On May 1, 2023, the Bavarian State Archives broke ground with a first large-scale digitization project funded by the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF). The project will cover a period of 7.5 years (92 months) and follows the signing of an agreement by the federal and state archives to provide digital access to archival documents via the Online Collection Wiedergutmachung. Dr. Bernhard Grau, Director General of the Bavarian State Archives, and Undersecretary Eva-Maria Meyer, head of the BMF sub-division in charge, signed a corresponding administrative agreement on April 19, 2023.

Dr. Grau is pleased with the conclusion of the agreement: “Our project will significantly improve and facilitate access to the Wiedergutmachung documentation for academic research; it will promote the numerous provenance research projects, and it will also make an important contribution to strengthen our culture of remembrance.” According to Undersecretary Eva-Maria Meyer, the project is of utmost significance for the entire undertaking: “Now, the Online Collection Wiedergutmachung is increasingly taking shape. In the upcoming decades, the digital platform will provide a central access point for families and descendants of the victims of Nazi terror to find information about the persecution fate of their relatives. This will include information about how they interacted with the German Wiedergutmachung bureaucracy after 1945. Moreover, the online collection will be for the benefit of academic research and of our cooperation with international partners.

Find out more about the project inside the Online Collection Wiedergutmachung (in German).