The city archives of the old Lippean residence Detmold is held in high esteem by the public. This is due to the fact that Detmold played a special role among the Lippe municipalities until 1947 because of its former function as the capital of the state of Lippe. While the records of the state authorities of the former principality are held in the state archives of North Rhine-Westphalia (Landesarchiv NRW, Abt. OWL), the archival records on social life in the former capital of the principality and later Free State of Lippe are kept at Detmold City Archives.

 

The Donop Fountain in the Detmold market place with elephants, 1958. A group of circus elephants caused a sensation. On 9 June 1958, the Franz Althoff Circus was in town and had just celebrated its premiere. (Detmold City Archives - Photografic Archive no 903) (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Many gifts, such as family papers, photographs or club records, prove how much citizens perceive their city archive as it's "memory". Numerous researchers use the archive's holdings and urban history projects work on aspects of local history.

 

Views of Detmold city

With funding from the programme "Targeted Digitisation Funding for Cultural Institutions Partaking in the German Digital Library", it has now been possible to digitise the old photo collection of the city archive as well as the pictures taken by the city's different departments. The funding was provided within the NEUSTART KULTUR programme of the commissioner for culture and the media of the German federal government, the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM).

Bruchmauerstraße in Detmold, 1930, with the steeple of St. Bonifatius in the rear (Detmold City Archives - Photographic Archive no 1783) (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Although many pictures were given to the archive without a precise description of their context of origin, we were able to index many of them since. However, not all of the archival descriptions now available stand up to critical scrutiny. Their publication offers the opportunity to correct wrong attributions and to append the descriptions. City archivist Dr Bärbel Sunderbrink and her team hope that the online presentation will lead to a lively eschange abouth the vast holdings of the Detmold City Archives.

 

Holdings of Detmold City Archives in Archivportal-D.

 

Contact Detmold City Archives

Stadtarchiv Detmold
Willi-Hofmann-Straße 2
32756 Detmold

phone: +49 5231 766-204
http://stadtarchiv.detmold.de

 

This article has already been published on Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek in the "Wir sind die DDB" section.