Metadata: Personal estate of Helmut Hoffmann - Pacifists of Oldenburg
Collection
- Country:
- Germany
- Holding institution:
- State Archives of Lower Saxony – Oldenburg branch
- Holding institution (official language):
- Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv - Standort Oldenburg
- Postal address:
- Damm 43, 26135 Oldenburg
- Phone number:
- +49 441 9244 100
- Reference number:
- Erw 84
- Title:
- Personal estate of Helmut Hoffmann - Pacifists of Oldenburg
- Title (official language):
- Nachlass Helmut Hoffmann - Oldenburger Pazifisten
- Creator/accumulator:
- Hoffmann, Helmut
- Date(s):
- 1856/2009
- Language:
- German
- Extent:
- 23 linear metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- The personal estate of Helmut Hoffmann contains diary, letters, newspaper clippings, brochures, postcards, posters, etc. on topics such as peace groups in Israel; resolution of conflicts between Jews, Israelis and Palestinians; a letter about Raoul Wallenberg and the saving of Jews in Budapest 1944-45, history of the Jews in Oldenburg; timeline.
- Archival history:
-
Helmut Hoffmann was born in 1917 in Berndorf near Vienna, the son of Dr.-Ing. Fritz Hoffmann and the teacher Friederike Hoffmann and died on 17 July 2010 in Oldenburg. At the so-called "Prince's School" in Grimma (Saxony), he obtained his high school diploma (Abitur) in 1937. He experienced the Second World War as a soldier of the Luftwaffe (air force). After the end of the war and captivity, he studied at the Pedagogical College in Oldenburg from 1947 and then worked as an elementary school teacher and head of an elementary school in Oldenburg. From 1966, he studied special education and worked as a special needs teacher (Sonderschullehrer) for children with learning disabilities in Oldenburg.
Even as a child, Helmut Hoffmann was interested in photography and he became a photographer for a Hitler Youth unit (HJ-Bann) and the German Wehrmacht. From 1984 he began coming to terms openly with his personal history and especially the part of his past shaped by National Socialism, due to a visit to the anti-war museum in Berlin (Stresemannstrasse), founded by Ernst Friedrichs. He began his own Christian peace work in Oldenburg and very quickly found active like-minded people, with whom he founded the Oldenburg Pacifist Group and the Circle of Silence (Schweigekreis). His wife Irmelin and his sister Ilsetraut (Frankfurt) were his most important work and life companions. With a team of like-minded people, he developed exhibitions against the war and against nuclear and conventional armaments or rearmament; his propensity for photography greatly benefitted him. His exhibitions have been shown in many towns and cities in West Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, his anti-war imaging and poster exhibitions were shown throughout Germany as well as in the western and eastern neighbouring countries. His careful and balanced correspondence with members of the (former) GDR civil rights movement shows the situation in the GDR a few years before its political and economic end and addresses the social problems of understanding between East and West Germany.
- Access points: locations:
- Israel
- Access points: persons/families:
- Hoffmann, Helmut
- System of arrangement:
- There is no system of arrangement. The material is in order of accession.
- Finding aids:
- An online catalogue (Arcinsys) is available.
- Links to finding aids:
- https://www.arcinsys.niedersachsen.de/arcinsys/start.action?oldNodeid=
- Yerusha Network member:
- Institute for the History of German Jews
- Author of the description:
- Meike Buck