Following the official launch of the project, the focus was not only on establishing the project structures within the Road Construction Authority but also on implementing the mandatory organisational requirements of the Interreg Programme and the European Union.

© strassen-mv.de/Canva

All project partners met for the first time at the international kick-off meeting at the University of Greifswald (lead partner) in April 2025 to agree on a joint working framework. This laid the foundation for close and transparent cooperation throughout the project.

© Ria Guth

One of the central elements of our project is the digitisation of historical documents in order to make them accessible to a broad public in a well-prepared format (e.g. in the Digital Library of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania). To ensure that the digitised materials can be easily found later on, each item is provided with a kind of profile in the archival software goobi, containing all relevant information (metadata).

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Old files in particular require specialised knowledge: in order to confidently read historical Kurrent and Fraktur scripts, the colleague responsible for processing the digitised materials went back to the classroom and studied historical handwriting with our associated partner, the State Archives of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in Schwerin.

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In addition, we turn our attention to an often overlooked yet ever-present cultural asset: the milestones along our roads. For this purpose, we received a comprehensive dataset for the programme region from the Research Group Milestones (Forschungsgruppe Meilensteine e.V.), which we are processing within the framework of the project in order to derive concrete measures from it.

© Forschungsgruppe Meilensteine e.V.

This means that we review the information on these technical monuments according to specific criteria and decide which stones will receive an information panel and which need to be raised, relocated, cleaned, fitted with new cast-iron plates, or “rescued.”

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At the beginning of the year, we were able to complete our project team and fill the third planned position. Our team now covers the entire process of digitising a historical document – from scanning and carefully recording it in the archival software to coordinating and preparing the relevant content for the public.

© strassen-mv.de/Canva

Together with the University of Greifswald and the State Main Archives in Schwerin, archival holdings relevant to the project were selected. From the collections relating to the history of road construction in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, we now aim to uncover historical treasures.

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Around 75 linear metres of files covering more than 200 years of road construction history are available for this purpose (one linear metre of files equals the amount of documents that fit upright next to each other on one metre of shelving). For one person to scan these documents alone would take more than five years.

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However, this is not traditional scanning where the paper is automatically fed into a machine. Instead, the documents are photographed in high resolution under a special camera. Each page is captured contact-free from above, ensuring that even delicate, centuries-old files can be digitised carefully and without damage.

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We also continue to focus on the milestones: From the extensive dataset containing coordinates, condition assessments and location data, we have created a geographical overview. The map illustrates the distribution of the historic milestones in the programme region and makes parts of the historic road network recognisable. On this basis, we have selected the first 30 milestones for further processing.

© strassen-mv.de/AI-generated map