Mann Papers – F.A. Mann

“The corpus contains several thousand letters to professional colleagues, scholars and others, concentrated in England and Germany but across the world. The archive, which comprises about 30 boxes of documents, shows that the kind of contribution that Francis Mann made to two legal systems requires not only talent and effort, but also a fastidious sense of order: Each copy of his own letters – whether sent on his initiative or in response – is conscientiously enclosed in a thematically and alphabetically organised binder with those of the relevant correspondent.”

Gerhard Dannemann and Christian Waldhoff, “Zwischen London und Berlin: Nachlass von Dr. Francis Mann der Humboldt-Universität geschenkt”.

The Mann Papers are an archive of documents from the estate of F.A. Mann now in the custody of the Humboldt-Universität of Berlin. The documents – mainly letters – offer a glimpse into the legal world of the mid-20th century and into the diaspora of German-Jewish jurists in English-speaking countries.

The project will exploit the archive more fully to gain an understanding of Mann’s impact on the development of the law, and, on this basis, to gain new perspectives on current legal problems.

The documents were bequeathed to the Humboldt-Universität by F.A. Mann’s daughter in law, Anne Kriken Mann, and his former firm, Herbert Smith Freehills. With the generous support of Anne Kriken Mann, the documents have been digitised and, under a previous grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), an initial assessment of their contents was made by Professor Gerhard Dannemann. On this basis, the DFG has made a substantial grant to the project for further exploration over three years.

12.000+ Documents

The archive contains over 12.000 documents, predominantly letters, from Mann’s estate.

500+ Correspondents

Mann corresponded with a global network of actors, including many notable in their respective fields.

Around the World

Mann’s network spanned the globe.

Digitised

The Mann Papers have been digitised as PDFs organised by correspondent and/or theme.

Available Online

The Mann Nachlass is available online as a Media Repository.

This peek inside the Mann Papers is given with the kind permission of the estate of Lord Roskill.

Access the Mann papers

Project members with login details can access the Mann Papers here.

For legal reasons, access is allowed for scholarly use only, subject to an agreement on data protection, and in conformity with standards of good academic practice.

If you are not a member of the project, but would like to get involved, please contract us to discuss your planned research.

TO THE PROJECT MEDIA REPOSITORY