Association Friends

The “Association of Friends of the Uboat Tradition Archive”, in short: FTU, was established as a result of emphatic desire by numerous visitors and friends of the “German U-boat-Museum Foundation” (formerly: Foundation Tradition Archive U-boat”), to give them some sort of home, where they could be member of and engage organized through hands-on work at the archive.

Today the association counts worldwide some 1.000 members with increasing tendency. About 80 % of those are between the age of 15 and 50. The majority are children, grandchildren and great grand children of former U-boat sailors, that want to contribute to the maintenance of this unique place of memories through their membership.

The members of the association considerably offload work from the Executive Board by their engagement and personal effort, as they work on inquiries, on the reproduction of photographic and written material, or independently deal with projects for the museum, such as designing and establishing IT software to file documents.

Membership and Donations

Full members of the association have committed themselves for 10 extra hours of voluntary work each year beyond the annual membership dues of 40,00 Euro as ruled by the Annual General Meeting. In case members are unable to meet this commitment, respective members are asked to donate 5,00 Euros extra as compensation per hour not carried out.

Fellow members may donate either on the archive´s special account IBAN DE 75 2415 0001 0000 1542 03, BIC: BRLADE21CUX, to be entitled to a receipt of a donation of 200,00 Euros or more for tax claims (under that amount a simple receipt will be sent). Or, when none of such receipts is required they may transfer their donation to the archive´s special account IBAN DE 97 2415 0001 0000 1541 95, BIC: BRLADE21CUX.

Since fellow member are not required for any voluntary work (also: no donation requested to compensate any non-compliance with the commitment for voluntary hours), their annual dues should not be less than 60,00 Euros per year.