Friedensau Archives answers inquiries from all over the world every day

Every day he receives mail from Europe and other parts of the world: the director of the historical archives, Daniel Heinz. Mostly these inquiries are about specific dates, personalities, places and events that cause him, a doctor of church history, to dive into the depths of Adventist church history and give the inquirers meticulously researched answers. This may well be in English or Russian. Since 1997 Daniel Heinz has been director of the Historical Archives of European Adventist History in Friedensau. Today the Adventist World Church has two large historical archives of international importance: the Archives of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference in Silver Spring, MD (USA), and the archives at the Friedensau Adventist University, which is supported and financed by the Inter-European Division of Seventh-day Adventists (EUD, Berne). It is the first point of contact for the whole of Europe and for the fields of formerly served from Europe (Africa and Middle East) to collect information on the history of Adventist churches. In Europe there is no comparable supra-regional central Adventist organization like the Historical Archives in Friedensau. Both institutions are also unique in the world with their international and supranational orientation. The Historical Archives in Europe (founded in Hamburg in 1937, destroyed in a bombing raid in July 1943, reopened in Darmstadt in 1980, and located in Friedensau since 1997) is even older than the General Conference Archives in the USA, which was officially established in 1973. In South and Central America, Africa, and Asia, where Adventist churches are growing rapidly, there are so far no transnational Adventist central archives serving entire continents.

Daniel Heinz, M.A., Ph.D. (born 1957), studied Theology in Bogenhofen (Austria) and at Andrews University (USA). Since 1997 he has been Director of the Historical Archives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Europe and lecturer at the Friedensau Adventist University. He wrote numerous books on the history of the Free Churches ans Adventism such as: "Ludwig Richard Conradi. Missionar, Evangelist und Organisator der Siebenten-Tags-Adventisten in Europa". He participates in several committees, such as the working group "Evangelical Martyrs of the 20th Century" and the Research Section of the Russian Academy of Sciences on "Religious Pacifism and Victims of Stalinism".