The ZZF, located in Potsdam, Germany, was established in 1996 as the continuation of the Max Planck Society research program on Contemporary History, founded in 1992.
Its main operation was supported by the state of Brandenburg, with additional financial backing from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) for specific projects.
Since 2009 the ZZF is a member of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Community and therefore mainly funded to equal parts by the German Ministry of Education and Research and the Länder.
The emphasis is on production of scholarly papers and dissertations on the partition of Germany after world War II, the comparison of post-war dictatorial regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, and the history and transformation of European memory.
The centre also designed the website Ungarn1956.de (Hungary1956), on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 jointly with the “Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur” (Foundation for the Reconciliation of the SED Dictatorship) and the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin.