Kahnakten

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As Kahn files are archives from the State Archives Dusseldorf referred that in March 1945 during a transport with a barge in Hannover were destroyed or damaged. They were on their way to the alternative camp in the Grasleben salt mine near Helmstedt .

Relocation of the holdings of the Düsseldorf State Archives

To secure the archive holdings in the Second World War , alternative camps were set up for refugees . The State Archives Dusseldorf brought parts inventories in the Ehrenbreitstein in Koblenz , in the salt mine Grasleben at Helmstedt and in other places (such as air-raid tunnels in Siegen , Saline Bad Frederick Hall , Salt Mine Salzdetfurth ) below. Since the Allies were advancing into the Rhineland from the west, the files in the Düsseldorf archive were to be secured inside the German Reich. The relocation to Helmstedt took place in 1944 and 1945 with two rail and two ship transports. Wilhelm Classen was in charge, followed by Otto Korn and Bernhard Vollmer .

Successful transports

The first ship transport of around 4,600 fascicles weighing 15 tons reached the destination. Due to numerous temporary line closures on the route from the Rhine via the Wesel-Datteln Canal and the Mittelland Canal to the transshipment point in the port of Haldensleben to the railroad, the transport with the Rhenus 39 took almost four months. In parallel, two transports were carried out directly by rail.

Failed transport with the motor ship Main 68

Aerial photo of the port of Hannover-Linden, 2016

The second ship, Main 68 , was to transport “20,000 archival items in 2,540 file packages and 60 sacks filled with archival material (approx. 3 million sheets) - a total of 25 tonnes, as evidenced by the loading slip, ie the equivalent of approx. 600–650 running meters of documents” . The ship started on December 27, 1944. Since the Mittelland Canal was partially closed, the route led over the Dortmund-Ems Canal , the Coastal Canal and the Weser . During a stop in the port of Hannover-Linden , the freighter burned down in part on March 14, 1945 during an air raid on the port and sank.

Salvage and restoration

The files destroyed and damaged in the process are therefore called Kahnakten . Archived files from authorities, church institutions and foundations from the Rhineland and Westphalia were particularly affected . The files were recovered in the summer of 1945, brought back to the then State Archives in Düsseldorf and stored in a magazine. They have been in the new North Rhine-Westphalia State Archives, Rhineland Department , in Duisburg since 2014 . The restoration of the stuck and burnt files was slow due to a lack of technical knowledge. It was not until 1976 that bulk handling began, which has not yet been completed. The restoration is the most extensive and time-consuming project to rescue war-damaged archive material in Germany.

literature

  • Johannes Kistenich : Sunken Treasures. The boat files . Damage history and restoration history. Ed .: State Archive North Rhine-Westphalia. 2010. ( Online , pdf, 2.65 MB)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Johannes Kistenich: Gesunkene Schätze - Die Kahnakten . Damage history and restoration history. Ed .: State Archive North Rhine-Westphalia. 2010.
  2. ↑ Technical information on the ship Rhenus 39 (Dutch) accessed on May 4, 2017.
  3. ↑ Ute Rasch: Archivists research treasure from the mud. RP Online , May 31, 2013, accessed May 1, 2017 .
  4. ^ State archive North Rhine-Westphalia: Kahnakten. An overview for orientation , online