Category: 20 years

Facts & Files has been organising collection days for the crowdsourcing project ‘Europeana1914-1918’ for seven years. Most of the handwritten sources from the First World War collected on Europeana1914-1918.eu can be transcribed using the online-tool www.transcribathon.eu, specially designed by Facts & Files and Olaf Baldini. Facts & Files has also organised so-called Transcribathons in various cities competitions across Europe.

For many decades, the Gallery Heinemann was one of Germany’s most prominent art dealers, until it was ‚aryanised‘ by Friedrich Heinrich Zinckgraf in 1939. The German Art Archive of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg commissioned Facts & Files to compile the business records of the Gallery Heinemann in an online database, accessible at http://heinemann.gnm.de. The website went online in 2010 and makes information on approximately 43,500 works of art accessible.

In 1922, after many years of digging, the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. The exhibition ‚Tutankhamun – His Tomb and his Treasures‘ recreates the Pharaoh’s tomb as Carter found it, with stunning replicas of all the objects. Since it opened in 2008, the exhibition has toured many cities worldwide. Facts & Files produced educational material, researched the exhibition‘s images and footage, and obtained their licenses.

The Viktoria-Luise-Platz in Schöneberg was completed in 1902. The former meadow was developed by the Berlinische Boden-Gesellschaft AG, which was founded by the Haberland family. Herbert M. Gutmann, whose property is researched by Facts & Files since 2006, became co-shareholder of the company. Eugen Gutmann was co-founder of the Dresdner Bank AG. His son Herbert worked at the board of the Bank for decades, and was also on the supervisory board of the Berlinische Boden-Gesellschaft AG until 1933.

Facts & Files received the Grimme Online Award for the website ‘Youth Opposition in the GDR’ in 2005. Facts & Files curated the website, and did the research, interviews, and editing. www.jugendopposition.de highlights youth resistance in the GDR against the state. Particularly striking was that punks also belonged to the youth resistance. The punks came together in the cultural park Plänterwald in East Berlin in the 1980s.

From January 21, 2015, our exhibition “Shot in Moscow…” German Victims of Stalinism at the Moscow Cemetery Donskoje 1950-1953 was shown at the Memorial Leistikowstraße in  Potsdam. The online edition of the German news magazine “Der Spiegel” reported about the “speaking walls” of the KGB prison  at Leistikowstrasse in Potsdam.

Facts & Files was commissioned by the Foundation German Museum of Technology, Berlin to organize and index the corporate files of the company Telefunken GmbH from the years 1903 till 1950 which are held at the German Museum of Technology, Berlin. Telefunken was founded as joint venture by Siemens & Halske and AEG in Berlin in 1903. It was a radio and TV-set company. Please see for the finding aid online here.

We started the research commissioned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museums in Washington, D.C. on the former “NS-Archiv” des DDR-Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit im Zwischenarchiv Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten  at the Federal Archives Berlin in 2001. Later we also conducted research at the archive of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. Our research is part of the USHMM International Acquisitions and Reproduction Program which aims to compile files from European archives that document the persecution and massacre of the Jewish people in Europe.

On April 17, 2000, the German news magazine “Der Spiegel” published an article on the start-up Facts & Files. Titled with “Old files, new facts” it also reinterpreted our firm’s name. The article is online here.

One of Facts & Files’ first projects investigated the role of insurance companies in confiscating Jewish life insurance policies during the Nazi era. On behalf of the
International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), Facts & Files consulted more than 50 archives in 11 countries to collect information on the policies and their owners.