Bundesarchiv Material in Public Domain

[Franek Grabowski]

Andreas, Joerg
You have entirely missed the point. I am not demanding everything for free policy (although it is introduced here and there), but I demand access, understanding of copyright and reasonable prices.
You can visit eg. AWM, IWM or NARA archives and you can order whatever photo is there, and only then if you want to publish it, to pay a fee. In ECPA or BA you CANNOT order a photo for personal use. More, copyright is claimed without any rights to it and the fees are excessive comparing to other similar archives.
In several cases, photos held at BA or ECPA are the only ones of the subject. Eg. bulk of photos of Helmut Wick's aircraft come from PK series and one can count privately taken ones on a hand. Thus if I want to publish anything on the subject I must use photos from the archives. I was able to secure scans or prints of the very same photos coming from other sources, but often with a worser quality or with quite a bit of effort. If I had the possibility of acquiring them in an archive at a reasonable cost, it would save me plenty of time for other research, etc.
Andreas, certainly your government should be condemned for destroying the historical material, but I may assure you that destroying original negatives is as much stupid, and I may assure you that within a few years most of the Lw documents will disintegrate. At the moment, plenty of WWI records are dissapearing due to paper's self destruction.
Joerg
1. No, it is not.
2. Nobody is asking for anything for free, but respecting the law.
3. Every government is obliged to preserve archives and make them accessible. It is noted even in the EU law.
Summarising, BA cannot claim copyright for copyrightless material, and cannot limit access to the material stored to individuals. Here is the point. I do not mention that BA holds thousands of negatives created out of Germany, thus belonging to the heritage of respective countries.