History of Tradition Biographical information Heinz Braun was born in 1927 as the son of Heinrich Braun and Barbara Braun, née Müller. At the age of ten the secondary school student Heinz Braun went to the Hitler Youth, at 15 he became a member of the fire brigade, at 16 he became an air force helper. He was drafted at the age of 17. After Heinz Braun had been deployed around Breslau in 1945, he spent a few weeks of rest with his comrades in a village near Prague. Finally, Heinz Braun was deployed on his way to Lake Balaton in mid-April 1945 in Vienna. While defending a crossroads, he and his comrades were taken prisoner of war in Russia. After a three-month stay in Vienna, they were taken to Stalingrad. He returned home from captivity in January 1950. With the help of the care of the returnees, he began training as an electrician, to which he joined the technician. In 1956 Heinz Braun married a young woman from Rottweil, with whom he has two sons. He took early retirement in 1985. After Mr. Braun had learned of the estate of Kugler, which had been published by the State Archive Sigmaringen, he donated a photo album with a collection of field postcards and some photographs to the archive in 2006 (access 2006/45). The vast majority of the field postcards his mother Barbara Braun, née Müller, had received from her brothers Jakob and Philipp during the First World War. Furthermore, in 2007 (access 2007/02), Mr Braun donated letters, personal documents and photographs from the first half of the 20th century to the Sigmaringen State Archives. In addition, Mr. Braun supplemented his past, in particular his stay in a prisoner of war camp in Stalingrad, as well as the past of his mother and his uncle Jakob Müller with personal notes and partially literarily worked up. The collection's focus is on 167 field postcards from the time of the First World War. They visualize the everyday life of soldiers as well as the effects of war. Used as a means of propaganda against their own population, they also illustrate the expansion of psychological warfare in the First World War. Within the newly created classification levels, the units of description were arranged chronologically. Postcards and photographs not to be dated are placed at the end of a classification group. Records, letters and personal documents of the estate giver were summarized in thematic units. Titles of postcards and photographs were made on the basis of text imprints. If no text imprints were available, the handwritten titles of the postcard owners were taken over in quotation marks. Own title formations or additions were made without quotation marks. In the case of postcards sent, the sender and recipient are also noted. The title shows place names in the spelling used on the postcards and photographs. Where today's official place names differ, they have been added in square brackets. The place names of that time, but also German names for foreign places can be understood in this way. The postcards are dated after the date of dispatch of the card. If the author of a postcard has dated his message to a date before the date of dispatch, both dates have been included. Information on publishers, photo studios, series and film numbering appear in the "Presignature 1" data field. In ScopeArchive the inventory was recorded and packaged under the guidance of Dr. Volker Trugen berger and Sibylle Brühl by intern Sarah Bongermino in July and August 2008. The inventory comprises 167 postcards, 15 photographs and 10 file units with a total volume of 0.4 linear metres of shelving. The citation of the inventory is as follows: N 1/85 T 1 No. [order number] Sigmaringen, August 2008 Sarah Bongermino The personal documents, photographs and maps (N1/85 T 1 No. 200-234) donated in the years 2008 (access 2008/56) and 2009 (access 2009/28 and 2009/37) were catalogued by Sibylle Brühl and the two interns Bernhard Homa and Anika Mester in September 2009 and included in the inventory. The collection comprises 167 postcards, 31 photographs, 19 file units and 5 cards with a total volume of 0.5 running metres of shelving. Sigmaringen, September 2009 Sibylle Brühl Content and evaluation Field postcards and photographs from the First World War; letters, personal documents, maps and photographs from the first half of the 20th century as well as records of the life stories of the estate giver and family members.
