(e,e'c) coincidence experiments at a momentum transfer of q=0.27 fm -I to study the decay of the giant dipole resonance in ss'soNi and S4Zn show deviations from photonuclear results and reveal strong contributions of direct decay to proton hole states.Since the discovery of the giant dipole resonance (GDR) photonuclear reactions have been the primary tool to study this collective E1 excitation in the nuclear continuum. The knowledge of its decay properties is still rather limited. Whereas in the (7,n)-rcaction thick targets may compensate for the low luminosity of monocnergetic photon beams, the information about charged decay channels obtained with continuous bremsstrahlung is impaired by the systematic errors intrinsic in this technique. Furthermore, very little is known about the final states populated by the decaying GDR. This knowledge is essential in order to distinguish statistical from dlrect decay, where the directly populated states reflect the microscopic structure of the collective mode. Electron scattering at low momentum transfer offers another fairly selective way for E1 excitation and the recent advent of cw electron accelerators has made possible the observation of their decay in coincidence experiments. Here we present (e,e'c) coincldence experiments concerned with the charged particle decay (c=p,a) of GDRs in medium heavy nuclei, comparing the semi-magic isotopes 5s's~ to the open shell nucleus S4Zn. So far the direct decay of the GDR in these nuclei has not been studied experimentally -as for the giant quadrupole resonance the situation is controversial [1,21. In order to keep the momentum transfer as low as q=0.27 fm -I, the cw electron beam of the Mainz microtron MAMI A was used with the reduced energy 137.2 MeV (current ~ 15 #A). Scattered electrons corresponding to excitation energies of E==8-25 MeV for ssNi and 12-25 MeV for S~ and 64Zn were measured at 23 ~ by the Mainz 180 ~ magnetic spectrometer with an energy resolution of < 10 -5. Charged decay products were detected in coincidence by six AE-E semiconductor telescopes (75 #m + 1500 #m, 16 msr), covering the angular range of 10~ Oc _< 210 ~ in 10~ relative to the q-axis at an azimuthal angle q%=45 ~ with respect to the scattering plane. An energy resolution of 300 keV was achieved for protons.The following discussion is based on measured (e,e'c) spectra, which have been 47r-integrated over | and iI%, assuming axial symmetry about the q-axis due to the dominance of longitudinal virtual photon polarization. Electron spectra taken in coincidence with protons and aparticles are shown in Fig.1 for all targets. Due to the coincidence condition, the elastic radiative background that dominates inclusive electron spectra is no longer present. An extrapolation from S4Zn(e,e'c) experiments at higher momentum transfers [3] leads to contributions of E2/E0 modes not exceeding 17% in the proton decay channd. They are stronger in the a-channel, but the (e,e'a) cross sections are generally small compared to the (e,e'p) yield and shall not be...