Previous projects
Berlin's Odyssey
A virtual reality tour of the city at the iconic TV tower
The TV tower is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Berlin. Located in what was East Berlin it now represents the unified city and houses a state of the art exhibition that takes visitors on a 15 minute, virtual reality, journey through 900 years of Berlin’s history.
The tour starts in the Middle Ages, when the city was little more than a village and takes the viewer through the Renaissance, the German Empire, the decades of division and into the modern era of unification. It offers an insight into the construction of the Tower, takes viewers into the homes of normal people on both sides of the wall and compares the television programs that were broadcast during the era of partition.
In collaboration with Timescope, Blat & Bild helped develop the concept for the VR tour and oversaw the project to ensure historical accuracy. We also unearthed the archived film footage and old images that are used in the exhibition.
Fritz Bauer's Legacy – a reflection on the Nazi trials
A film by Sabine Lamby, Cornelia Partmann and Isabel Gathof
This film focuses on the question of why it took several decades for Fritz Bauer's opinion of the law to find its way into the German courts. He suggested that a criminal regime was only able to operate because there were people who were prepared to commit heinous crimes and/or others who were willing to ignore mass murder. This applied to everyone who worked in the extermination camps, regardless of their position in the military hierarchy, or whether or not they had themselves committed acts of brutality, or murder. To witness it was to be a part of it.
It was more than 40 years after the first Auschwitz trials, in which Fritz Bauer was the General Attorney, that the German legal system agreed with him. In 2011 John Demjanjuk was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison for having been an accessory to murder during the war. This was the first time someone was successfully prosecuted on the basis of having been an accessory to the murderous Nazi regime.
The film covers all the trials held since 2011 and pays particular attention to the last trial in 2015. That of Oskar Gröning – the accountant of Auschwitz.
For this project Blatt and Bild searched through boxes of old newspaper articles at the Berlin State library to try and understand public reactions to the Auschwitz trials in the 1960s. We also searched the picture agency files at Ullstein Bild, the SZ-Photo and Picture Alliance and combed the collections of memorial sites at KZ Neuengamme.
Hitler and Stalin - The clash of tyrants
A film by Michël Prazan
Siècle Productions produced a 90 minute documentary about the close political relationship between Hitler and Stalin. They covered the relationship from the early 1930s through the second world war and up to the demise of Stalin in 1953 and pays particular attention to the pact of non-aggression made between the two men in 1939.The film is made up entirely of archive material. Blatt & Bild found many of the documents, images and film footage.
Most of the photographs, film footage and documents we found were colourised and brought to life with contemporary technologies.
The Nazis and the money
A film by Gil Rabier
In May 1940 Hitler's troops invaded Holland, Belgium and France.
Germany had limited financial resources, few raw materials, no oil and no foreign currency. So, with such a fragile economy, how did Hitler achieve his mission?
The film uses contemporary 3D animation and a combination of rarely seen archival material to illustrate how the Nazis succeeded in anchoring their racist and violent beliefs into all areas of German society and the economy. The film shows how they created an economic model based on robbery and mass murder and convinced the German nation that they were morally justified to rule Europe.
For the animation Blatt & Bild went to the Federal Archives. There we uncovered the original technical drawings of the German Tiger tanks and documents from various Ministries of the Reich, including the aviation, agriculture and finance departments.
We also found several original German
newspapers in which the headlines screamed of huge economic successes in
Europe. The successes they spoke about involved the mass exploitation of Soviet
prisoners of war and the forced labour of thousands of people from across
Europe. All are described with a shockingly cold administrative language.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-M1129-300 / Donath, Otto / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Dr. Carlo Gentile, University of Cologne
The massacres in occupied Italy (1943-1945) - How the perpetrators defended and rationalised their crimes.
For this project Blatt & Bild evaluated personnel documents and official files from the German police forces, the Waffen SS and the NSDAP membership files, at the former US - Berlin Document Centre (BDC).
German military hospitals in Belgium during the First World War
Yannick Van Lierde
The primary aim of this study was to identify individual soldiers, list their injuries and make a record of what eventually happened to them. The secondary purpose was to establish a record of everyday life in German military hospitals during the First World War.
For this project Blatt & Bild accessed and analysed the extensive hospital registers from the German military hospital in Geraardsbergen.
‘’Thanks again for your valuable help in this case‘‘.
Yannick Van Lierde
The soldiers from Reintal, Austria, who fell during the Second World War
Gerhard Wimmer
For this project we analysed the index cards of the Central Personal Index in the Bundesarchiv and were able to identify the ranks and units of individual soldiers. From there we were able to determine the location of and the cause of death.
"Thank you very much for your research, that is more than I hoped to find."
Gerhard Wimmer
German Historical Institute, Paris
This project produced an interactive, online map which shows the location of the German and French government offices throughout France during the German occupation.
For this project Blatt & Bild scoured the old German telephone directories and French administrative records. We compiled the database of information and photographs and helped develop the online search tool.
When Men Fell from the Sky
Prof. Claire Andrieu, Sciences Po
The aim was to find people who had witnessed German airmen bailing out of their planes and to establish how the population in various European countries reacted to German airmen landing in their territory.
Blatt & Bild helped with the research for this project at the former Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt). We also conducted an interview with the former German pilot, Joachim, who was shot down over London in 1944 and was subsequently held by the British as a prisoner of war.
Claire Andrieu: When Men Fell from the Sky. Civilians and Downed Airmen in Second World War Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2023.
© British Library, public domain
German and Australian combat units in the Battle of Crete - Adversaries or brothers in arms?
Richard Travers, Macquarie University, Sydney
The basis of this PhD thesis was to examine the social structure of the Luftwaffe's Paratrooper Regiment 2 and the Australian units that were involved in the battle at Rethymnon, on Crete in May 1941. It is a study of the low-ranking soldiers who were engaged, not a study of the battle itself.
The ultimate question is: were the men who fought at Rethymnon so different from one another, or were they quite similar?
Blatt & Bild scoured the reams of military service record books and dog-tag registers in the German Federal Archives, in Berlin and we were able to locate the required Wehrstammbücher.
Thanks, Corinna. I greatly appreciate the work you are doing.
Richard Travers
