[Franek Grabowski]

Andreas
I am certain the EPA refferred to anything under the German copyright law. I do not remember the period but you may find EPAs in the internet. The problem is that EPAs were agreed among Allies but it was to legislation of each country to implement them into their law system, hence there might be some differencies between eg. British EPA and US EPA.
According to the law, yes, you are allowed to copy such novels, but you must be awared that there might be some smart guys who can pay more than you are able to some lawyers, to prove you have no right to do so. This is the trick with the copyrights, which are often claimed by big companies or agencies. You have the right but no money to execute it.
By the way, copyright for photos was not in mind when the law was applied. It mostly reffered to technical designs, research, etc., which are also subjects of protection.
Finally, I always understood that photo archive is an integral part of BAMA but only placed in another city. If I am wrong, then sorry.
It does not change the fact I am finding actions of the archive as well as of ECPA illegal in regard of access to the information. I can imagine there are archives it works much worser, but there are the ones it works much better. Still, I stand by my opinion, that we should write to European Commission and ask them to clear the general problem of access to European archives.