Documents Collection

The Documents Collection was established in 1952 by the MfDG. Following its transfer to the DHM in 1990, it was divided into two separate collections – Documents I and Documents II – separated by the chronological cut-off date of “1 August 1914”. Since 2025, both collections have been reunited in a single collection and organised under six sub-headings according to their types.

The collection comprises more than 200,000 catalogued items and spans the period from the High Middle Ages to the present day, with 20th-century documents making up the vast majority of the holdings. Owing to the MfDG’s extensive collection activities, there is still a disproportionately large number of documents relating to party-political disputes during the Weimar Republic, the post-war period, and the early GDR. Otherwise, this collection is also characterised by its very wide variety of content, which is both a strength and a challenge to the museum when dealing with the holdings.