On June 3, 2003, I.G. Farbenindustrie in Liquidation transferred ownership of the historical company archive to its Stiftung “I.G. Farbenindustrie,” a foundation created in 2001. I.G. Farben i.L. announced its insolvency a few months later, in November 2003. The archives were removed from the estate prior to the insolvency. The files were moved from the former I.G. Farben i.L. headquarters at Silberbornstrasse 14 in Frankfurt am Main to Schwerin, where they were administered by attorney Volker Pollehn, I.G. Farben i.L. liquidation officer as well as board member of the new foundation.

The resulting archive includes about 8,000 file units, a number of index-card registers, and a few maps and photographs. The documents are dated from the 1930s all the way to 2003, with the majority having been made in the years after 1945.

The contents of the Stiftung “I.G. Farbenindustrie” archive are of great significance for research into the legal, business, local and contemporary histories of both National Socialism and the Federal Republic of Germany. The archive contains a large number of sources relevant to historical research of the Holocaust.

The following file stores are of special interest for historical research:

1. Trial documents from the civil case filed by former Monowitz concentration camp prisoner Norbert Wollheim against I.G. Farben i.L. (the Wollheim Suit).
2. Documents on international negotiations regarding restitutions for former I.G. Farbenindustrie slave and forced laborers who received payments after the settlement in the Wollheim case as a result of the Bundestag’s passage of the Act to Satisfy Claimants of I.G. Farbenindustrie Stock Corporation in Liquidation.
3. Correspondence with survivors of the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp.
4. Files on the history of the I.G. Farben building in Frankfurt am Main.
5. Financial transactions with architects and about 300 construction companies and suppliers who were involved in the building of I.G. Farbenindustrie’s sites in the eastern territories (including Auschwitz, Heydebreck and Breslau).
6. Files on wage, salary and pension claims from Germans who worked as civilians at the I.G. Farbenindustrie eastern plants in Auschwitz, Heydebreck and Breslau.
7. Extensive files on I.G. Farben’s international subsidiaries and assets abroad (in the United States, Switzerland, Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc.).
8. Documents on I.G. Farbenindustrie in Liquidation activities from the 1950s until 2003, including records from the annual conferences and efforts at acquiring restitutions for former I.G. Farben assets abroad.

The archive stores are to be transferred to the Fritz Bauer Institute and from there to the Frankfurt am Main university library on permanent loan, where they will be indexed according to research archive standards in the following years. Following the survey the archives will be made available to scholarly research.

(FS; transl. NL)