, pdf 0.8 MB, accessed on April 20, 2010