Marburger Index / Gebrauchsanleitung

When started in 1976/77, the Marburger Index was initially intended to be a reference work and guide to the largest collection of art photographs in Germany, published using the medium microfiche. The concept of reproducing pictures in this way was new at the time, but proved to be a unique success as an art-history documentation. The original scope of the Marburger Index – the photographs of the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg and the Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln – was extended in 1984 to cover all art in Germany: All the photographs dealing with art and architecture available in Germany are published in it. Due to the political division of Germany, in the past it was not possible to access the extraordinarily valuable collections of art- historical photographs in existence in East Germany. This changed in 1991, however, with the filming of the `Deutsche Fotothek` (German Photo Library) in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek (State Library of Saxony) in Dresden as a supplement to the Marburger Index. In addition to the 320,000 historic images it contains, it also has around 100,000 more recent images that document the current state of art and architecture in East Germany.