Hanseatic Economic Archive
The Hanseatic Economic Archive Foundation is a regional economic archive with responsibility for Hamburg and Northern Germany. The archive looks after archival material from companies, chambers, associations, foundations and business figures. It advises and supports companies in questions of company history and archives and sees itself as a research institution for economic and regional history.
History and task
The archive was founded in January 2008 by the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce in the form of a non-profit foundation . Your seat is Hamburg. The foundation is the central storage and collection point for handwritten and printed certificates as well as other historical illustrative materials from economic life in Hamburg and northern Germany. Activities are the recording and securing, the scientific evaluation and the archival-appropriate indexing and permanent storage of economic archive material from companies, chambers, associations, foundations and private individuals in the economy. The archive documents the achievements, innovations and brand history (s) of the north German economy.
Stocks
The archive collects, preserves and provides material for research and research that might otherwise have been destroyed.
- The basis of the holdings is the historical safe holdings of the Commerzbibliothek , the oldest private business library in the world at over 275 years. The collection consists of atlases, travelogues, protocols, newspapers, literature on coins, weights and measures, geography, shipbuilding, camera and political science, maritime and international law as well as Hamburg and other Hanseatic cities.
- This tradition is supplemented by the holdings of Hamburg and North German companies that cannot be maintained by them themselves or are threatened with destruction. Other documents from the economy (e.g. from chambers and associations, estates of important personalities from the economic life or documents from business-related foundations) are collected in the Hanseatic Economic Archives. The holdings include the shipping company archive Ick-Mathies-Sommer, the Alfred Toepfer archive as well as the company archive of the grain elevator company, the association archive of the society “Harmonie” from 1789 and a large collection of advertising stamps .
use
It is a public archive. Your holdings are accessible to anyone who can prove a legitimate interest, taking into account the protection and blocking periods of the Hamburg Archives Act and special agreements with archivists. Use of the archive is usually free of charge.