Germany

Dr.-Ing. Claus-Peter Echter is a conservationist, urban planner and sociologist. Echter is a scientific heritage consultant working in private practice since 2008 and based in Munich, Germany. He has extensive experience working in favour of cultural heritage at European and international level. Claus-Peter Echter was a member of the World Heritage Panel of ICOMOS for the evaluation of World Heritage nominations in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018 and has been a member of the ICOMOS Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) since 2015 and of the ICOMOS Task Force on the New European Bauhaus since 2021. He is ICOMOS focal point for the UN Habitat World Urban Campaign (WUC), elected CO-Chair of the WUC Partner Constituent Group Professionals and member of the WUC Steering Committee since 2020.

Claus-Peter Echter has been a member of Europa Nostra and ICOMOS since 2007 and was a Council member of Europa Nostra 2012-2021, and Honorary member of Europa Nostra Germany since 2019. He was Vice-President of Europa Nostra Germany from 2009 to 2019 and again from 2021. He has acted as a local assessor for the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards for many years.

Claus-Peter Echter began his studies in sociology, receiving a Diploma from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, he has completed postgraduate studies of urban planning and heritage conservation at the Technical University Munich (Certificates) and defended his Ph.D. in engineering (architecture) at the Technical University Berlin. He wrote a doctoral thesis on “Monument Topography: A Recording Tool and Cultural History Enterprise“ (2005).
He was Senior Researcher at the German Institute of Urban Affairs with the main tasks Heritage conservation and History of Urban Architecture from 1981 to 2007 and has written many books and articles and lectured on Architectural History and (Urban) Monument Preservation.

Trained as a chemist in Germany and the USA, Johanna Leissner has been working in cultural heritage research in various EU and national projects for over 20 years with a focus on climate change, environmental pollution, environmental sensor development and sustainability issues like Green Museums.

She is chair of the EU OMC group “Strengthening cultural heritage resilience for climate change”, established in January 2021, and member of the EU expert group “Cultural Heritage Forum”, established in 2019. Currently coordinator of German research project KERES “Protecting cultural heritage from extreme climate events and increasing resilience”.

German delegate for the Council of Europe Strategy “European Cultural Heritage in the 21st Century” and of the UNESCO World Heritage Expert Group for climate change impacts on cultural heritage. Since 2005 scientific representative for Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft at the European Union in Brussels. Co-founder of the German Research Alliance for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in 2008 and of the Fraunhofer Sustainability Network. From 2001 to 2005, National Expert of the Federal Republic of Germany responsible for “Technologies for the Protection of the European Cultural Heritage” at the European Commission in Brussels.