The St. Nicholas church in the old town of Tallinn, Estonia, was a marvel of 13th century architecture, untouched even by the iconclasm brought by the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. But the Soviet bombing of Tallinn in 1944 left this cultural crown jewel in ruins along with a large part of the medieval town.
Hence, Tallinn was a perfect location for Baltic military and civilian personnel to attend a course on Cultural Property Protection (CPP) organised and led by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Purbrick, who serves with the British Army as part of NATO‘s eFP forces in Estonia.
“Cultural property is the physical and often iconic representation of our cultures – it could be monuments, buildings, fine arts, archives, archaeology or almost anything that the State declares to be cultural property,“ explains Lt. Col. Purbrick.
For NATO‘s eFP battlegroups on the Eastern Flank, preparing to defend Allied territory typically means planning and exercising to protect land and people. But, as the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine has amply demonstrated, preservation of cultural property can also be vital to national survival.
“When we are fighting from a trench, we fight for the comrades alongside us. But, take a step back and the reason why we are in that trench is to protect our freedom, our way of life and our culture – the things which collectively make us the communities and societies that we are,“ Purbrick says.
And that‘s where the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict comes in. Under it, parties to the Convention „must protect all cultural property, whether their own or that situated in the territory of other States Parties.“