DOI: 10.7910/dvn/sq8dvx
title: Machine-Readable Nazi Biograms originally collected by Theodore Abel

description: In 1934, Theodore Abel distributed the following announcement to all local headquarters of the National Socialist party (NSDAP): “400 Marks in Prizes for the Best Personal Life History of an Adherent of the Hitler Movement. Any person, regardless of sex or age, who was a member of the National Socialist party before January 1, 1933, or who was in sympathy with the movement, may participate in this contest. Contestants are to give accurate and detailed descriptions of their personal lives, particularly after the World War. Special attention should be given to accounts of family life, education, economic conditions, membership in associations, participation in the Hitler movement, and important experiences, thoughts, and feelings about events and ideas of the post-war period. (…) The contestants whose contributions are published in part or in full will receive an additional honorarium of two marks per printed page. Manuscripts will not be returned, and must be submitted on or before September 1934” (Abel 1986:3). 
In total, Abel received 683 life histories (biogram), forwarded to him by the Reichspropagandaministerium in Berlin. 584 of the 683 are digitally archived by the Hoover Institute. From those 584, we converted 579 to machine-readable format. The discrepancy in the number of biograms is due to archiving errors.

This data package has two components: 
First, it provides .rtf files for 579 Nazi biograms collected by Theodore Abel in 1930s. 
348 (~ 60 percent) of the biograms were type-written; the remaining biograms were hand-written. The type-written biograms were automatically converted to .rtf using the ABBYY FineReader 14 software. Every file was then corrected manually for unreadable portions, hand-written insertions, text deletions by the author or other conversion issues. The hand-written biograms were all converted manually by reading every letter and retyping it in an .rtf file. 
Second, a dataset collecting “meta information” on the biograms. We followed much of what was provided by Abel in terms of “demographic” characteristics of the biogram’s authors. In addition, we include information on whether the original letter was hand-written and how many words are missing and/or unreadable. Finally, the last column in the dataset includes a unique letter ID corresponding to the letters ID on the Hoover Institute website. Users will need this ID to match individual letters to this dataset. In total, the dataset contains the following information: Last name, first name, sex, date of birth, place of birth, place of residence, number of location changes, educational attainment, occupation by training, current occupation, occupation father, parental political attitudes, number of siblings, current employment status, every unemployed after 1929, ever changed occupation, ever changed place of work, marital status, denomination, NSDAP member number, year of becoming member, party/association membership before joining the NSDAP, first contact with the NSDAP, employment status at the time of joining the party, WW1 veteran, WW1 casualty, participated in military activity after the WW1, hand-written letter, number of missing words, unique letter ID.