[4] For instance, Schickel wrote in 1980 that the number of six millions Jews killed in the Holocaust was "no longer advocated seriously today in contemporary historical science".
[2] Former GDR policeman Bernd Wagner [de] regarded the ZFI in 1994 as "one of the intellectual centers of far right historical revisionism in Germany".
However, the ZFI no longer features in the yearly reports of the intelligence service, that depict extremist and anti-constitutional activities.
[2][9] Some of the more active critics of the institution include the left-wing journalist Anton Maegerle, who published his portrait of the ZFI in 1996.
[11] Die ZFI also awards the Dr. Walter-Eckhardt-Ehrengabe für Zeitgeschichtsforschung ("Dr. Walter Eckhardt Honorary Gift for Contemporary Historical Research").