Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe

The Herder Institute in Marburg is a research institution that also hosts several scientific collections. The regional focus of the collections is on the area of present-day Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia as well as the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Archive/ "Document Collection"
The co-called document collection includes unprinted sources on the history and culture of East Central Europe, with a focus on the history of Estonia, Livonia and Courland, i.e. the present-day states of Estonia and Latvia. Of approximately 1300 linear meters of shelves, about 90% deal with the Baltic States. Of particular value is the holding of Baltic archive films, which were produced in 1940 in connection with the resettlement of the Baltic Germans in Riga, Dorpat/Tartu and Reval/Tallin, as some of the originals were lost due to the effects of war.

Image Archive
The image archive hosts image sources on East Central Europe (currently approximately 622,500 units). The regions in the west and north of what is today Poland – i.e. Lower Silesia and East and West Prussia as well as the Baltic – historically form the bulk of the institute’s collection. The collection also contains material on the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, as well as the Kaliningrad district, while only a limited number of units are available for Slovakia, Hungary, the Ukraine and the Republic of Belarus.

Research Library
The Herder Institue's library gathers literature from the humanities and social sciences on and from East Central Europe, ie on the history, geography and culture of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as the historic German territories and the German settlements in East Central Europe. Apart from monographs and periodicals, it puts an emphasis on collecting hard to find (“gray”) literature.

As a research library specializing in political, cultural, economic and social history, geography and culture of East Central Europe, the library collects books, magazines and newspapers, sheet music, records, CDs, CD-ROMs, videos, DVDs, and electronic resources (eg, national licenses) in East and Western European languages.

Map Collection
The Map Collection offers approximately 50,000 topographic and thematic maps from the 16th to the 21st centuries as well as 9,300 vertical aerial photographs taken between 1942 and 1945 as reference holdings. The geographical focus lies on the areas of today’s states of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, whilst adjoining regions are also covered in order to guarantee content coherence.

Press Collection
The press collection consists of a newspaper collection and a press clippings archive. The newspaper collection comprises press publications since 1945 from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia or, as the case may be, the Soviet Union. It also contains regional newspapers from towns and regions of the historical German Eastern territories. The press clippings archive is organized thematically per country as well as by persons and places. A special collection contains newspaper clippings from the interwar period.