Opening hours and contact

Video instructions for researching and using the German Exile Archive collection 1933–1945

In German with English subtitles

Use and service in Frankfurt am Main

German Exile Archive 1933–1945

The German Exile Archive’s collections are made available in a separate reading room. Please contact us in time so that we can make appointments and prepare the items you require exilarchiv-benutzung@dnb.de. Special provisions apply to archival materials in order to ensure that copyright and privacy rights are upheld. Documents relating to living people may only be viewed with their permission.

Here you will find archives of exile organisations, estates, partial estates and collections left by émigrés, collections focusing on individual émigrés, large bundles of letters, individual autographs, and archives compiled by exile researchers.

Please take note of a few points to simplify your research work and use of our collections.

Reference collection of the German Exile Archive 1933–1945

Literature on the subject of exile is located in the reference collection of exile literature from 1933–1945 and can be accessed in the multimedia reading room and the German Exile Archive. The printed publications compiled by émigrés themselves have all been digitalised. You can access them through the German National Library’s catalogue and use them at all the computer workstations in the German National Library’s reading rooms. The same applies to digitalised Jewish periodicals dating from the Nazi era and selected exile newspapers and journals that constitute part of the Digital Exile Press project. These too are searchable in the catalogue and can be read online. Please contact us if you would like to view original editions of other exile newspapers and periodicals exilarchiv-benutzung@dnb.de.

Using the catalogue

Use and service in Leipzig

Anne Frank Shoah Library

The Anne Frank Shoah Library contains literature about Anne Frank and the persecution and extermination of European Jews in Nazi Germany that has been published worldwide. These collections are freely accessible and searchable using the German National Library’s catalogue. The collections can be used free of charge. If you do not have a library card, we will be happy to issue you with a visitor's card, which will give you access to the freely accessible media in the Anne Frank Shoah Library’s reading room.

Reference library of the collection of exile literature 1933–1945

You will find freely accessible literature in the reference collection of exile literature 1933–1945 in the Anne Frank Shoah Library’s reading room. The printed publications compiled by émigrés themselves have all been digitalised. You can access them through the German National Library’s catalogue and use them at all the computer workstations in the German National Library’s reading rooms. The same applies to digitalised Jewish periodicals dating from the Nazi era and selected exile newspapers and journals that constitute part of the Digital exile press project. These too are searchable in the catalogue and can be read online. Please contact us if you would like to view original editions of other exile newspapers and periodicals exilarchiv@dnb.de.