Dresden (dpa / sn) - The archive of the Evangelical Church of Saxony has a new home. The building in the Coschütz/Gittersee district of Dresden will be opened and inaugurated on June 7th, as the regional church office announced on Monday. The archive holdings of the regional church as well as the church districts and many parishes are summarized there and are publicly accessible. For the first time, there is also the possibility for parishes to deposit their archive material because they cannot store it properly and make it usable.
The state church archive not only preserves church history, but also makes an important part of Saxon history such as local and family histories accessible to the general public, said Antonia Ellke, the archives officer at the state church office. Now these historically significant testimonies could be preserved and evaluated in a climate-appropriate manner.
The building, for which the foundation stone was laid in July 2019, was initially designed for ten linear kilometers of archive material, but was then expanded from spring 2020 to include areas for a further 13 linear kilometers and historical libraries. The regional church invested a total of 15.5 million euros in its new archive, which also coordinates the backup filming of the church registers and advises separate archives.
