Between official reporting and private investigation – cataloguing and partial digitization of the film collection of Dresden cinematographer and collector Ernst Hirsch

• Applicant: Katrin Stump
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 576868728

The project proposal concerns the scientific cataloguing and partial digitisation of the film collection of the cinematographer Ernst Hirsch, who is known for his work for the East German television, his documentaries and his collection of historical films with a focus on Dresden before and after its destruction in 1945. The collection comprises 466 films. By cataloguing the historically (approx. 1903-1990s) and materially diverse media collection, the research aims to provide a high-quality corpus of sources that can be accessed from various fields of research, including production studies, cultural memory studies, and television research. The cataloguing process is particularly complex, as the films are often not published works, but unique recordings in various material compositions and in varying states of preservation. As is typical in the field of audiovisual media, many of the films are not yet free of copyright claims, so a digitalization with open access publication is possible only for those films for which the SLUB was granted rights of use or which are definitely free of copyright claims - this sub-collection comprises 66 units. Due to the high standards for archival-quality digitization and the special legal requirements that apply to cellulose nitrate films, the digitization of this sub-collection will be carried out by a service provider. The project also includes the exchange of best practices with the professional community, for which there is still a great need. In addition, in order to optimize the visibility of the Ernst Hirsch collection with researchers from the field, metadata for all 66 OA-published film works will be offered to the editorial team at filmportal.de in collected and mapped form.

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