Archives introduce themselves - Hof City Archive

The Hof City Archive was set up in 1931, initially under the part-time management of a historian with a doctorate, who worked full-time as a teacher of religion. In the course of the following decades, the business expanded and became more professional. At present the archive employs four staff members, two of whom are professional archivists in the higher or middle archive service.

The Hof City Archive is the responsible final archive of the independent city of Hof and additionally collects historically relevant documents about the district Hof, which encloses the city area.

The library of the house consists of the council library built in the 18th century with about 5,000 titles from the 15th to 18th century and the service library with the younger titles. The archive tries to acquire printed publications from and about the Hof region as completely as possible. In addition, numerous journals and series from the German-speaking area from the exchange of the North Upper Franconian Association for Natural, Historical and Regional Studies, which is based in Hof, are also included in the library. On more than 4,000 microfilms there is a newspaper archive for Eastern Upper Franconia and neighbouring areas. The library is indexed via the Bavarian Union Catalogue, the fastest access to the catalogue data is possible via the OPAC of Hof University of Applied Sciences.

In addition to the levies of the city administration, the records include collections from numerous associations and other organisations, private individuals and families as well as companies from Hof and the surrounding area. The chronological focus of the file holdings is on the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the older holdings, the archives of the noble family von Waldenfels deserve special mention. Small collections on the writer Jean Paul and the painter Johann Christian Reinhart are among the more recent private estates. In the case of the association files, the extensive holdings of the sociability associations garden society and civil society and of the beautification association should be mentioned, as well as the records of guilds and guilds. Several corporate and private bequests relate to the textile production that has been strongly represented in the Hof region from the late Middle Ages to the present day. Technical drawings of the oven manufacturing company Summa in Schwarzenbach an der Saale document the technology and design of the products of this innovative company.

In contrast to the municipal museum Bayerisches Vogtland, the city archive collects "flatware" and small objects on regional history, while the museum concentrates on larger three-dimensional objects. As a result, orders and decorations, seals and stamps, posters, maps, calendars, advertising labels, securities, family registers, more than 100,000 photographs (60,000 of which are glass negatives) and many other collections are available in the Stadtarchiv.

The daily newspapers are evaluated for a biographical collection and press documentation. A chronicle of important events "ab urbe condita" will be compiled.

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Holdings of the City Archive Hof on Archivportal-D.

Contact information

Stadtarchiv Hof
Unteres Tor 9 b
95028 Hof
Opening hours: Tue 9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m., Wed and Thu 9:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m., Fri 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Phone: +49 9281 / 815 - 1620
E-Mail: archiv(at)stadt-hof.de