Cataloguing and digitization of archival records on the persecution of National Socialist crimes of violence in Hesse

• Applicant: Dr. Johannes Kistenich-Zerfaß
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 557538759

The Hessian State Archives have an extensive and informative collection of files from the immediate post-war period, which documents the coming to terms with the Nazi dictatorship in the young Federal Republic in a particularly dense way. The archival records include documents on denazification, reparations and restitution, the early records of the official Hessian state administration, the ministerial administration and the judicial administration. The importance of the Hessian documents from the post-war period becomes apparent by the numerous relevant publications and by the inclusion of the audio documents and the trial files of the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial into the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme in 2017. Since 1945, the German judiciary has conducted extensive investigations into National Socialist crimes of violence (NSG). A look at the research situation for Hesse reveals a heterogeneous image of the NSG proceedings there. In particular, research has focused on the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, which took place from 1963 to 1965. An attempt to research the judicial prosecution of Nazi crimes of violence and their effects on the judiciary and post-war society in a broader and at the same time differentiated manner has not yet been conducted. This is probably due to the fact that the archival source situation is still disparate: not all the necessary sources have been handed over to the Hessian State Archives yet and the existing sources in the Hessian archives are far from being sufficiently differentiated and thus accessible to research in a form appropriate to the importance of the documents. However, the need for such an investigation has been repeatedly expressed. The proposed project therefore aims to make the approximately 4,400 criminal case files in the Hessian State Archives relating to the prosecution of National Socialist crimes of violence and the approximately 3,600 relevant preliminary investigation files of the Hessian State Office of Criminal Investigation accessible in a differentiated manner and to digitize them for online access. In addition, the whereabouts of further investigation files of the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main, which have not yet been handed over to the Hessian State Archives, are to be clarified and efforts should be made to archive the files. The whereabouts of around 499 investigation files from the Central Office in Ludwigsburg relating to Hesse are also to be clarified as part of the project and, if possible, archiving in the Hessian State Archives is to be sought. Accompanying the project, a complete overview of the entire inventory of judicial and police investigation and criminal case files on the Hessian NSG proceedings is to be compiled. It is expected that this overview will provide extensive new knowledge for research. Furthermore, it is also to transfer the indexing data to a database in order to prepare it for future research questions.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)