Category: 20 years

This advertising leaflet for tourists praises the sights of Berlin even before the Wall was built. The essential sights, such as museums, libraries and archives, which are essential for the work done by Facts & Files, are missing. In 2019, we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Wall. Thanks to these two events, we can also celebrate the foundation of Facts & Files 20 years ago.

The Neue Automobil-Gesellschaft (NAG) was founded as a subsidary of the AEG in Berlin-Oberschöneweide. The depicted racing car by NAG is part of the motor vehicle collection of the German Museum of Technology Berlin. The provenance of the motor vehicle museum’s collection has been researched by Facts & Files. The research aimed to investigate whether motor vehicles of the collection were sold under duress or confiscated after the National Socialists came to power in 1933.

On behalf of the University of Cologne, Facts & Files had prepared a report which looks at the entanglement of the National Socialist regime with the university’s charitable foundations, honorary titles and grants awarded to academics and institutes. The assessment included research on honorary doctors, members and senators of the University of Cologne, the members of the Board of Trustees, donors to the university and the activities of associated institutes and their employees during the Nazi period.

Ka-We: This is what the city Königs Wusterhausen is called in Berlin and Brandenburg, for which Facts & Files wrote a concept for its monuments and memorials. The city is well-known for its palace and the Funkerberg is particularly popular among techies. The photograph shows work being done on the transmitter-mast on the Funkerberg at a dizzying height of 200 metres. The mast was created seven years before the famous ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ at the later GE building in New York City.

Since April 2016 Facts & Files had been researching on the provenance of several art pieces belonging to the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen. The Wilhelm Hack Museum was founded in 1979 and includes the Municipal Art Collection of Ludwigshafen, and a collection of medieval and modern art donated to the city by Wilhelm Hack in 1973.

The book “Stolen Legacy” by Dina Gold tells the story of the author’s search on her family’s history and the company H. Wolff the family owned in Berlin. It also documents the issues of the restitution claims for the property looted by the National Socialists. The book was published in summer 2015, and we conducted research on behalf of Dina Gold at Berlin archives.

Facts & Files researched the history of the German Food, Beverages and Catering Union (NGG). The history of NGG goes back to the General German Cigar Workers Association, which was founded in 1865. This makes the union the oldest labour union in Germany. Facts & Files curated an exhibition, created a website, and wrote a book on NGG’s 150 years of history.

From the year 2013 on, Facts & Files has been supervising the archive of the German Red Cross (GRC) General Secretariat in Berlin. The archive primarily holds files from the General Secretariat of the GRC from 1951, as well as the records of the GRC of the GDR, an extensive collection of Red Cross newspapers, audiovisual media, advertising materials and a billboard collection, from which this poster is from.

In April 2014, 144.317 data records of the Berlin restitution offices were made publicly available for research on the website www.wga-datenbank.de.

Facts & Files had been commissioned by the State Archive Berlin to do the editorial processing and prepare the online presentation of the data records. In the end of the year all over 430,000 data sets are published online.

The Working Group Applied History of the Association of German Historians organized a panel discussion about “History between scholarship, education and business” on March 25, 2015 in Hamburg. Frank Drauschke was invited to share our experiences in the field. A workshop addressed the training of historians at universities, and an ethic codex for the Public and Applied History sector.