EnDeRu
Main
[Title]
[L-01]
talking archives:
[L-02]
stories hidden
[L-03]
among the papers
[Title]
[L1]
talking
[L2]
archives:
[L3]
stories hidden
[L4]
among the
[L5]
papers
[Description]

This project shows that the world of the archive is more than shelves and dusty boxes; the archive is filled with magic, mystery, and hidden truths. The world of the archive is accessible to everyone, not just professionals. It’s interesting, engaging, and very important, because the archive is a first-hand account of history

Most of the materials for this project are concerned with the history of political repressions and resistance in the USSR. That’s because the project is based on the archives of Zukunft Memorial and the Center for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen and has seen us working in concert with our colleagues at those organizations. Both deal with the history of the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe in the Soviet period.

Of course, the history of political repressions, and especially the topic of historical memory, aren’t limited by geography and time. We hope that, in time, the project will grow to include materials that show historical memory and archival work in other countries and eras.

Most of the materials for this project are concerned with the history of political repressions and resistance in the USSR. That’s because the project is based on the archives of Zukunft Memorial and the Center for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen and has seen us working in concert with our colleagues at those organizations. Both deal with the history of the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe in the Soviet period.

Of course, the history of political repressions, and especially the topic of historical memory, aren’t limited by geography and time. We hope that, in time, the project will grow to include materials that show historical memory and archival work in other countries and eras.

01   Podcast
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[Title]
podcast
a history hidden
in documents
Archivists and historians debunk myths and stereotypes about the world of archives. They explain why archives are not just collections of documents, why they are not always about the past, and what a non-professional can do in an archive.
01   
Stories
[Title]
The world of magic
The world of magic
and Fairy Tales
The world of magic
and Fairy Tales
Archivists talk
about their work

Searching through the archives is more than a profession: it’s magic, mystery, excitement, and even an earthly taste of eternal life. We talk with colleagues from Memorial, Zukunft Memorial, and the Research Centre for East European Studies

No.
SB-002
Title
Socialite, Prisoner, Investigator: A Woman of Many Faces
Speaker
Sergey Bondarenko
Role
historian
Summary
The story of Nina Gnevkovskaya, who was harassed by secret police chief Beria, was sent to a labor camp, then became an investigator and prosecuted
dissidents, and finally demanded recognition as a political repression victim.
Supporting Materials
——
No.
SS-001
Title
Trust is very important
Speaker
Susanne Schattenberg
Role
historian
Summary
Why a German girl studied Russian, how a dissident archive survived in the post-Soviet period, and why trust is so important when you do archival work.
Supporting Materials
——
No.
MK-002
Title
A lot of energy in one little card!
Speaker
Maria Klassen
Role
ARCHIVIST
Summary
The story of correspondence between Magadan and Bremen in the days of the Iron Curtain.
Supporting Materials
——
No.
IS-001
Title
Human lives and fates are the most important of all
Speaker
Irina Scherbakowa
Role
historian
Summary
Why children need to study their country’s difficult past, and how that past can work for the future.
Supporting Materials
——
No.
GS-001
Title
The archivist’s tools and the principles of archival work
Speaker
Gabriel Superfin
Role
ARCHIVIST
Summary
White gloves, a pencil instead of a pen, and a love of indexes.
Supporting Materials
——
See all stories (21)  →
02   
The Archive Museum
03   
Escape Room
[Title]
The Archive
Escape Room

Imagine that you’ve found a suitcase filled with all kinds of things: photos, letters, personal items, and various papers. Let’s use archival search tools to learn about the fates of these items and of those they belonged to

Read material  →
04   
Recommendations
[Title]
A horror game,
a podcast about portraits,
and a map of broken hearts
и карта разбитых сердец

Eleven examples of the beautiful, clever, and infinitely various ways to display the stories hidden in archives

Smithsonian Collections [↗]
The perfect online archive
The Smithsonian Institution's website contains thousands of important items that tell detailed stories about American culture and history: from Edison's light bulb and the Apollo 11 spacecraft module to Abraham Lincoln's hat and Eddie Van Halen's guitar.
All this is beautifully displayed: each exhibit is not only described in detail but also perfectly photographed. Some of the items have been digitized in 3D (and pretty large ones, too, like an airplane), so that you can examine them from all sides without leaving your computer.
Each exhibit contains a detailed inventory with all the data about the storage location of the piece itself, and even the catalogue number.

si.edu
DDR Museum [↗]
The website of the Berlin Museum of East Germany, which contains items from the everyday life of citizens of the German Democratic Republic
This is a beautiful and conveniently arranged museum of everyday life. All the exhibits are arranged in thematic groups: "Household items,” "Letters and stamps,” "Furniture,” "Music," and so on. Each exhibit—for example, a box of White Maple cigars or a concentrate for making liqueur—is perfectly filmed and accompanied by a brief historical description. As in any self-respecting archive, each item has an inventory number.

ddr-museum.de
Portraits: Real People, Real Stories [↗]
A great example of presenting one’s own collection: stories of people through works of art
The podcast of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum is dedicated to the heroes of portraits from the museum's collection. For example, in an episode called "Behind Enemy Lines," gallery curator Ann Shumard tells the story of Rose O'Neill Greenhow and Belle Boyd, spies from the American Civil War, whose images were distributed on cards in the popular carte de visite format in the mid-19th century.
By the way, the Smithsonian Museum has other clever ideas on how to present an archival collection: one section of the site shows artists who were born on your birthday.

npg.si.edu
Museum of Broken Relationships [↗]
An example of an online archive as a means of therapy
In fact, this is an archive of stories in which people talk about dramatic breakups of relationships and living through the pain of loss. The project has been around for nearly 20 years and has hundreds of such stories. The site is organized as a map with geotags. Each dot on it is someone's story of parting and an object associated with it. Sometimes the link is somewhat ambiguous: for example, one of the project participants used an axe as the symbol of his breakup with a girl.

brokenships.com
Richard Wagner Postkarten [↗]
A great example of the ingenious work that can be done with a thematic archive: in this case, with historical postcards
The site contains more than 500 postcards based on Wagner's operas. The entire database is sorted by the works of the great composer: For example, more than fifty postcards are dedicated to Tannhäuser alone.

richard-wagner-postkarten.de
Prozhito [↗]
One of the best online archives in terms of navigation and general usability
The site contains more than 16,000 diaries and other personal documents of citizens of Russia and the USSR from the 19th century to the present day, including some that are quite unusual. For example, the notes of the sinologist Vasily Alekseev about Beijing in 1907 or the diary of Anna Allendorf, a student at the Mariinsky Institute of Young Ladies.
The database is equipped with a convenient search function that allows you to sort diaries by date—for example, all entries about the first day of the Second World War—or by keywords like "happiness" or "parrot.”

archive.prozhito.org
Show more  ↓
05   
Unexpected Finds
[Title]
Harper Lee’s lost novel,
the remains of England’s most
hated king, and the DNA of one
of Santa’s reindeer
одного из оленей Санта-Клауса
Harper Lee’s lost novel,
the remains of England’s
most hated king, and the
DNA of one of Santa’s
reindeer
Санта-Клауса

Five great archival finds and discoveries made by amateurs

←
Harper Lee's novel "Go Set a Watchman," which even the writer herself considered lost
The remains of Richard III, the English king of the York dynasty and the legendary villain from Shakespeare's play of the same name
Benedict Cumberbatch is a descendant of several characters he has played, including… Richard III
A copy of the Declaration of Independence, which practically destroyed the original
Santa exists (maybe)!
→
[Title]
Harper Lee's novel "Go Set a Watchman," which even the writer herself considered lost

In 2011, Harper Lee's lawyer Tonya Carter conducted an inventory of the property of the famous writer, who was 85 years old at the time. In her home safe, among other papers, Carter found a manuscript that she mistook for a draft of Lee's most famous novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, put the manuscript back, and forgot about it. The manuscript remained in the safe for three more years, until in 2014, at a family gathering, when Carter—not only a lawyer, but also a friend of Harper Lee—heard that the writer had another novel written before Mockingbird, but lost. The lawyer reopened the safe, read the text, and realized that this was the novel in question.

After that, Harper Lee issued a statement:

"In the mid 1950s, I finished a novel called Go Set a Watchman. In it, the heroine, known as Scout, is depicted as an adult woman. I thought it was a decent job. But my editor, who was fascinated by the memories of Scout's childhood, convinced me to write a novel about the heroine's youth. I was an aspiring writer, so I did as I was told.

I had no idea that the novel had been preserved. After much thought and hesitation, I showed it to several people I trust, and they found it worthy of publication. I am flattered and amazed that it will be published after so many years."

The novel Go Set a Watchman was published in 2015, 60 years after it was written and six months before its author's death.

Начать ваш собственный архивный поиск можно с электронных версий архивов:
Архив Научно-информационного центра «Мемориал»
Архив Исследовательского центра Восточной Европы при Бременском университете

You can start your own archival research with the digital archives:
Memorial Society archive
Feniks Database of the Archive of the FSO Bremen

_______
Sie können Ihre eigene Archivrecherche in folgenden digitalen Archiven beginnen:
Archiv der Gesellschaft Memorial
Feniks Datenbank des Archivs der FSO Bremen

[Title]
The remains of Richard III, the English king of the York dynasty and the legendary villain from Shakespeare's play of the same name

For several centuries, Richard III was considered one of the most odious kings of England, a murderer and a schemer. It was after his short but dramatic reign that the War of the Roses ended. Richard was killed, and the York dynasty was replaced by the Tudor dynasty.

However, in the twentieth century, historians revised their view of the figure of Richard III. Recent research has shown that most of the monstrous stories about Richard III are later Tudor fiction. The king’s reputation was largely restored, but the question remained where the body of Richard, who was killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, was located. It was known that, after the battle, he was buried in the church of the Franciscan monastery in Leicester, but the monastery itself was demolished many centuries ago.

The story of the defamed king interested one of the members of the amateur Richard III Society, screenwriter Philippa Langley. In 2012, she persuaded the Leicester City Council to allow excavations in the parking lot, the only undeveloped area of the monastery. All the excavation participants considered the chances of excavating the church and finding Richard's remains there to be close to zero.

Constraints of space do not allow us to tell the story of the excavations in detail, but we recommend that you find a description: It’s worth it. In short, the archaeologists not only managed to find the skeleton of the king, but also confirmed its authenticity through DNA analysis of Richard’s descendants.

Начать ваш собственный архивный поиск можно с электронных версий архивов:
Архив Научно-информационного центра «Мемориал»
Архив Исследовательского центра Восточной Европы при Бременском университете

You can start your own archival research with the digital archives:
Memorial Society archive
Feniks Database of the Archive of the FSO Bremen

_______
Sie können Ihre eigene Archivrecherche in folgenden digitalen Archiven beginnen:
Archiv der Gesellschaft Memorial
Feniks Datenbank des Archivs der FSO Bremen

[Название]
Benedict Cumberbatch is a descendant of several characters he has played, including… Richard III

Genealogy is one of the most common types of amateur archival search. Even if there are no kings or princes in your family, it’s always interesting to find out who your ancestors are.

The family tree of actor Benedict Cumberbatch first came into the spotlight after the actor played a role in the movie 12 Years a Slave and it turned out that one of his distant relatives was a slave trader in Barbados. Since then, Cumberbatch has regularly found himself playing his own relatives: for example, mathematician Alan Turing or King Richard III. To the latter, Cumberbatch is a second cousin, sixteen times removed. By the way, the role of the famous detective in Sherlock can also be included in this list, if desired: Cumberbatch turned out to be the sixteenth great-grandnephew of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Начать ваш собственный архивный поиск можно с электронных версий архивов:
Архив Научно-информационного центра «Мемориал»
Архив Исследовательского центра Восточной Европы при Бременском университете

You can start your own archival research with the digital archives:
Memorial Society archive
Feniks Database of the Archive of the FSO Bremen

_______
Sie können Ihre eigene Archivrecherche in folgenden digitalen Archiven beginnen:
Archiv der Gesellschaft Memorial
Feniks Datenbank des Archivs der FSO Bremen

[Title]
A copy of the Declaration of Independence, which practically destroyed the original

The original of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, made on parchment in 1776, is kept in the National Archives in Washington. Unfortunately, one of the most revered documents in American history is almost impossible to read today: The pale brown text written on parchment is almost indecipherable.

In 1992, Tom Lingenfelter, an antique dealer and dealer in rare documents from Pennsylvania, found a varnish-covered copy of the Declaration at a flea market. He decided that it was a commemorative copy made for the centenary of the signing of the Declaration. In the lower corner of the document, he saw the inscription "ANASTATIC FACSIMILE." Curious about what that meant, he learned that anastatic printing was a form of facsimile reproduction using chemical transfer invented in the early 1840s. The technique had a significant drawback: By creating a copy that was almost indistinguishable in quality from the original, it sometimes practically destroyed the original.

Of course, the Declaration of Independence has been copied before, but made with other techniques, those copies are much inferior in quality to Tom Lingenfelter's copy.

Thus, the antiquarian became the owner of not only a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence, but also the most accurate and high-quality copy to date, as close as possible in appearance to the original.

Начать ваш собственный архивный поиск можно с электронных версий архивов:
Архив Научно-информационного центра «Мемориал»
Архив Исследовательского центра Восточной Европы при Бременском университете

You can start your own archival research with the digital archives:
Memorial Society archive
Feniks Database of the Archive of the FSO Bremen

_______
Sie können Ihre eigene Archivrecherche in folgenden digitalen Archiven beginnen:
Archiv der Gesellschaft Memorial
Feniks Datenbank des Archivs der FSO Bremen

[Title]
Santa exists (maybe)!

In 2023, a 10-year-old resident of the American town of Cumberland sent a half-eaten cookie and the stump of a carrot to the local police station, which she left on Christmas Eve for Santa Claus. The girl asked the police to check if there were traces of DNA on the food that might confirm that Santa had visited her house. The police sent the samples to the Rhode Island Department of Public Health's Medical Examiner's office. The department soon reported that it had not found a complete match with anyone in the archive of the Unified DNA Index System, but a message appeared on the department's official Twitter account: "We all agree that there may be something magical about this story."

Also, when examining the carrots, laboratory experts found the presence of DNA that closely matches the DNA of Rangifer tarandus, that is, reindeer.

Начать ваш собственный архивный поиск можно с электронных версий архивов:
Архив Научно-информационного центра «Мемориал»
Архив Исследовательского центра Восточной Европы при Бременском университете

You can start your own archival research with the digital archives:
Memorial Society archive
Feniks Database of the Archive of the FSO Bremen

_______
Sie können Ihre eigene Archivrecherche in folgenden digitalen Archiven beginnen:
Archiv der Gesellschaft Memorial
Feniks Datenbank des Archivs der FSO Bremen