German Dance Archive & Dance Museum

The institution continuously acquires, curates and catalogues the estates and documents of significant figures in dance history, making them accessible through exhibitions and publications. The archive alone holds more than 600 personal collections, a photo archive of over 160,000 images, and a press-clippings file of around 650,000 items alongside roughly 25,000 programmes. The library's reference collection (as of 2023) numbers some 13,000 titles, including rare volumes dating back to the 16th century.

The institution's roots reach back to 1873, when the Berlin Academy of Dance Teaching established Germany's first library and archive dedicated to the systematic documentation of dance. Fritz Böhme continued this legacy in the 1930s under the name Deutsches Tanzarchiv. On the night of 2 March 1943 the archive was destroyed in a British air raid; a rebuilt collection subsequently disappeared after being relocated to Burg Seeberg. After 1945, Kurt Peters undertook a personal reconstruction effort – first in Hamburg, then from 1965 in Cologne. In 1985 the holdings passed to the SK Stiftung Kultur, which has since made them publicly accessible in partnership with the city's cultural office.