For fifty years, the World Heritage Convention of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been dedicated to the protection of natural and cultural sites of “outstanding universal value”. Its primary instrument of protection, the World Heritage List, includes a steadily growing conglomeration of cultural sites that are considered to be of outstanding importance to a “global society”. Which cultural sites are considered to meet this standard has broadened considerably since the 1970s. The list indicates a paradigm shift in favor of a broader understanding of cultural value, which on the one hand displays parallels to national processes, and on the other hand is rooted in global discourses on participation and balanced representativeness of cultural diversity. Germany is one of the most consistently successful countries and serves as the basis of consideration for navigating this paradigm shift. The thesis pursues the argument that the German nomination strategy corresponds with the evolution of World Heritage conception, and that this analogy is the reason for Germany's success in the World Heritage arena. By analyzing six German nominations from 1978 to 2021, specific evolutionary steps of "conceptual expansion" are highlighted and contextualized within the dichotomy of national heritage valorization processes and the consideration of international interests. Finally, showing how entangled the European and German understanding of heritage is with the World Heritage Convention is intended to facilitate a discussion as to whether and to what extent the dynamic adaptability of states such as Germany opposes a truly representative, inclusive World Heritage List.

In Latin America after World War I, the idea spread to solve a lack of housing through self-help and mutual help. In this approach, experts tried to empower local populations affected by the housing shortage, to improve their living conditions using their own resources and community strength. In 1952, the Colombian government partnered with the Pan-American Union and established the Inter-American Housing and Planning Center (abbr. CINVA) in Colombia to promote this model. CINVA served as a research and training center from 1952 until 1972 and provided practical and interdisciplinary training to selected young Latin American scholars. Rural and urban housing projects delivered practical experience and knowledge in order to improve the future housing situation in Latin America. The methodology applicated in the rural projects targeted to get an understanding of the social and spatial requirements of users' living environments and to make corresponding suggestions for improvement. To assess whether the active participation of the population in the rural projects and the experts’ academic approach were successful, the thesis focuses on a representative rural project realized in 1957 in Chambimbal (Colombia). With the analysis of interviews with some contemporary witnesses and primary literature of CINVA from the Central and Historical Archive in Bogotá the case study was retrospectively evaluated. The focus is on how the input of academic knowledge contributed by CINVA's experts in the project could be linked with the local knowledge of the Chambimbal residents in the individual improvement proposals of CINVA. The results of the study led to a critical reflection on CINVA's approach. It became clear that the experimental character of the project, as well as the academic research and training objectives inhibited the development of a project method in Chambimbal that exclusively addressed local needs. The work encourages equating academic knowledge, which is carried into projects through research and local knowledge in self-help projects in housing construction.