The German Consulate Fonds is a digital collection that was created in partnership with UBC Library Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC). It contains documents from various German Consulates in Canada, dating from 1909 to 1939.
The collection contains documents, reports, memoranda, and correspondences from German Consulates in Ottawa, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Items in the collection are useful source materials for research into the Canadian political and economic affairs of this time period. Export trade, currency exchange, customs regulations and information, trade agreements, boycotts, and important Canadian industries such as mining, automobile, broadcasting, and fishing are only some of the topics covered by this collection. Not to mention industrial espionage!
In 2010, the Vancouver German Consulate informed UBC Library that efforts were being made to repatriate all of the records removed from Germany Consulates during World War II. Before returning all physical items in the collection, UBC Library digitized the entirety of the German Consulate Fonds and has now made it available to the public.
Interested in checking out more of the records of the German Consulate? If so, access the fonds on the RBSC AtoM site and make sure to check back once it’s added to Open Collections. If you want just to take a glance at what items are in the collection, access the finding aid.