Historical Responsibility

The Corporate History Department organises a variety of activities connected with the history of the Volkswagen Group’s various facilities and is the point of contact for all questions raised by people within and outside Volkswagen concerning the history of the company and its products.

Corporate archive
The corporate archive is, as it were, the collective memory of Volkswagen AG. Documents such as files, photos, films, drawings, publications and advertising material are stored in the archive in analogue and digital form and made available to users within and outside the Group. The documents collected by the company are supplemented by interviews with contemporary witnesses.

The archive lays the foundations for seeing today’s events as tomorrow’s history and ensuring that the company is able to provide information on its history in the future. The archives of Group companies are linked within a network operated by the Corporate History Department, tapping synergy effects and ensuring a unified approach. In this context, the archive plays a key role in knowledge management.

Historical sites and places of remembrance
Three history workshops at the Kassel and Braunschweig plants as well as at Volkswagen Financial Services AG reinforce the identity and heighten the historical awareness of employees and ensure that the company’s history is remembered.

A site which bears living witness to the company’s history and informs visitors about the injustices of the past is the “Place of Remembrance of Forced Labour in the Volkswagen Factory”. The Place of Remembrance, inaugurated on 17 December 1999 in the presence of former forced labourers, features documents, photos, statements by witnesses and exhibits loaned by victims which highlight the structure and extent of historical human rights violations.

Humanitarian Fund
Against the backdrop of its historical responsibility, the Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft Humanitarian Fund has provided individual assistance to former forced labourers since 1998. To date, some 2,149 victims have received payments from the fund. Since the outset, the company has been part of the German Economy Foundation Initiative, which provided half the funds required for the Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future Foundation, established by law in the year 2000. All in all, some 1.66 million former forced labourers and other victims of National Socialism in almost 100 countries have now received final compensation payments.

In 1991, Volkswagen AG already donated DM 12 million for social activities and campaigns promoting international understanding. Apart from social projects in the home countries of forced labour victims, these funds were mainly used to support projects with young people, especially German-Polish exchange programmes.

Publications
The Corporate History Department publishes two scientifically based series: “Historical Notes” and “Forschungen, Positionen, Dokumente” (FPD) covering various aspects of the history of the company; the Volkswagen Chronicle, which is updated annually, is also published in “Historical Notes”.

In addition, the history of the automobile industry is brought to life by individual publications on specific vehicle models, articles in the employee magazine “autogramm” and a lecture series.