The Forum of Contemporary History Leipzig displays in its permanent exhibition German history from 1945 to the present. The exhibition plan and layout is experience-focused and visitor-friendly, and multimedia resources play an important role.

On entering the permanent exhibition, visitors are "tuned in" to contemporary German history in an "audio tunnel" featuring well-known historical quotations. In the permanent exhibition itself, there are 44 media stations available. The presentation culminates in long-term sequential film portraits showing East Germans before and after German reunification.

The use of audiovisual media in the permanent and temporary exhibitions follows a three-tier multimedia design that has proved itself in the Museum of Contemporary History in Bonn:

• On the first information level, continuously-running monitors and ambient sound convey general information to the visitors. More general information is supplied by trailers that can be selected on monitors.
• On the second information level, visitors can select sound and film sequences. They choose the topics and the focal points themselves.
• On the third information level, visitors can interactively access large clusters of data and informative material, either individually or in groups. There is also opportunity here to look back, to compare, to make connections.

The audiovisual media are put to intensive use by the visitors to the Leipzig Forum of Contemporary History.

• Public access
  
  In the Information Centre of the Forum of Contemporary History Leipzig, visitors find an audiovisual collection of 550 directly available items (as of August 2007) on German history - political, economic, social, cultural, everyday life - from 1945 to the present. The collection also includes well-known GDR movies.
  
  Research in the holdings of the Information Centre
  (in German only).
  
  

Contact: Gabriele Hodzic
Tel.: +49 (0)341 2220-300
Fax: +49 (0)341 2220-500
E-Mail: hodzic@hdg.de

• Special features
  
  The Information Centre has terminals offering visitors access to special information, such as results of all parliamentary (Bundestag) elections since 1949 and of the (GDR) Volkskammer elections of 1990, with biographies of all Members of Parliament. The Internet presentation of the Forum of Contemporary History is also accessible in the Information Centre.

• Media resources
  
  The Multimedia Resource Centre follows Museum policy guidelines regarding new acquisitions.
  
  The Multimedia Resource Centre documents all audiovisual media produced in-house and used in the exhibitions, also programmes of contemporary historical relevance aired in the German transmission range. The selection focuses on the subject of dictatorship and resistance in the GDR: documentaries on the uprising of 17 June 1953, the building of the Wall, successful and unsuccessful escape-attempts, the opposition in the GDR, the peaceful revolution, and the process of German reunification.
  
  The programmes are archived and described in detail in data files. The data are also accessible to outside users on request, and it is planned to put them on the Internet via the online-database "Suche in den Sammlungen / Search the Collections". Accessing will depend on rights.

Contact: Uta Köstler
Tel.: +49 (0)341 2220-139
Fax: +49 (0)341 2220-500
E-Mail: koestler@hdg.de

© 2002-2008 Netzwerk Mediatheken / Network of Multimedia Resource Centres