Collection of Newspaper Clippings - Trend/Profil-Archive

^{by Albert Müller}

When the editorial staff of profil moved from the Kurier building to their new premises in Vienna's third district, the so-called Trend-profil archive was planned to be disposed of. Responsible employees contacted the Department of Contemporary History to inquire whether there would be interest in taking over and preserving these materials. The Austrian Society for Contemporary History then sought and found a way to transport the extensive archive to the Department of Contemporary History.

The Trend-Profil-Archiv was re-established in accordance with the original organisational principles and is relatively easy to use.

The Trend-Profil-Archiv is not an archive in the archival sense, but consists of materials systematically collected by the documentation department of the trend-profil publishing house. These are mainly newspaper clippings.

The collection is relatively clearly organised: alphabetical folders on the one hand, and chronological collections on the other.

The documentation department, which at times employed five people, has existed since 1970 and has become increasingly less important since the mid-1990s, when electronic media were increasingly used. Nevertheless, the archive was used internally until recently.

The collection is almost complete. Only rarely are there borrowing slips issued by the journalistic staff for resolved and non-returned folders, which provide an indication of minor losses.

For the period from around 1970 to around 1995, the trend profile archive offers excellent material for Austrian history in all its facets, as well as for European history and the history of the Middle East.

To avoid any misunderstandings, it should be noted that the collection does not contain any documents that came about as a result of research from the journalistic work of the two magazines.

In 2023, the Trend/Profil archive was handed over by the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Zeitgeschichte to the University of Vienna (Department of Contemporary History).