The Reich Film Archive was founded in 1934 and existed up to the end of the “Third Reich”. It paved the way for the preservation of films, the safe storage of the highly-explosive film material of the time, and also initiated the international exchange of film archives (FIAF). During the Second World War, it was part of the Nazi war propaganda and the intended destination of so-called “booty films”. In order to protect it from air raids, parts of the archive were relocated in a salt mine near Helmstedt after 1943. Following the end of the war, its inventory was split between the film archives of the GDR and the FRG, which were then remerged after the reunification of Germany.