Soviet zone / GDR

Reappraisal of the SED dictatorship: survey on holdings of Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR provenance in Berlin

The Berlin Com­mis­sion­er for the Reap­praisal of the SED Dic­ta­tor­ship has com­mis­sioned the re­search in­sti­tute Facts & Files to pre­pare a study on hold­ings of So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone/GDR prove­nance. The pur­pose of the study is to re­search and reap­praise the SED dic­ta­tor­ship as well pro­vid­ing sup­port for the archives in the state of Berlin in meet­ing the chal­lenges posed by mod­ern archive work.

The project forms part of an over­ar­ch­ing sta­tus re­port on the reap­praisal of the SED dic­ta­tor­ship in the state of Berlin: the aim is to eval­u­ate the reap­praisal and con­se­quences of the SED dic­ta­tor­ship based on a res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed by the Berlin House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, with im­ple­men­ta­tion as­signed to the Berlin Com­mis­sion­er for Reap­praisal by the Berlin Sen­ate.

The study to be pre­pared by Facts & Files on the archiv­ing and doc­u­men­ta­tion of hold­ings of So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone/GDR prove­nance in the state of Berlin in the pe­ri­od from 1990 to 2021 is de­vot­ed to ques­tions such as the fol­low­ing:

  • What archival hold­ings (writ­ten ma­te­ri­al, pho­tographs, posters, films and au­dio­vi­su­al ma­te­ri­al) of So­vi­et Oc­cu­pa­tion Zone/GDR prove­nance are avail­able in the Berlin archives?
  • How have these hold­ings been hand­ed down and what con­ser­va­tion, in­dex­ing and digi­ti­sa­tion mea­sures have been car­ried out since 1990?
  • Where do archivists see a need for ac­tion?

Facts & Files pre­pared the above-men­tioned study based on the anal­y­sis of a ques­tion­naire sur­vey, in­ter­views with ex­perts and doc­u­ments from the archives. It con­tains con­crete rec­om­men­da­tions for ac­tion by pol­i­cy­mak­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors based on ex­pe­ri­ence of archival prac­tice and par­tic­i­pants’ wish­es. For this rea­son, Facts & Files needs sup­port in prepar­ing the study, since it is the archive ex­perts them­selves who are fa­mil­iar with the his­to­ries of the col­lec­tions and are aware not just of how to meet cur­rent chal­lenges in terms of con­ser­va­tion, digi­ti­sa­tion and use, but al­so what re­sources are re­quired for this pur­pose. Based on this ex­per­tise it will be pos­si­ble to im­prove the sit­u­a­tion of the Berlin state archives in the long term.

The fol­low­ing ques­tion­naire con­tains the main ques­tions on these pri­or­i­ty top­ics. It can be com­plet­ed on­line.
A draw will be held among par­tic­i­pat­ing in­sti­tu­tions with the chance to win three prizes con­sist­ing of 500 eu­ros worth of ma­te­ri­al for archival work.
For ques­tions about the project or the ques­tion­naire, please get in touch with the Facts & Files con­tacts Frank Drauschke and Hen­rike Voigtlän­der, archivs­tudie@fact­sand­files.com, Tel. (030) 48 09 86 20.