The Auris-Archiv is a digital archive of historical private photography —
images from German family albums, curated and made available as
high-resolution reproductions for research, publication and education.
The Collection
The collection comprises around 255,000 private photographs from the
period 1900 to 1950 — including more than 5,600 color slides from 1938
to 1945 — as well as approximately 50 hours of historical film
recordings. It is supplemented by detailed war diaries, field-post
letters and personal documents.
The focus is on German history from the colonial era (1880–1910) through
the First World War to the end of the Second World War. Unlike
institutional archives, the Auris-Archiv preserves the perspective of
private actors: soldiers, families, travelers. To current knowledge it
is the largest private collection of its kind worldwide.
The collection was built up over decades by Reiner Moneth. Today, AURIS
MEDIA Verlag GmbH holds the cataloguing and exploitation rights and
continues the systematic digitization, scholarly classification and
public access.
The Founder
Marius Moneth (B.A., M.A.) is a historian, managing director of
AURIS MEDIA Verlag GmbH and responsible for building and operating the
Auris-Archiv. He combines historical-scholarly methodology with
technical implementation: from the source-critical classification of
historical image collections through the design of digital cataloguing
workflows to the implementation of AI-supported metadata pipelines.
His approach is methodologically conscious and source-critical: each
image is placed in its context of origin, described, and — where
possible — linked with further information about the unit, location and
historical situation. Depth of cataloguing before mass.
Technology & Workflow
The Auris-Archiv uses a hybrid approach combining traditional archival
work with modern automation. The three core stages of the workflow:
- Digitization & Extraction: Historical album pages are scanned,
individual photographs detected via computer-vision methods and
automatically cut out. - Metadata Generation: An AI-supported vision-language model
analyzes each image, generates structured metadata (title,
description, dating, location, context) and writes them back to a
central database. - Portal Delivery: Images and metadata are transferred
automatically into the WordPress portal — including gallery
creation, download management and access control.
This workflow enables scalable, quality-assured cataloguing of large
image collections at consistently high scholarly standards. It was
designed and implemented entirely by Marius Moneth.
Services
- Image research: Targeted searches in the collection for academic,
journalistic or private projects - High-resolution digitizations: Licensing and provision of
individual images or whole series - Membership: Access to the growing digital archive with regular
additions - AI & workflow consulting: Design and implementation of automation
solutions for archives, publishers and institutions
Contact
AURIS MEDIA Verlag GmbH
Brehmstraße 8
42897 Remscheid
Germany
Email: info@auris-verlag.de
Phone: +49 173 2103331
Commercial Register: District Court Wuppertal, HRB 26757
VAT ID: DE119371114
Managing Directors: Marius Moneth, Tatiana Moneth