In many cities, there are discussions about changing street names because the people who gave them their names committed crimes in the past. If you would like to research a street name, you can do so in the Archivportal-D. Lothar-Irle-Straße existed in Siegen until 2023, since then the street has been called Am Breitenbach. The reason for the renaming was the Nazi past of the person who gave the street its name. You want to find out more about the person's past and search for the denazification files. To do this, search for ‘denazification’ and ‘Lothar Irle’ in the search slot on the homepage.
Suchergebnisseite im Archivportal-D für eine Suche nach „Entnazifizierung Lothar Irle“
Archivportal-D: What could your search in Archivportal-D look like?
29.04.2025
Here we use an example search to show you how you can search in Archive Portal-D. Our example is about street renaming - including a video.
More tipps on searching the archive portal
Suchergebnisseite im Archivportal-D für eine Suche nach „Entnazifizierung Lothar Irle“
The titles of the archive documents, also known as archive records, are shown in green at the top of the results page. Two hits were found for your search, as Lothar Irle lodged an objection to the categorisation he received in the denazification procedure.
Clicking on the title takes you to the so-called object page, where you will find all the data on the archive documents, such as the shelfmark, NW 1127, 1066. This shelfmark only appears once in the entire archive and helps archivists and users to quickly find what they are looking for. The Inventory field tells you where the archive documents are located in the tectonics, and the Provenance field tells you the context in which they were created. In our example, the denazification file comes from the Siegen Appeals Committee and was given to the archive for storage by the state's Ministry of Justice.
Tip: If a search for a person, court case or event does not yield any results, consider in which office/authority the type of document you are looking for was created and then search for this office/authority.
In our example, you can even view the complete file by clicking on the ‘DFG Viewer’ button. By clicking on the button, you can read the 89 double pages of the file directly online. If no digital copy is available, you can access the system of the relevant archive directly via the ‘Object at data partner’ button. There you can then order a digital copy or the original in the reading room of the archive on site. Have fun trying it out!
More tips on searching the archive portal