Historical archive on tourism

The Historical Archives for Tourism (HAT, Historical archives on Tourism ) is a repository for historical documents about tourism and travel in Berlin. It makes this material accessible for research and teaching as well as for media, tourism and exhibition management.

The basis of the 1988 Willy Scharnow Institute of the Free University of Berlin launched in archive form larger time historical collections from the tourism industry and government tourism advertising that have been enhanced through acquisitions and donations. Overall, the collection includes around 500 meters of shelf space. The HAT is the largest collection of its kind in Europe. A big part of making brochures and other promotional materials (so-called ephemera ) as well as an extensive collection of journals.

Furthermore, there is a plethora of books before:

• Tourism literature (since 1900 );
• Guide ( greaves, Meyers travel books, Baedeker etc. );
• Client countries;
• Belletristic literature;
• Travel Reports and Iternarien from " vortouristischer " time;
• Statistics.

There are also numerous other materials such as private photo albums, posters, tapes, videos, records and maps. The temporal focus is on the 19th and 20th centuries; the oldest pieces are from the 17th century. The geographical focus is on the German-speaking countries, however, the collection includes all continents.

The journal collection ( about 200 periodicals with several thousand volumes) is almost completely captured in a database, the book inventory at present to more than two -thirds ( just under nine thousand titles ). In the database can only be researched on site; Excerpts can be found on the archive page on the Internet.

The scientific development and maintenance of the inventory was made possible by funds from the Volkswagen Foundation, and has since been supported by the Willy Scharnow Foundation. Affiliated to the archive is founded in 1988, working group tourism history.