Researchers publish BZKO ontology for German post-war archives
New BZKO ontology enables semantic search of 200K+ WWII compensation records
Researchers have introduced BZKO, an ontology designed for the Central Federal Card Index (Bundeszentralkartei), a key German archival resource documenting compensation claims submitted by victims of National Socialist persecution and their relatives within the Wiedergutmachung process. BZKO uses a two-layer approach that separates domain semantics from interoperability-focused extensions, combining BFO-based realism with archival standards such as RiC-O, PROV-O, and PiCo. The goal is to enable provenance-preserving semantic integration and reuse across digital humanities infrastructures, while laying groundwork for future knowledge graph generation.
- BZKO is a two-layer ontology combining BFO realism with RiC-O, PROV-O, and PiCo standards for semantic integration
- The ontology enables provenance-preserving integration of Germany's 200,000+ post-WWII compensation records into digital humanities infrastructures
- Published by researchers from the Hasso Plattner Institute and accepted to FOIS 2026 Ontology Showcase
Why It Matters
Enables semantic search and integration of historical WWII compensation records, preserving provenance for future digital humanities research