The Johannes Lepsius Archive

The Lepsiushaus Potsdam is home to the Johannes Lepsius Archive, consisting of over 17,000 documents from the years 1858–1926. These sources were collected and assembled into an accessible archive by Prof. Hermann Goltz and Dr Axel Meissner in the second half of the 1990s. Their pioneering work resulted in the publication of the three volumes of Deutschland, Armenien und die Türkei, 1895–1925 (Germany, Armenia and Turkey, 1895–1925). Volume I (1998) consists of a reference book that catalogues the archive according to sender/addressee, place, and date. Volume III (2004) is made up of a lexicon, charting and thematically organizing the archival material with respect to persons, institutions, events, and places, in the context of the massacre and of the genocide of the Armenians as well as of the Armenian Relief Organization and the German Orient Mission. When the Lepsiushaus Potsdam was opened in 2011, the archive held at the theological faculty of the University of Halle-Wittenberg was transferred to our institution, where both print and digital facsimiles are accessible to researchers. The originals were deposited in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin-Lichterfelde.

The archive includes correspondence by Lepsius and from his network, from the Reich Foreign Office, prominent Armenians, and many other people. There is also a complete collection of the journals and articles Lepsius published. Another important source are the many reports from mission offices, employees, accountability reports sent to donors, personal letters from sponsored Armenian children to their benefactors, and eyewitness accounts of deportations, massacres and the genocide.

If you wish to visit the Archive, you can contact Michael Kühn to arrange an appointment. Should you require specific items, you can also request digital copies using the relevant catalogue number.