Introductory information
The restitution of art and cultural assets unlawfully seized during the Nazi era is a key concern of the German federal government. On the basis of the Washingtoner Principles of 1998, the federal government, together with the federal states and local authority associations, agreed in December 1999 on a “Declaration on the Tracing and Return of Nazi-confiscated Cultural Property, especially Jewish property” (Gemeinsame Erklärung/Joint Declaration). The declaration stresses the importance of identifying and returning Nazi-looted property as a core task of public cultural institutions.
As a major institution of cultural preservation, the Federal Archives holds a large number of documents from the period of Nazi tyranny and the postwar era that document the looting and displacement of cultural property by state institutions and agencies. By permanently securing the archival material and making it available, the Federal Archives provides essential support for research into cultural property confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution.
Please note that the document holdings from the Nazi era are far from complete as a result of war damage, deliberate destruction and confiscation. Despite the return of material by the Allied powers and the exchange of archival material between German archives, the surviving written documents and other archival material continues to be scattered across numerous archives in Germany and abroad.
Accessing information
The Nazi-related documents that are preserved in the Federal Archives can be searched online using the invenio search system. Invenio enables users to search the Federal Archives’ central database according to record groups, subjects, persons, or across the entire holdings. Many of the document holdings have already been entirely or largely digitised and can be viewed and downloaded directly via invenio. Digitisation is ongoing, and the digitised archival materials are successively being made available online. In this regard, please take note of the services available through Digitalisation on demand. In addition to detailed information at the level of individual files or file groups, invenio provides basic data on each holding, including information on its history and main content.
Image material that is already available in digital form (mainly photos and posters) can be accessed in the Digital Picture Archive. Film material can be searched in the Digital Reading Room on the Federal Archives website. Digitised film material can be viewed at the Berlin-Lichterfelde location. The Federal Archives is continually expanding its digitised collections of audio documents, which are also available via invenio.
Most of the original records from civil service agencies in Nazi Germany are preserved at the Federal Archives’ location in Berlin-Lichterfelde. Important military records in this context are managed by the Military Archives Department of the Federal Archives in Freiburg (Breisgau). Under certain circumstances, the records of the former “Wehrmachtauskunftsstelle”, which are preserved at the Berlin-Tegel location, may also be relevant. Relevant records from the postwar period are found in Koblenz, Bayreuth, Ludwigsburg, Freiburg and Berlin.
Access to and use of material relating to National Socialism is subject to the provisions of the Federal Archives Act (BArchG).
Many documents relating to the Nazi era and also the early postwar period are written in an old German handwriting style (Kurrent or Fraktur). The „Kurrent-Schreibmaschine/Kurrent typwriter“ can help you decipher these old texts.
