Welcome to the European HIV/AIDS Archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin!

The European HIV/AIDS Archive opens a space to preserve memories of living with HIV/AIDS, civil society engagements and AIDS policies in Europe, to share stories and to learn from a variety of voices and experiences. At the heart of the collection are oral history interviews on the history and present of individual, social and political engagements with HIV/AIDS. Oral histories enable a lively and multi-perspective memory. The archive is intended to complement and expand upon the existing HIV/AIDS collections that already exist in different European countries. The collection includes interviews with people living with HIV/AIDS, activists, employees and volunteers of aid and health sectors, politicians, and artists on topics such as sex work, drugs, migration, prisons, LGBTI rights and queer politics. These interviews are supplemented with lists of art works and political documents.  

EHAA entries can be searched with the support of meta-data. Some interviews are freely accessible online, and others can be viewed for research and educational purposes upon request at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum library.  

The oral history archive initiative dates back to the “AIDS History into Museums Working Group” (Arbeitskreis AIDS-Geschichte ins Museum) of the “German AIDS Service Organization” (Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe e.V.). The idea was further developed in two research projects at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Institute for European Ethnology in cooperation with AKAIM: “Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies: Activism, Citizenship and Health” (EUROPACH, funded by HERA) and “‘Don’t criminalize Passion!’ The AIDS crisis and political mobilization in the 1980s and early 1990s in Germany” (funded by the German Research Foundation). Planned is also to include additional oral history interviews into the EHAA that concern HIV/AIDS in other contexts. If you would like to contribute interviews or other documents to the EHAA, please contact the collection head, Prof. Beate Binder.

The EHAA is part of the Institute for European Ethnology’s Archive for Alternative Culture and thus belongs to the collections of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. It is currently under construction. The first collections – interviews conducted by EUROPACH – are accessible since September 2019.

Contact: ehaa.euroethno[at]hu-berlin.de