The Historical Archive on Tourism (HAT,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
: ''Historisches Archiv zum Tourismus'') is sited in the city of
Berlin at the
Technische Universität Berlin where it is housed at the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CMS) and the Zentrum Technik und Gesellschaft (ZTG). The HAT had been founded in 1986/87 at the
Freie Universität Berlin; in 2011 international protests helped to avert a planned shut-down of the archive and the following year it moved from the Free to the Technical University. Since 1999 the HAT is headed by the historian
Hasso Spode
Hasso Spode (born 1951 in Friedrichshagen) is a German historian and sociologist.
After his childhood in East Germany, Spode fled to West Berlin where he studied philosophy, history, theology, and sociology. He is professor in Hanover and direc ...
and co-financed by the Willy-Scharnow-Foundation.
Step-by-step the collection was enlarged with material about historical travel and tourism research. Today the length of the shelves amounts to some 600 running meters. The focus of the material is not so much on "travel" generally but on "
tourism" as a special sort of travelling. The HAT is gathering various materials ranging from
Baedekers to private
photo albums. In particular, there is an extensive collection of
flyers and other so-called
ephemera
Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...
. Mainly, the material stems from
Central Europe, but specifically from Germany. However, other parts of the world are also represented, e.g.
Southern Africa or USA.
Over 50,000 leaflets are stored, and more than 250 journals and some 12,000 books are registered. In addition
statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
,
poster
A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both typography, textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or w ...
s and
maps are gathered. The bulk of the material is from the 19th and 20th century, some books date back to around 1600. No
OPAC is installed but lists of titles are published in the
Internet.
[Landesarchiv Berlin (ed.): Berliner Archive, 5th. edn., Heenemann, Berlin 2003.]
References
External links
Homepage of the HATHomepage of the CMS at the TU BerlinHAT in University Museums and Collections (Engl.)HAT in University Collections (Germ.)in Clio-online (Germ.)
{{Authority control
Tourism in Germany
Archives in Germany
Travel writing
Travel-related organizations