Description: Heinrich Billstein, former deputy, last resident at Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 101. 2.5 hundredweight books, 3 albums and 19 files from the daughter Mariette Becker and her husband were handed over to the Historical Archive on 13.03.1974. IntroductionWith this publication, a collection is made accessible which, due to its poor state of development, had previously only been available to a limited number of users. The documents possess only to a limited extent the characteristics of a genuine hand-file collection; rather, their structure also makes them closely related to collections and documentations. BiographischesHeinrich Billstein was born on 23 January 1883 in Cologne. His father Michael Billstein was a brewer and innkeeper; he belonged to the Centre Party and was a member of the City Council from 1894 to 1905. Shortly after his re-election in November 1905, he died on 21 December. He represented the interests of the commercial middle class in the centre faction and was a not unimportant member for the Catholic party, through which it gained access to the important clientele of brewers and innkeepers, a social group belonging to the 2nd electoral class. Heinrich Billstein completed his legal studies in Freiburg, Münster and Bonn in 1902 after obtaining his Abitur at the Städtisches Gymnasium Kreuzgasse, passed the 1st state examination in 1905 and the 2nd in 1911, both with the grade "good" by the way. In the meantime he had received his doctorate in Leipzig in 1908. After temporary employment as a court assessor and assistant judge at the criminal and civil chambers of the Regional Court of Cologne, he joined the administrative service of the City of Cologne as a city assessor on 12 June 1912: He was appointed to the tax department to relieve the First Deputy Konrad Adenauer. In this function Billstein succeeded Paul Berndorff, who was elected deputy a few days later. Both belonged to the Centre Party, which since its stable majority in 1908 had sought to replenish the higher administrative apparatus with its party supporters and to eliminate the disadvantage created by decades of liberal supremacy. On 12 June 1914 Billstein was elected as a deputy; but before the election confirmation from Berlin arrived on 13 August and the planned inauguration could take place on 3 September, he had already been drafted for military service. After being discharged from military service on 4 November 1918 - Billstein was last captain of the reserve and battery leader in an artillery battalion - he took up his administrative duties three days later, on 7 November 1918; in the following period he managed various departments. He was re-elected on 20 May 1926 at the end of his twelve-year term of office. On 18 June 1933, the National Socialists removed him from office. After the end of the Second World War, the 62-year-old Billstein refused, for health reasons, to comply with the request to return to the administrative service. Persecutions and harassment by the local NSDAP local group, especially in the last days of March 1945, had so physically afflicted him that he was not in a position to participate in the community's new beginning and reconstruction. He died on 28 June 1956 in Cologne. Billstein had been married to Frieda nee Eigel since March 6, 1909; two children resulted from this marriage.administrative activities and scope of businessAccording to the business distribution plan of 1914, Billstein was to assume responsibility for all taxes (departments 5, 6 and 7 at that time) with the commencement of his assistant activities, continue to supervise the Cologne Association for Further Education in Law and Political Science, control the compensation of school, poor and police costs with the neighbouring communities, and supervise the management of the City School Register Office. With his return from the war he was given a large part of the war economy, i.e. the deficiency management that was organised during the First World War and took on an ever larger business volume in order to be gradually dismantled after the war and in accordance with the requirements of the Reich. While Heinrich Schäfer (SPD) organized the food management and supply, Billstein's activities extended to the clothing department, the coal office, the price inspection office, the brand headquarters, the economic department, the substitute means office and the police inspectorates set up for monitoring purposes. Finally, with the supervision of the city committee and the registry office, he was given responsibility for two classic administrative fields. These areas of responsibility were completely changed as early as 1921: Billstein now has powers over Office 12 - Police (Building, Road and Construction Police), Office 2 (Vehicle Fleet, Street Cleaning, Waste Collection and Fire Extinguishing), Department 14 (Trade, Commerce, Chamber of Commerce, Crafts and Guilds, Commercial Court, Commercial Court, Local Sewing Committee) and Office 26 (Commercial and Commercial Training Schools, Commercial Schools, Vocational Private Schools). Two years later his business circle changed again completely. Instead of the previous tasks in the area of promoting trade and commerce, Billstein was now entrusted with the supervision of social administration, such as welfare administration, especially welfare institutions and institutions, orphan and youth welfare. In addition, there was the supervision of youth care and the promotion of physical exercises, the supervision of sports clubs and the organisation of sports events. Billstein was to keep this area as a department until the end of his service; so he was also remembered for this decade from 1923 to 1933 as the city's sports department head. Furthermore, he again took over the supervision of the City Committee and the responsibility for the Cologne Association for Further Education in Law and Political Science, which had already been assigned to him in 1914. While he lost the City Committee again in 1926, the training facility for civil servants remained in place until he was dismissed. 1926 was another year in which a deep cut was made. Billstein lost the competence for the welfare and youth care, received again for some years (until 1931) the police supervision, then the competence for the management of the city halls and economies, here particularly the Gürzenich, and the allotment garden administration. Five years later, in 1931, Billstein undertook the last far-reaching reorganization of his business. He relinquished his authority over the police, the management of the city halls and the allotment gardens, and in return was supervised by the economic department, i.e. the tasks he had already temporarily performed in 1921 to promote trade and industry. In addition, responsibility was assumed for the ports and shipyards, the hydraulic engineering department and aviation matters with Butzweiler Hof Airport. With these fields of activity, he inherited the deputy August Haas (SPD), who had taken up his new post in Kassel in 1930 as chief president of Hessen-Nassau. With these responsibilities, Billstein was given the position of Head of Economic Affairs for the remaining two years. The constant changes in business organisation and distribution, as was typical for Adenauer's time as Lord Mayor, and the unstable responsibilities are reflected in the structure and content of the papers and documentary documents left by Billstein. They are sporadically enriched with documents that arose during the representation for absent co-ordinates. However, since the system of representation was not rigid, but constantly changed, documents from almost all administrative areas were preserved, such as the administration of health care and hospitals (deputies Peter Krautwig and Karl Coerper, both centres), culture (deputies Johann Meerfeld, SPD), the department business of economy, traffic and broadcasting (deputies August Haas, SPD) and the social administration, gardens and baths as well as the slaughterhouse (deputies Johannes Bergmann, centre).Structure of the documentsThe content of the inventory comprises approx. 30
us administrative processes, including extracts from the minutes of the meetings of the Administrative Conference, from internal processes of the offices and services subordinated to Billstein; financial matters in particular, including the questions of the structure of income and expenditure of these administrative bodies, the budget and the constraints on savings, then processes relating to personal data such as promotions, documents relating to the meetings of the City Assembly, so many reprints, often with attachments to the agendas, and to the various committees. Most of the present material is not original in nature, but consists to a large extent of copies and reprints, some of which Billstein used as memorial and memorial aids; occasionally, discussion notes are also preserved. To a limited extent, the collection also includes letters and reports by Billstein, also in typewritten form after dictation, as well as invitation and thank-you letters. The scope of Billstein's elaborations and concepts for speeches at receptions, conferences and club anniversaries is not insignificant, and newspaper articles make up a considerable part of the documents. Billstein had an anteroom officer in his department office cut out articles from newspapers he had previously marked with a cross. This collection of articles only considers the Kölner Zeitungen, namely the Kölnische Zeitung with its local edition, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the Kölnische Volkszeitung with the Kölner Lokal-Anzeiger, the Rheinischer Beobachter as temporary successor of the Lokal Anzeiger, the Kölner Tageblatt, the Rheinische Zeitung and the Socialist Republic. According to a report dated 24 May 1929 (see No. A 678. BI. 227), the Rheinische Zeitung, the Kölner Stadtanzeiger and the Sozialistische Republik became official, while the Kölnische Volkszeitung and the Lokalanzeiger were purchased privately by Billstein. The other editions are not reported. Then the material filled at that time "3 medium-sized cabinets". It covered all areas of local government and dates back to the war and pre-war period. Only with regard to the war economy and food supply were articles, mostly in hektographed form, from economic services, so-called economic daily reports, consulted in addition to newspapers, and the content of the newspaper articles was predominantly based on local Cologne topics. Only in the great issues of the time, such as the reparations negotiations, the elections, the resignations and new formations of Reich Cabinets, then especially the economic crisis and the financial and budget crisis of the Reich, the Länder and the municipalities, did one go beyond local references and collect articles with supralocal, partly regional, partly national themes; but here, too, almost exclusively articles from newspapers of Cologne provenance were taken into account. The reference to the offices and agencies administered by Billstein is sometimes quite far-reaching. On the other hand, issues such as weather and climate, which appear to be remote, are more closely intertwined with Billstein's tasks, for example with regard to his responsibility for measures against the Rhine flooding and for the settlement of flood damage. Billstein apparently took over some of these documents from his predecessor in this administrative area, the deputy Hermann Best (liberal). In the context of the administrative reorganisation of 31 January 1928, which summarised the entire public relations work in a press and advertising department at the newly established Transport and Economic Office, and in connection with the press and the increased interest of the administration, especially Konrad Adenauer, in press and newspaper issues, a press and newspaper archive was set up. An exact date is not known; the archive seems to have fully developed its activity in a gradual process in 1930/1931. (See organisational decree of 31 January 1928. in: Administrative Gazette of the City of Cologne. Vol. 5 (1928). No. 5; Administrative Report of the City of Cologne 1929/30 (Cologne 1930). P. 56: cf. 1930/31 (Cologne 1931). S.39 f, pp. 1931/32 (Cologne 1932). p. 39f.) In this context of the reorganization of the administration and the efforts to simplify business, the office director August Lentzen of the Departmental Office Billstein in the above-mentioned report of May 1929 recommended the submission of the documents to the new archive. In his report, he also referred to the newspaper archive of the Fair and Exhibition Office, which would have to be combined with the new press archive. (According to the administrative report 1930/31 (Cologne 1931), p. 39, this newspaper archive was here called "Literarische Abteilung-genannt, aufgelös und deren Aufgaben von der Presse- und Werbeabteilung übernommen) He also mentions the excerpts already "collected before the war in an exemplary way by the University and City Library". By bringing together the various collections of articles, Lentzen explained, the material could be used by the entire administration. In order to deliver the documents of the Billstein department office, an antechamber officer has now drawn up a list of about 380 files by topic and duration. By the end of 1929 these files had not yet been handed over. (See No. A 678: The negotiations end with the note (BI. 228 v) of 30 October 1929 that Miss Volk would probably "take over the collection for the archives of the Lord Mayor"; she wanted to discuss the matter further with Billstein, but did not know about the tent where the archives should be accommodated. Accordingly, the press archive had not yet been set up at that time.) They were, however, handed over in any case; for many of the files existing in the Billstein holdings are preceded by a form on which the delivery to "the newspaper archive to be newly established at A 1" was noted with the name of the corresponding predecessor file as well as the subject and the duration. (E.g. file concerning coal supply 21.12. 1920 --21.8.1922: No. A 521; affairs of A 2 19.6.1920 - 5.3.1925: No. A 536; dismantling of war economy enterprises and forced economy 8.7.1920 - 11.7.1921: No. A 531; identity card affairs, welfare office for expellees 20.3.1923 - 27.3.1925: No. A 491; war-affected persons welfare, war survivors welfare 12.3.1923 - 12.3.1925: No. A 492; Verein für Volkswohl, Volksküche 18.5.1923 - 14.12.1923: No. A 524. Afterwards the files were probably handed over via A 1 (Organisation- und Personalamt. Department Dr. Berndorff) to the newspaper and press archive which was in the process of being founded.) These files, which can be clearly determined from the list attached to the report, coincide with the documents of the present collection with regard to the subject matter and extend from 1919 to approx. 1922 - 1923 in individual cases, such as series up to 1929. Such series were present above all in the area of war economy and food management (coal supply, fight against traffickers and usury, food supply such as fruit and vegetables), can also be proven in files of classical administrative action (city council with eleven volumes, police inspection, municipal railways, statistics, civil servant pay, welfare, housing affairs). However, they were also created for processes that do not directly affect local self-government, but are nevertheless not insignificant for the municipality, such as individual parties such as the Centre, the KPD and the SPD, or negotiations concerning reparations. In addition to the series, the list also included individual files on all questions of the Cologne city administration, including trade unions, associations, trade and commerce, the economy and transport. All files handed over to the administrative archive at that time are no longer available and must be regarded as a loss during the war. With today's lack of municipal administrative files and documentation from these years of the Weimar Republic, the loss of tradition is very much to be lamented. The surviving holdings, catalogued in this publication, were transferred to the archive in 1938 by the Assistant Heringhaus, as he informed his colleague, the Head of the Department of Culture, Ludwig, on 7 July (cf. Best. 8900 (Alte Repertorien), A 164). He instructed Billstein to keep the "approximately 500 hand-files" he had collected there until they could be used in the preparation of a planned chronicle of the city of Cologne and until a suitable office had been appointed to manage the chronicle of the city of Cologne. a few files and documents for professional training as well as a larger batch of books and magazines were handed over to the archive in 1974 by Billstein's daughter, Marietta Becker. The scarcely 20 files were integrated into the existence. until into the eighties the existence was registered only to the half and also only by a keyword-like file subject without running times according to list. As part of the investigation of sources on the history of National Socialism in Cologne, Friedrich Kröhnke and Werner Jung, as staff members of the former NS Documentation Centre, the NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne, which had become independent a few years ago, sifted through all files on Nazi issues, including those not yet recorded in the titles. The previously unrecorded files with the short meetings and durations noted on the file covers were recorded in the form of a card. In the following years, attempts were made to make the files more accessible by student assistants, to specify the subjects by more extensive titles and to make them accessible by more detailed notes on content, and also to structure the result of the indexing for the first time. A finding aid book planned at that time had to be postponed after first attempts, since the result was completely unsatisfactory. Finally nothing helped more than to undertake the entire inventory again and to sight sheet by sheet. Since the files are usually organized after commercial filing, the listing follows this order and names the file contents after the chronological sequence, thus depending upon case beginning with the last sheet of the file. With regard to the indexing of the contents of the individual file units, first the actual file processes are named, then the newspaper articles are listed, and finally the official and other printed matters are mentioned. In order to make the character of the individual files easier for the user to recognize, they were marked with the abbreviations A (mainly file processes), Z (mainly newspaper articles), M (mixed form). (This identifier was transferred to the comments field during the retroconversion of the holdings.)Source value of the reference files Due to the high war losses, the once existing serial character of the holdings has not been preserved. Thus the traditional picture now gives a fragmentary, somewhat incoherent impression. Thus, the hand file collection is of very limited informative value for in-depth structural investigations of Cologne's urban and administrative history. Its value lies rather in the multitude of persons, events, associations, events and administrative processes mentioned, which are often only occasionally documented and can hardly be followed in their genesis and further development. In view of the great loss that the City of Cologne suffered in its administrative documents, collections and documentations as a result of the war destruction, the collection has a certain significance for the history of the city and its citizens during the Weimar Republic. Whether the object was worthy of this intensive treatment, that can ultimately only decide the user. The finding aid was created by Dr. Everhard Kleinertz.references: Kleinertz, Everhard: Handakten Heinrich Billsteins (Mitteilungen aus dem Stadtarchiv von Köln, vol. 90), Cologne 2000.
