Managing their own past. German archivists between national socialism and democracy

The article examines the transition of (West) German archivists from the Nazi period to the time of Allied occupation and on into the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany. After considering the extent of the profession’s nazification, the article focuses on Allied denazification efforts after the war and discusses the strategies archivists devised in order to maneuver through these dangerous times. In the end, the archival profession mastered the transition with only minor “denazification damage.” The article closes with an examination of the consequences of the continuity of personnel especially among the leading archivists of the former Prussian Archival Administration (Preussische Archivverwaltung) for the reconstruction of the archival profession in West Germany.

Astrid M. EckertEmail:

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Astrid M. Eckert   is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at Emory University in Atlanta. (M.A., University of Michigan, 1995; M.A. Free University Berlin, 1998; Dr. Phil. Free University Berlin, 2003). Before moving to Emory, she was a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington, D. C. (2002–2005). Her 2003 Dissertation on the history of captured German records after the Second World War was awarded the Friedrich Meinecke Dissertation Prize of Free University’s history department, and the biennial Hedwig Hintze Dissertation Award of the German Historical Association. The work was published in German in 2004 and will appear in English with Cambridge University Press as Fight for the Files: The Western Allies and the Captured German Archives after World War II. Her research interests include the history of postwar Germany, transnational historiographical questions, and, most recently, the political and cultural history of the inter-German border.