Gestapo Research
The interdisciplinary team is developing methods to both automatically evaluate large amounts of data and analyse individual videos in detail, according to Seul. The aim is to make various manifestations of antisemitism – from right-wing, left-wing and Islamist content to subtly coded material – visible and to better understand them.
This also involves concrete impact, as Seul emphasises: “It is about passing this knowledge on to teachers,” in order to educate them on how to deal with problematic content and to strengthen prevention.
The initially extremely poor state of the source material has been significantly improved over the years through systematic archival research. The most spectacular find was undoubtedly the 3,533 personal files of the Trier Gestapo, which have been catalogued at the Service historique de la Défense in Vincennes (near Paris) since 2015 and from which digital copies have been obtained for Trier. On this basis, a DFG-funded research project was carried out under the direction of Lutz Raphael and Thomas Grotum:
► Gestapo: Nazi Terror on the Ground. The Trier State Police Office in the Southern Rhine Province [4/2018–6/2022]
- Andreas Borsch: The Trier State Police Office. A Modern Organisational History
- Lena Haase: The Relationship between the Judiciary and the Police under National Socialism
In addition, the project team is addressing numerous other aspects of Gestapo research. For example, the Gestapo card index (approx. 58,000 cards) and the Gestapo files (12,471) of the Neustadt an der Weinstraße State Police Station are being catalogued.
Further information is available on the website of the SEAL Research and Documentation Centre.
