Obligation to preserve monuments?

Abstract

The Catholic and the Protestant Churches in Germany have a great heritage of artistic, cultural and historical monuments. Many churches are not only fine buildings, but they are filled with valuable artefacts. The churches have – based on their canon or ecclesiastical law and treaties with the German states – an obligation to conserve this heritage. But historic preservation is very expensive and the churches lose more and more members and they have not only to look after their monuments, but have a lot of very important duties (e.g. worship, charity and much more). If not the state and preservation foundations help, not all of these monuments can be saved for the next decades and centuries. Therefore criteria must be found, when monuments are to be preserved and when not. One of the most important criteria are the financial resources of a church, to comply its different missions.