The preservation of monuments concerns the supervising, promoting and researching activities of the authorities without any intrusive character. The monument protection laws of the Länder basically distinguish between two areas, the protection of monuments and the preservation of monuments. Monument protection includes the preservation of monuments and targeted measures by the public authorities, especially in the area of intervention management. Here, orders in the form of commandments and prohibitions can be enforced even without the owner's consent. Monument preservation and protection aim at the preservation of monuments and their scientific research. Monuments are things, majorities or parts of things in whose preservation and use there is a public interest. The decisive factor is the public interest. This is always the case if an object is significant for the history of mankind for cities and settlements or for the development of labour and production conditions and if there are artistic, scientific, folkloristic or urban planning reasons which make the preservation and use of the object necessary (example § 2 para. 1 sentence 1 DSchG NRW).
