 to trace the classic course of a communication crisis, thus demonstrating the importance of communication and management in archeology and heritage protection. Showed warning, it might not actually be a best practice example when you're going to see it here. The village of Halstead in the Zalch's Chemical Region of Upper Austria has been famous within the international scientific community since the 18th century, thanks to its exceptionally rich burial sites getting back to the Halstead period. The graves there contain precious items from almost all regions of the world known at that time. Indeed, early searches were even inspired to name a culture found in many parts of Europe and an entire period of European history of the Halstead period after this location. Halstead wealth and prehistoric times were based on seemingly inexhaustible reserves of salt in the mountains. It is likely that this salt has been used by humans for 7,000 years, while there is little evidence of surface salt mining during the early period. Researchers from the Natural History Museum in Vienna have been able to establish that in the period around 1,500 BC, Halstead was home to a fully developed salt mining industry. Since 1997, the town of Halstead, together with three other municipalities and the landscape around the mountain Dachstein, has been one of the world's few UNESCO World Cultural Heritage sites, which are also World Natural Heritage Sites. So it's one of the 35 mixed sites. In the description of the World Heritage List, it said, quote, the landscape around Halstead is exceptional as a complex of great scientific interest and immense natural power that has played a vital role in human history reflected in the impact of farmer miners over millennia in the way mining has transformed the interior of the mountain through the artists and writers that conveyed its harmony and beauty, unquote. The World Heritage status always comes along with the need of protection and conservation. Personally, I think that it's the most important task as it is the only request which, if it's not fulfilled, will make it impossible to carry out the rest of our tasks in the World Heritage Management. This task of protection and conservation are the only ones for which there would never be a new challenge tomorrow. So it was necessary to put the buildings in Halstead under protection, right? But an attempt to do so by the Heritage Protection Office in 2010 to put a part of the village called Marked. It's the part you see here under ensemble protection. That means all of them together. I don't know if it's always the same word. Let a massive protest from the inhabitants and cause the crisis. Actually, nothing was really done. This was a pure communication crisis. The massive protest of the inhabitants of Halstead is even more remarkable as it has been the local population which preserved the construction of a lakefront road in the 1960s. The construction initiated by the federal state of Upper Austria would have destroyed large parts of the village. So one can assume the people in Halstead are pro-herited protection. So what went wrong? The basis for the emergence of the crisis provided time and place. Time. The mayor of Halstead was in charge back then only since a few months. He followed, without election, his predecessor during a legislative period. He felt that the way of information of the planned ensemble protection came to him was influenced by this fact. He felt the officials tried to use his inexperience as a mayor against him. Although the fact that the representative of the Federal Office of Heritage Protection dared to risk a possible conflict with the community because he was close to retirement and would not have to bear the consequences why his successors could always refer to that, that it was always been an already existing decision. So he was not responsible. All the suspicions were caused by the fact that the information about the already taken not yet implemented decision had reached the mayor and his community. That's the place only on detours at the beginning of February 2010. No one had asked the inhabitants of Halstead if they would like to have this. And nobody wanted to explain to them what an ensemble protection meant for their property. This led to this massive public protest which has spread widely in the media. So what is a crisis? One good definition, at least to my opinion, is the following. Cases of crisis are limited in time and are characterized by increased perceived pressure regarding time, decision, action, as well as the resulting limited cognitive capacity for information processing. A typical course of a crisis like the one in Halstead looks like this. In the beginning, there's a period of latency. There is one single event. In the case of Halstead, there seems to have been, let's call a visit of a staff member of the BDA of the National Heritage Protection Agency to one of the houses in Halstead. Rumor has it that the officials went in the house to, without asking, some pictures of the interior and went even as far as the bedroom of the owners where the sick house owner laid for rest, learning that this behavior, real or not, would comply with the law. As soon as the buildings in Halstead would be under ensemble protection, the mayor stepped in. That's the face of emergence when the problem becomes visible. In this period, media will catch tensions and, at latest, with media. If not even before then, come the politicians. They do not always come by themselves. Sometimes they are called. In the case of Halstead, the politicians have been called by the mayor. He wrote several letters to members of the Upper Austrian Parliament, and at the 13th of April, they put an urgent request in their parliamentary session. Latest at this point, we are in the middle of a crisis. The articles written in newspapers and websites, the TV and radio reports, as well as the letters written on both sides, are uncountable. Let's have a look why this topic was so interesting for the media. This is mainly because of the news factors. A news factor is the one thing that makes the news a news. In Halstead crisis, there have been many of them and strong ones too. It can be that the story is very emotional. Officials as intruders on the bedside of an ill man that's a quiet emotional thing. The poor new mayor tricked a member of the authorities, who would not even have to be in there to bear the consequences of his cruel behavior. As you can see especially, this factor, this emotional factor, is in the core of many possible stories. The poor people, poor simple people against an aggressor that is a common pattern and news stories. Is this no surprise as the readers of newspapers are almost normal people, all of them. These normal people by the way, are not just the others. We as we are sitting here right now, we are also such normal people. Maybe not when it comes to archeology or heritage protection, but when it comes to taxes or our children. The simple normal people are often characterized in such stories as victims. In the case of Halsand, the representatives of the Federal Heritage Protection Office have been the attackers. And to stop them, there were the heroes from the media. This is called a drama triangle. Another aspect that might also explain the harsh reaction of the villages is the masterism. On one side, the village is very famous in Austria and white parts of Asia, I have to admit, as a touristic destination. And being famous and well known is a news factor too. The masterism in Halsand had been before and still is a topic in media. So they already reported on that village again can be a news factor. In these articles, the villagers are often shown as people who are restricted in their private sphere as they are victims of these many strangers who come for their pleasure to the town and disturb a normal community life. The last news factor I'd like to mention is the conflict between the people and the countryside in this case and those authorities who lived in the city far away to come only when they want to tell them what to do. So the villagers started to fight. They took to the press. Unfortunately, the other side did too. Not always successfully, of course, remember the drama triangle, the officials have been in a very bad position before already they haven't even started giving this interview. And I'm sure that every single communication fault they ever made was quoted by the journalists. Three questions should be considered. What would you do if you knew you would have to adapt your house to your needs at some point? And that soon you might need a lot of permits to do so. What would be your immediate reaction? And on the side of the officials, how would you feel if you were to fulfill an important mission to protect the world heritage that is important to you, but you end up being the bad guy? And the third question is, what does that mean for a heritage, for whose protection we are bleached and that shall bring people together? Let's take another look at the slide with the crisis stages. We have seen through media and politician the attention on the crisis got higher, whilst the options of the officials sank lower and lower. The case ended for the moment with a statement of the minister in charge. At June 7th, she explained officially that for the time being, protection of the whole architectural ensemble was not an issue. Is this the end of the crisis? Who might have thought so? For a while ago, karma, the newspapers turned their attention to other things. And Halstead was regularly the possibility to have a consultant, one of the locals, of course, for all those who wanted to renovate their house. But with just having the assurance that ensemble protection is not an option in the time being, there was no reliable security for people. There was something everybody who went to Halstead could clearly feel and hear years later when talking to the villagers. In December 2016, the community newspaper reported on an occasion. So let's hear the mayor in the journal of the village at the beginning of 2017. In April 2015, that's a quote, the inhabitants first told me that he planned to renovate his house, which is in a very bad condition. I told him to discuss that with the architect who is the village's advisor when it comes to the questions of heritage protection. Together with the experts for nature, conservation, e-commerce, and federal monument office, they had a local meeting. The architect remembers that staff member of the federal monument office at that time expressed no intention to put the house under monument protection. In January 2016, Holtschuk got a new e-commerce commissioner. He immediately inquired about this project and got the information that everything had already been improved by his predecessor. The construction process had been in progress when the commissioner had returned to the town in summer for private reasons. Out of the blue, because there were no disagreements, came about three weeks later suddenly, a letter from the federal monument office. It contained the decision to put this house under heritage protection, quote, and the article written by the mayor in this community journal is a lot longer. He explained the very detailed character of this description, quote, because I consider this as an arbitrary act, end of quote. And he inferred already an ministry in charge. To read this was very sad for me. As I might not work on daily basis with the World Heritage in Halstead, or Halstead, Dachstein, but I work for another World Heritage, the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. And then the focus of my work there is the World Heritage idea. The label World Heritage has been created to support peace in the world. I know we often forget that in our daily world. But the World Heritage list has been created to bring people together, to enable them to learn about and from each other. We as archeologists and heritage protectors are no exception from that. But learning is not all that can expect it from us as heritage experts. It's also our task to find ways to build bridges between us and those people, for example. To be honest, it's not just the World Heritage idea that I'm worried about. I already asked you, what do you think of the people in Halstead likely done in case they have plans for some adjustments in the future as soon as they learned about the possibility of ensemble protection? So a communication crisis is not just a threat for public relations. It's more than that. It's a solid threat for the safety of our heritage. The textbook-like communication crisis of Halstead has proven to me that the knowledge of a professional communication is indispensable for professional heritage management. Thanks for your attention. Thank you.