The Archives Departments

Walter Mehring to Kurt Tucholsky, New Year 1932/1933

Ellen Auerbach, The dancer Renate Schottelius (New York), 1953

Cover of Mario Adorf's script for his role in the film Die Blechtrommel, 1979

Lovis Corinth and Charlotte Berend-Corinth, Berlin 1908

Moritat von Mackie Messer (Ballad of Mack the Knife), from Bertolt Brecht’s version of the Dreigroschenoper, 1928

Hans Scharoun, Sketch of Utopian Architecture, c. 1919–1921

Mary Wigman, Totentanz II, 1926

Recording tape from the Hermann Scherchen Archive, Tautologos 1, 1961, Composition by Luc Ferrari

Walter Benjamin, Was ist Aura? Draft of Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit

Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Impromptu for Orchester, 1958

Berlin's Governing Mayor Willy Brandt visiting the new Akademie der Künste building in Hanseatenweg, Berlin, 12 July 1961

The artistic estates of the Archives of the Akademie der Künste are held in six departments reflecting the Academy’s membership structure with its six Sections of the Visual Arts, Architecture, Music, Literature, Performing Arts and Film and Media Arts.
In addition, the Media Archives is responsible for the audio-visual collections.

The independence of the literary archives of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht is a result of their historical development.

The Historical Archives, with its administrative documents, serve as the memory of the Akademie der Künste down the centuries, with holdings going back to the earliest days of the Prussian Akademie der Künste when it was founded in 1696.