Digitisation and Indexing of the Photographs from the Adolf-Reichwein-Archive

Project Description

Researchers and the public have come to know Adolf Reichwein (1898–1944) from his work in a variety of areas and contexts: he was engaged in adult and worker education in Thuringia, he taught at the Pedagogical Academy in Halle, he successfully ran a country school project in Tiefensee near Berlin, worked in museum education at the State Museum for German Ethnology in Berlin and last but not least, Reichwein belonged to the resistance group “Kreisauer Kreis”. The National Socialist (Volksgerichtshof) sentenced him to death and he was executed in Berlin-Plötzensee in 1944.

Following the liquidation of the Adolf-Reichwein-Verein e.V., the Adolf Reichwein Archive became part of the BBF archive. It contains approximately 1,300 images, mostly photographs. These images relate to different contexts of Reichwein’s personal and professional life, and they are now being digitized by the BBF. The photographs show Reichwein and other persons, family settings and impressions from his travels. Many of the group photographs were made during his time as a teacher in adult and worker education in Thuringia in the 1920s and during his time as a university teacher in Halle in the early 1930s as well as during his activity at the State Museum for German Ethnology in Berlin until 1944.

His resistance against the National Socialist regime is documented in photographs from the trial held at the Volksgerichtshof on October 20, 1944.

The professional photographs that were taken to document his practical school work in Tiefensee are particularly worth mentioning. They were taken for the publications "Schaffendes Schulvolk” (title in the library catalog) and “Film in der Landschule” (title in the library catalog). Both unpublished and published photographs give insight into daily school life at the “Landschule”.

For legal reasons, the digital copies cannot be made available online, but can only be viewed in the archive on site.

Collection in the Archive Database

Funding

The project received funding from Adolf Reichwein Association (Adolf-Reichwein-Verein e.V. ).

Project Management

Project Team

Project Details