Image catalogue of the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association

In the image catalog, the Image Archive team presents the digitized parts of its collections. The Image Archive collects and makes accessible image sources on the region of East-Central Europe and makes them available for research and the interested public. These include all forms of photography, postcards, graphics and drawings from the 16th century to the present day, with the exception of paintings.

Of the approximately 750,000 image carriers stored in the Image Archive, a good 147,000 have been digitized and are searchable online in the image catalog (as of 09.03.2021), which continues to be updated and supplemented with new materials on a regular basis. The catalog offers a wide range of search options. Using the full text search, it is possible to search all image materials. Furthermore, filters can be used to restrict the search to specific collections, places and objects, countries and regions, persons and organizations, as well as sources and systematics. Furthermore, it is possible to display image materials depicting particular places and objects in their actual location via an interactive map.

Thematically, the image materials include the documentation of urban and rural settlements, (cultural) landscapes, and secular and sacred buildings (including an inventory). Historical and festive events are also documented, but also topics and scenes of everyday life as well as portraits of individuals. Through links to various external and internal standard vocabularies, thesauri and online encyclopedias, it is also possible to access further information about the individual images and data records for places, objects, countries, regions, people, etc. The image catalog also contains information about the history of the images themselves. Furthermore, where possible, the catalog also refers to other resources of the Herder Institute relating to a given topic (library, map collection, document collection).