Research Guides: HIST 618: German History: Primary Sources

What is a primary source?

What is a primary source? video from Shmoop

Primary sources are materials created at the time of the topic you are researching, or by an eyewitness to the topic. Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during a historical event or time period. They are not a commentary about your topic but are the topic you are commenting about.

Primary sources may include:

diaries, letters
interviews, oral histories
audio recordings
photographs and images
newspaper articles
poems, novels, plays, and music
cartoons and advertisements
memoirs and autobiographies
speeches
movies, videos, DVDs
public opinion polls
research data and statistics, census records
maps

Citing Primary Sources in Chicago Style
from the Library of Congress

From the Reformation to the Thirty Years War: 1500-1648

BYU Eurodocs - Germany: The Reformation
While the majority of these resources are available in English, some facsimiles remain in the original German.
BYU Eurodocs - The Thirty Years' War and Hapsburg Austria
Translated documents offering commentary on politics, Hapsburg power, and cultural life within the Holy Roman Empire.
GHDI From the Reformation to the Thirty Years War
Translated documents offering commentary on politics, culture, and religion with the Holy Roman Empire.

From Absolutism to Napoleon (1648-1815)

BYU Eurodocs - Prussia: Friedrich I to Friedrich Wilhelm II
Contains German language and translated materials.
GHDI: From Absolutism to Napoleon
Translated documents offering commentary on shifting social orders and economies within the HRE/Habsburg Empire and Prussia, the German Enlightenment, and emerging German nationalism.

From Vormarz to Prussian Dominance (1815-1866)

BYU Eurodocs - Prussia: From Friedrich Wilhelm III to Wilhelm I
Contains German language and translated materials.
GHDI: From Vormarz to Prussian Dominance
Translated documents offering commentary on republicanism and its suppression within the German Confederation, competition between the Austrian & Prussian monarchies vying for preeminence in Central Europe, emancipation of German Jews, and more.

Forging an Empire: Bismarckian Germany (1866-1890)

BYU Eurodocs - A Unified Germany (1871-1899)
Contains links to collections holding German language and translated materials.
The Duel Alliance Between Austria-Hungary and Germany
From Yale's Avalon Project, the translated text of the 1879 treaty aligning the Hohenzollern & Hapsburg monarchies against the Russian Empire.
GHDI: Forging an Empire - Bismarckian Germany
Translated documents concerning Bismarckian diplomacy & consolidation of Prussian power, Kulturkampf, Pan-German Nationalism, antisemitism, and more.

Wilhelmine Germany and the First World War (1890-1918)

BYU Eurodocs - Wilhelmine Germany
Contains German language and translated materials.
BYU Eurodocs - Pre-War Wilhelmine Germany
Contains links to collections of German language and translated materials documenting cultural life, colonialism, and martial culture between 1900 -1914.
BYU Eurodocs - World War I
Contains German language and translated materials including diaries documenting trench life, diplomatic missives, white papers and other communiques, and links to other collections.
GHDI: Wilhelmine Germany and the First World War
English translations of economic, agricultural, and demographic reports; materials offering commentary on culture and politics; and both personal and official materials concerning the First World War.

Weimar Germany (1918/19-1933)

BYU Eurodocs - Interwar Era
Links to German language and translated collections largely focused on Volkish movements, Nazism, and the KPD and Comintern response. Also contains a link to the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's archive of anti-fascist / anti-Nazi documents (untranslated), translated reports chronicling the Reichstag Fire, and a translation of the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact.
GHDI: Weimar Germany
Primary source materials (translated) documenting the Kiel Revolt, Spartacus Revolution and Freikorps reaction, reconstruction and economic policies, sexual liberation, the rise of Nazism amidst other Volkish movements, and the Republic's collapse.

Nazi Germany (1933-1945)

BYU Eurodocs - Nazism during the interwar period
Contains links to translated and untranslated materials documenting the Nazi movement and dictatorship.
BYU Eurodocs - World War II
Links to materials and larger collections (translated and untranslated) concerning the Hitlerite Regime's foreign policy and its invasion & colonization of Eastern Europe, memoirs of Allied POWs, cultural life of European Jews confined to ghettos, reactions by foreign officials, and more.
BYU Eurodocs - The Shoah
Links to individual materials and collections documenting Judenhass and antisemitism before the Hitlerite Regime; Nazism's antisemitic policies building toward mass murder, archives of the Aktion Reinhard Camps, archives of survivor testimonies, archives of Allied military officials, and more.
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies consists of over 4,400 testimonies of Holocaust survivors, witnesses and liberators.
All FHSU users must be logged in through their TigerNet credentials and are then required to create an account in the archive itself. Please read all instructions at the resource site.
Germany and the Soviet Union - November 1937 to July 1938
From Yale's Avalon Project, a collection of documents related to pre-war cooperation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
GHDI: Nazi Germany (1933-1945)
Primary source materials (translated) documenting the Hitlerite Regime's antisemitic, racial, and gender policies and other aspects of Gleichschaltung, speeches and documents concerning the building of the German war machine and preparations for the invasion and colonization of Eastern Europe, observations and resistance from Germans Jews, German dissidents like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and foreign observers.
*Though scant, materials concerning Germany's mass-murder of European Jews are included in the section "Racial Politics."
USHMM Primary Source Databases
Links to databases providing access to original primary sources related to the Holocaust. *Please note, as this list is intended for researchers located at the USHMM's institutions, not all databases will be accessible to FHSU students, faculty, & staff.

Occupation, Denazification, and the Emergence of Two States (1945-1961)

BYU Eurodocs - The Postwar Era
Links to translated and untranslated individual materials and collections documenting the Adenauer Era, reconstruction and the "Economic Miracle," and Cold War tensions.
BYU Eurodocs - Denazification in the Postwar Period
Links to collections containing materials pertaining to the IMT and other Nuremberg Trials including the William J. Donovan Collection of Nuremberg Documents at the Cornell Law Library.
GHDI: Occupation and the Emergence of Two States
Primary source materials from 1945-1961 documenting the Western Allies and Soviet quadripartite occupation of Germany; denazification, transitional justice, and Cold War amnesties; displaced persons and relocation, the creation of two states and cultural, economic, and social life in the BRD and DDR; Cold War tensions, and more.
The International Military Tribunal for Germany
From Yale's Avalon Project, the documentary record of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The model for other postwar Nuremberg Trials in the Anglo-American occupation zones, the "Blue Books" and documents related to the Nuremberg Trials are also available in Forsyth Library's Federal Government Documents print collection. An alternative electronic version can be located using the HeinOnline Military Legal Resources database available through Forsyth Library.

Two Germanies (1961-1989)

GHDI: Two Germanies (1961-1989)
Contains translated materials documenting the cultural and social movements of the 1960s, shifting gender and sexual politics post Adenauer, leftwing radicalism after 1968, Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, the rise of the Green Party, Kohl and the winding down of the Cold War, and more.
BYU Eurodocs - The Cold War Continues (1960-1990)
Links to individual documents between U.S., West German, and Soviet officials, links to English translations of DDR's Freie Deutsche Jugend archival materials, DDR propaganda archive, and more.

One Germany in Europe (1989-2009)

BYU Eurodocs - Germany Reunited
Links to translated and German-language materials predominantly focused on the incorporation of Germans from the former DDR into the Federal Republic and experiences of the Volksdeutsche in the Soviet Union.
GHDI: One Germany in Europe
Containing links to translated materials documenting the collapse of the DDR; the unification process, absorption and incorporation of East Germans into the BRD; unified Germany's emergence as a economic powerhouse and EU leader; immigration policies, guest workers, and xenophobic reactions; and more.

Primary Source Resources for Continental Europe Online

Archives Portal Europe
Search hundreds of thousands of archive descriptions and digital objects from 92 institutions across Europe. TIP: You may want to use the checkbox provided beneath the search box to view "Only material with digital objects."
David Rumsey Map Collection
The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, globes, wall maps, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from around 1550 to the present.
Eurodocs
Collection of websites containing transcriptions, facsimiles and translations of various primary sources on topics throughout European history. These documents range in time period from ancient to modern, and are also organized geographically by country.

Find More Primary Source Collections

Forsyth Library E-Journal Collection
Students researching late 19th, 20th, and 21st Century topics can search English-language popular periodicals and scholarly journals for reporting on topics and events in Germany.
HathiTrust Digital Library
Includes full text of government documents or books in the public domain.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
From Fordham University, a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts
OEDB Digital Libraries and Archives
This site lists over 200 digital libraries and archives and sorts them by state
Worldcat
Connects you to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide
World History Primary Source Collections Online
Guide to primary source collections on the Internet for Western & Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South & Latin America, and more from Sam Houston State University's Newton Gresham Library
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (Germany)

Finding Primary Sources through WorldCat

Start at WorldCat: https://www.worldcat.org/
Use the Everything search bar to search for your title, keywords, or subject area.
- For example, a search for The French Revolution finds over 271,000 results
Use the sidebar and choose Downloadable Archival Material.
- For example, filtering for these topics found 428 results:
  - Downloadable Archival Material.
  - Year: 1798
  - Language: English
Click on the title on an item to learn more about it, to find online links, or the libraries that hold the item.

For example, this search found: An appeal to impartial posterity. By Madame Roland, wife of the minister of the interior: or, A collection of tracts written by her during her confinement in the prisons of the Abbey, and St. Pelagie, in Paris http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1175595004

Available at The University of Michigan: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;idno=N25929.0001.001