Archives and Library
Our archive collects important documents, objects, and images of informal culture in Eastern Europe in a large scale. It makes collections accessibl e which originally were published in Samizdat (Russian: author’s edition), thereby bypassing censorship . Among them are writings , photographs, and artworks by human rights activists, writers, artists, and scientists from the former Soviet Union, Poland, former Czechoslovakia, GDR, as well as Hungary. Our library provides around 50.000 volumes of the humanities and social sciences from and about Central and Eastern Europe after 1945/1953.
Archive
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Contact and Opening Hours
Researchers, planning to work in our archive, are invited to register 4 weeks in advance with the respective section of our archives. The date of your stay has to be confirmed by our archivists.
For working with our holdings please fill in our preliminary request to work with archival collections and submit it to:
Opening Hours of the Reading Room
Monday - Thursday 10 am - 17 pm, closed on Friday (user services are restricted)
Requests for archival materials and documents will be handled from 10-13 am.
On public holidays our archives will be closed for visitors!
We gladly support scholars from abroad applying for visiting fellowships through the DAAD, the Gerda Henkel Foundation or the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
We are extremely grateful to anyone wishing to leave papers to the archive or inform us of materials relevant to our profile.
The section for the Soviet Union and its successor states keeps roughly 600 personal archives in addition to samizdat journals and other documents. These include the personal papers of the writers Lev Kopelev and Iurii Trifonov, the philosopher Boris Groys, performance artist Dmitrii Prigov, as well as poems and manuscripts by Joseph Brodsky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, among others.
Besides numerous documents on emigration from the former USSR, NGO as well as leaflet collections can be found. The samizdat journals at FSO can be searched with the digital archive “Project for the Study of Dissidence and Samizdat” by Ann Komaromi.
The Central East European section keeps testimonies of political, religious, and artistic dissent after 1945/53. Extensive materials from the Polish trade union Solidarność and the opposition movement from 1976-1989 are of particular importance. Added to this are a large library of the drugi obieg ("second circulation"), as well as postage stamps and posters from the underground. The Czechoslovakian collection consists of an extensive library of books from the underground like the "Edition Padlock" (Edice Petlice), documentations of alternative art and culture, along with personal papers of the photographer Ivan Kyncl. Our smaller Hungarian collection includes, for example, the papers of the writer Györgi Dalos. Likewise, the small GDR collection keeps artistic samizdat and the writings of Christian activists.
Library
Opening Hours:
Monday - Friday: 10 am to 2 pm
Profile:
Our library collects books on the following topics: Political and cultural resistance, opposition, dissidence, as well as repression, emigration, and exile in the former Soviet Union, Poland, former Czechoslovakia, and other formerly socialist states in Europe. Furthermore, works on transition in these states in the 1990s, as well as works on the development of a party landscape and civil society.
Contact:
Marina Rätz
Phone: +49-421-218-69636
E-Mail: fsobib@uni-bremen.de
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