Collections & Archives

In our testimony archive you will find a number of special collections and archival materials that we have acquired from third parties due to their particular relevance to the study of displacement, expulsion and forced migration of the 20th and 21st centuries. Here are some examples:

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Heinz Schön Archive

Heinz Schön (1926-2013) came from Lower Silesia and had been working as an assistant purser on the "Wilhelm Gustloff" since 1944. The ship, previously operated by the “Strength Through Joy” leisure organisation (KdF), lay in Gotenhafen-Oxhöft as a hospital and accommodation ship of the German Navy.The ship sank on its first voyage as a refugee ship on 30 January 1945 on the voyage from Gotenhafen to Kiel off the Pomeranian coast after it had taken three torpedo hits from a Soviet submarine. Presumably over 9,000 refugees and wounded soldiers died, with only 1,230 passengers surviving. Schön survived and dedicated the rest of his life to private research on the sinking of the "Gustloff" and the displacement across the Baltic Sea in 1944/45. In 2018, we took over the collection of 33 linear metres of files, which had been obtained between 1949 and 2013. The collection contains the research and working documents for all of Schön's publications, as well as eyewitness witness reports and correspondence, photographs and a list of around 1,700 passenger names.

Lampedusa

The Lampedusa collection is a unique collection of audio interviews. In 2016, when the Italian island of Lampedusa, located only 140 kilometres off the African continent, became the destination of more and more refugees, filmmaker Christina Schmidt-Dogliani spoke with people on the ground.
Refugees gave accounts of the wars they were escaping, the odyssey of their displacement through the desert, the conditions of imprisonment in Libya and crossing the sea.
A first aider described the situation when the emaciated could finally disembark from the overcrowded boats, a teacher presented her library project for young refugees and a carpenter explained his artworks, which he made with the wood of stranded boats.
Fishermen shared their dilemma: They are often the first on the scene when a boat capsized and, following their human instinct, they rescued those drowning. Suspected of being "traffickers", their boats were confiscated and their brave actions cost them their livelihood.
28 interviews authentically reflect the situation on the island from different perspectives. They will soon be available on our media stations.

Foundation Deutschlandhaus

The holdings of the Stiftung Haus der Ostdeutschen Heimat (House of the East German Homeland Foundation) / Stiftung Deutschlandhaus (Deutschlandhaus Foundation) comprise over 250 files from the period 1961 to 2000.

The Haus der Ostdeutschen Heimat was a cultural meeting place for expellees in Berlin from 1961. In 1974, the Stiftung Deutschlandhaus was founded and the building, which today houses the Documentation Centre, was renamed Deutschlandhaus. The holdings include documents on the activities of both foundations, such as business records, minutes of the board of trustees, documents on events, on exhibitions and on the collection.

The reading room of the library and testimony archive also offers access to the extensive library and periodical collection of the two foundations, in addition to the archive. The collection of historical maps, topographical city views as well as paintings, drawings and prints by artists from the areas east of the Oder and Neisse rivers and German settlement areas outside of the borders of the Reich were also acquired.

Historical City Plans and Maps

The spatial representation of a (historical) place can often help when researching the history of one's own family. Browse through maps of the Prussian eastern provinces of the German Reich and the Sudetenland in the extensive digitised map collection of the Pharus publishing house. The detailed city maps and maps of the surrounding areas offer an insight into historical topographies from the first half of the 20th century.

Estate of Ruth Hoffmann

The German writer Ruth Hoffmann was born in Breslau in 1893. She studied painting and graphic arts there at the Staatliche Kunstakademie (State Academy of Arts). She married the bank clerk Erich Scheye in 1929, with whom she lived in Berlin-Dahlem. She took up writing four years later and published her debut novel in 1935, which was banned by the National Socialists the following year. She was also forbidden to write and publish further texts due to her husband being of Jewish descent. She not only lost her husband – who was murdered in Auschwitz – but also many family members in the course of the war. After the end of the war, she immediately began to write about and publish her recollections of Breslau and Silesia, women's fates and Jewish lives. Ruth Hoffmann died in West Berlin in 1974. The literary estate consists of typescripts and manuscripts for books and unpublished writings, radio plays and poems. It also includes posters for readings and newspaper articles.

Estate of Helga Heinke

Helga Heinke (1913-2004) ran an estate with her family in the East Prussian administrative district of West Prussia not far from Marienburg. Colonel General Friedrich Fromm was her father. He was arrested and executed in the aftermath of the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. Helga Heinke and her children fled to Brandenburg at the beginning of 1945. They joined her husband Hans-Günther Heinke in the British occupation zone in Lower Saxony in 1948.
Helga Heinke was politically committed to the interests of expellees. She was a member of the state parliament in Lower Saxony from 1955 to 1970, initially for the BHE (Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten – Association of Expellees and Disenfranchised Persons), and from 1961 for the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The material includes private correspondence with her mother, files on the estate and documents on political activities after the war. It also includes letters between Helga Heinke and her father (also from his time in the Reich Security Main Office prison in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse) up until the beginning of 1945. Moreover, this special collection contains various reports and notes on the displacement of 1945.