The Archives of the Max Planck Society in Berlin-Dahlem were established in 1975 in order to safeguard the files of the Kaiser Wilhelm / Max Planck Societies for the Advancement of Science (mainly files, photographs, audio records and film) in one central place and to make them accessible to users (currently approx. 4 kilometres of shelf space). 

Our collection focuses on the personal papers of outstanding personalities who conducted research at either the Kaiser Wilhelm Society or the Max Planck Society. These include Nobel laureates Carl Bosch, Walther Bothe, Adolf Butenandt, Paul J. Crutzen, Peter Debye, Gerhard Ertl, Fritz Haber, Otto Hahn, Georges Köhler, Richard Kuhn, Max von Laue, Feodor Lynen, Ernst Ruska, Bert Sakmann, and Otto Warburg, supplemented by collections on Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber and Max Planck, among others.

In addition, the library of the Archives is collecting scholarly literature on the general history of science of the 20th century (more than 40,100 volumes, 150 subscriptions to journals, literature without clearly identifiable authors, and approx. 20,000 special editions).

The Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich serves as an external branch of the Archives. 

Further information about the archive can be found under these headings: