Cornelius Holtorf’s text describes a hotly debated issue that is currently the subject of political debate in many countries around the world. The text also demonstrates the author’s sensitivity to problematic, if not inadmissible, simplifications. He succeeds in demonstrating how short-sighted the Swedish national cultural heritage claims are that he quotes. Furthermore, it is obvious that alternatives to such reckless claims should not focus on cultural heritage objects but rather on the well-being of people. With all those statements made by the author, I entirely agree. It is plausible to link this problematic to the one-sidedness and shortcomings in the field of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Programme. Criticism of this UNESCO programme has been articulated in academia for more than thirty years. The problematic simplifications of this programme and its implicit reproduction of global power imbalances, which were often uncritically accepted in the 1950s, can no longer be considered scientific standard or ethically acceptable. It goes without saying that a definition from the year 1954 of what a cultural phenomenon is should be under critical revision more than 70 years later.
