Services
- You are looking for information on a particular submariner of an U-boat?
- You are researching for a publication or you work on family history?
- You need photographs or takes from films for private use or illustration?
- You are collecting special issue stamps depicting submarines or Naval/ Armed Forces Postal Service?
We can help you.
Since 1947, the German U-boat Museum foundation has been collecting all available information, photos and other material of German submarine history and evaluates them for objective historiography. It is a private institution and does not receive any public funding. In order to maintain and further expand this institution, the “Freundeskreis Traditionsarchiv Unterseeboote e.V.” (FTU), which was founded in 1992 receives and processes requests for the foundation for a fee. Please send your inquiries to the postal address or by e-mail to uboot-archiv-altenbruch@web.de .
In addition to an extensive library – currently about 6,000 volumes, mainly from estates and review copies of authors and publishers – with the entire literature published on submarines from 1906 to the present day, technical manuals, service regulations, construction plans, sea charts, logbooks, war diaries, lists and directories, the worlds most extensive special image archive on U-boats of both World Wars also maintained. In 2017, the picture archive contained around 183,000 historical photos, making it the most comprehensive specialist picture archive of submarines in the world. The average increase per year is about 500 photos. If you wish to order, please ask in advance whether the photos you require are available in our archive. The delivery takes place either as a paper copy in the size of your choice or digitally via internet or on USB-stick or CD.
Furthermore, information about different navies – from the Imperial German Navy (1906 to 1918) over the Kriegsmarine to the Federal German Navy (from 1957 to today) can be made available. At the same time, the archive has also become a contact point for many people interested in submarines, where one can also obtain information about their relatives, who served on U-boats, on the basis of the extensive documents available. This makes it a unique meeting place and memorial for all submariners worldwide. In this context, since the beginning of 2013 it has also been possible to conduct online searches for various documents and records within the Kriegsmarine and the Imperial German Navy.
Please refer to the list of fees for an overview of the purchase of documents, records, enquiries or any research costs.
In the field of motif stamps, there is a colourful and wide range of stamps, miniature sheets, booklets, first day covers, etc. worldwide whose motif is a submarine. Many of them are nice to look at, cheap or expensive, wrong or real. The same applies to mail transported on U-boats or originating from U-boat men. We can help you with questions and fall back on numerous originals, which are also available for viewing. Furthermore, we have extensive special literature and catologists, so that we can also help with tricky questions or let you take a look at them during a research.