Reading Documents Beyond, Between and Within the Lines
By Dora Komnenovic, Bundesarchiv
From September 10-15, 2023, the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) hosted the five-day EHRI archival seminar "Modern Diplomatics of the Holocaust" at its branch in Berlin-Lichterfelde. Following a competitive call for applications, twelve participants from Europe, Israel and the United States were invited to participate in the event, which was organised for the second time since 2016.
Over the five days of the programme, the attendees were introduced to the German administrative tradition and critical document analysis, i.e. diplomatics as an auxiliary science of history. What might seem as a rather "dry" topic at first glance has nevertheless managed to impress, as one of the participants remarked:
"It's been a while since I had a week such as this one at the EHRI archival seminar. It opened a whole new world to me!"