Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

3. Session / Séance. Sharing of Experience and Exchange of Staff / Partage d’Expériences et Echange des Personnes - Oldenhage, Klaus: Scope and Aims of Mobility. A German View / Portée et buts de la mobilité. Un point de vue allemand (english 279 - français 285)

3. Session/Séance: Oldenhage, Scope and Aims of mobility. A German view

The archival co-operation between the National Archives of the United States of America and the German Federal and several State Archives started, of course, with the return of captured German records. From the early fifties up to the present there is a long tradition of mutual professional visits. The exchange of staff is to be regarded as a one-way exercise, but there were good reasons for that. The American- German Joint Venture to describe the Records of the Office of Military Government US Element for Germany (1945 through 1949) was carried out from 1978 through 1980 by almost hundred American and German archivists at Suitland, Maryland. The result for the researchers consists of about 8 million pages microfiched within two years. A similar Japanese-American project and a smaller British-German venture were to follow.

Even the ongoing close co-operation between the two archives, the National Archives of the USA and the Federal German Archives, did not lead to an exchange programme on a permanent basis.

4. Cultural Conventions

The exchange of staff was more heavily used as a tool of cooperation when the Federal Republic of Germany and her Eastern neighbour countries from the early seventies onwards concluded cultural conventions in which archives were included so as to enable an exchange of archival reproductions for the benefit of the researchers in the other country. The policy of détente between the two blocks led to excellent professional results. The aim of exchanging archival reproductions was reached by an exchange of archivists from Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Rumania. West Germany and Hungary secretly even exchanged orginal archival material. The exchange of archivists between Poland and Rumania on the one hand and the Federal Republic of Germany on the other hand was also used to train younger archivists in German paleography. The professional archival relations between Poland and the FRG proved to be able to overcome political controversies concerning the records of former Eastern territories of Germany and their relevant archival materials by an agreement on the exchange of microforms which did not settle the matter in principle, but in practice.

The policy of concluding cultural conventions which could be used for archival purposes is being continued up to the present with regard to several dozens of countries in four continents. The real goals were not always reached in a very professional sense, but the numerous visits paid by foreign archivists and would-be- archivists to many German Archives initiated in a sufficient number of cases good archival relations between Germany and other countries. The Cultural Conventions have proved to be the best basis for professional relations between countries which otherwise would not have a chance to cooperate in the field of archives.

5. Archival development

There is no doubt that archival relations between developing countries and their former metropolitan powers are of highest importance professionally for the developing countries, morally for the former colonial powers.

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