German Exile Archive

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The German Exile Archive 1933–1945 is part of the German National Library . His collection includes exile literature , autographs and the estates of German-speaking emigrants .

history

The history of the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 of the German National Library goes back to the early post-war period. Together with former exiles who were organized in the Protection Association of German Writers in Switzerland, the then director of the German Library Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer began in 1948 to set up a “library for emigration literature”. Walter Fabian , Jo Mihaly and Kurt Hirschfeld were among the initiators of the Association for the Protection of German Writers in Switzerland . They saw the founding of the collection as an “instrument of political enlightenment” and a “weapon against the newly rejoicing Nazism”. The collection was first presented to the public in 1965 with the exhibition “Exile Literature 1933–1945”. This gave exile research in Germany new impetus. The exile archive was one of the non-university research institutions that, despite the social and scientific disinterest, unwaveringly collected evidence of German-speaking emigration and made it accessible. A law from 1969 decided to expand the special collection into the “German Exile Archive 1933–1945”. As early as the early 1970s, the estates of emigrants and archives were purchased by organizations in exile. They form the focus of the collection. With the law on the German National Library of June 22, 2006, the work of the German Exile Archive was established as the task of the National Library.

Today, the "Exile Literature Collection" located in the Leipzig House and the Anne Frank Shoah Library are organizationally part of the German Exile Archive 1933–1945.

The collection comprises more than 23,000 books and brochures, 13,000 magazine volumes or booklets on around 1,200 magazine titles. In addition, there are over 300 bequests and partial bequests as well as an extensive collection of individual items and bundles such as letter collections, individual letters and manuscripts. In addition, numerous leaflets and newspaper clippings were collected. The German Exile Archive also has a reading room in which original materials from the collection can be viewed by prior arrangement. 30 exile journals were digitized in the “Exile Press Digital” project and can be accessed via the portal of the German National Library. The entire monograph collection has also been digitized. Works in the public domain can be accessed worldwide via the library portal; works protected by copyright can be used in digital form in the reading rooms of the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig.

An important task of the German Exile Archive is the cultural mediation work. With temporary exhibitions, a program of events, guided tours and the permanent exhibition “Exile. Experience and Testimony ”, the Exile Archive communicates its topics to the public. With the virtual exhibition “Exile. Experience and Testimony ”and the cooperative network project“ Arts in Exile ”, the archive and its topics are also present at any time and at any local level.

The German Exile Archive 1933–1945 has been managed since 1958 by Werner Berthold, since 1984 by Brita Eckert and since 2011 by Sylvia Asmus.

Publications (selection)

  • Werner Berthold: Exile Literature 1933–1945: Exhibition by the German Library, Frankfurt am Main, May to August 1965 . Self-published, Frankfurt am Main 1965, OCLC 174234774 .
  • Archive catalog of the German Exile Archive 1933–1945. ZDB ID 2393386-0

literature

  • Sylvia Asmus: A look back and forward - The German Exile Archive 1933–1945 and the Exile Literature Collection 1933–1945 of the German National Library . In: Refugee Archives . 2007, p. 1-15 , doi : 10.1163 / 9789401205931_002 .
  • Brita Eckert: The Beginnings of Exile Research in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945-1975. An overview [1] (56-page PDF document), in: Sabine Koloch (Hrsg.): 1968 in German literature / topic group “Post-War German Studies in Criticism” (literaturkritik.de archive / special editions) (2020).
  • "Exile. Experience and Testimony | Exile. Experience and Testimony. German Exile Archive 1933–1945 of the German National Library." Edited by Sylvia Asmus on behalf of the German National Library. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2019. ISBN 978-3-8353-3483-0
  • Klaus Ulrich Werner: Exile in the archive. The "German Exile Archive 1933–1945" of the German Library , Bautz, Herzberg 1992 (Bibliothemata, Volume 4), ISBN 3-88309-019-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. DBiblG law on the German library. buzer.de, 1969, accessed on November 5, 2019 .
  2. DNBG law on the German National Library. buzer.de, 2006, accessed on November 5, 2019 .