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The history of traditionThe history of tradition as well as the original structure of the estate of Herbert Frank could be derived from the isolated traces of this structure, be it references in Frank's correspondence, portfolio inscriptions and contents or also archive directories, and on the other hand from information provided by Frank's daughters, by Hermann Weiß, staff member of the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ), and by the German historian Herbert Frank. By 1929, Herbert Frank's political and private activities had accumulated a small, unsystematically selected basic stock of documents. Correspondence, as in the following years, formed the largest part of Frank's work, since Frank sought contact almost daily with his father, Fritz Frank, and acquaintances from the respective political environment, later also with Ludendorff. In 1929, Frank took over small parts of the files of his office in his private archives as head of the West German Tannenberg Association, in order to familiarize himself with his management activities. In the following years, he successively collected correspondence, propaganda materials, excerpts and general administrative documents from his official activities as well as newspaper articles and materials on specific topics from politics, business and culture in his own collection, which is to be called the "newspaper collection" in the following. This collection was predominantly based on an unsystematic and sporadic newspaper evaluation during the years 1930-1932.1932 Frank transferred parts of the documents of his editor activity at the Tecklenburger "Landboten" and as Gauleiter of the Osnabrück "Tannenbergbund" to his archive. Similarly, between 1933 and 1936 he also took over a selection of documents from the Ludendorff publishing house's literary agency. From the beginning of 1933, at the latest, Frank oriented his newspaper collection to the corresponding archive structure of the northern state management of the "Tannenbergbund". This is documented by the original inscriptions of a smaller part of the collection (cf. the corresponding register "Gliederung des Kampfstoffes für die Kartotheken und Sammelmappen" of the Landesleitung Nord, vol. 54). In addition, the estate contains a small, highly fragmented collection of administrative files from the years 1932/33, which Frank had either partly taken over in 1933, presumably to prevent confiscation by the Gestapo, or he had only oriented himself to the Gestapo's archive structure in general and received the above-mentioned administrative documents in connection with his work as a speaker for the Northern Regional Government. Only a few folders were filled until 1934, at most until late autumn 1937. One can only speculate about Frank's motives for this demolition. On the one hand the state pressure on the "Tannenbergbund" grew from spring 1933 [see below]. On the other hand, Frank returned in 1936 due to his financial situation (the "Ludendorffsche Volkswarte-Verlag" (LVV) had reduced his income as a writer [see NL Frank, vol. 73: Frank an Fritz Hugo Hoffmann v. 7.5.1937]) and a certain disappointment about Ludendorff's internal style of leadership [see NL Frank, vol. 72: Frank an Gerstenberg v. 20.10.].At some point between 1933 and 1945, Frank removed almost all of his correspondence with Ludendorff and with the LVV, as well as some other documents from his work for the "Tannenbergbund" 1933-1945 from his documents; he presumably sought to protect himself and the documents from access by the Gestapo. It was a photo album on the occasion of the unveiling of the commemorative plaque on the former residence of General Ludendorff in Düsseldorf on 9 July 1939, the three volumes of Franks handwritten memoirs, 11 folders with "Tannenbergbund"-internal correspondence 1932-1940, a folder with lecture documents for "Lebenskundeunterricht" 1941/42 and three brochures. These documents, in the following supplement to the estate Frank called, wandered later on the Frank'sche memory and were sighted for the first time again in 1999 by the descendants. Since no personal documents were found in the supplement, Frank had probably removed these documents not only at the time when he handed over his archive to third parties, for the sake of their special memorial value, but actually in view of the Gestapo threat.1945 Frank restructured his newspaper article collection a second time after the end of the war, expanded it by new subject areas (see also "Table of Contents Ludendorff Archive", vol. 97) and began again with the sporadic press evaluation. This finally ended with the year 1957, but already in 1950 it lost a lot of intensity. At the same time Frank took over parts of the respective correspondence and administrative documents in his private archive during his work for various regional Tannenbergbund successor organisations. either after the termination of Frank's collection activities or indefinitely after his death in 1972, part of the files, with the exception of the supplement, were disturbed in their original context by unknown parties, many documents were taken out of their original order and re-sorted into folders with inappropriate inscriptions. Possibly this happened when the estate was handed over to the Institute of Newspaper Sciences, today's IKW, at an unknown time during Karl's term of office at d´Esters . The Institute initially transferred the newspaper collection to hanging files. Although the inscriptions of the original folders were taken over, the remains of Frank's archive structure were dissolved and the folders were assigned to newly selected thematic terms such as culture, personalities, political groups, Judaism, churches. When the first tenth of the files of the official activity had also been distributed in hanging files, this process was stopped. The reconstruction of the original structure of the estate probably appeared too time-consuming and in no relation to the actual use and interests of the users of the Institute's archives due to the frequent differences between the content and title or inscription of the portfolios. The estate now remained in its "semi-sorted" state. In the mid-1960s, a part of it was used for the first time by research and served as an essential basis for Gert Borst's work in communication science [Gert Borst, Die Ludendorff-Bewegung 1919-1961. An Analysis of Monologue Forms of Communication in Social Time Communication, Diss. In April and July 1994, the IKW transferred to the IfZ most of the estate, which was at the time called the "Ludendorff Collection". Some contemporary writings and monographs remained at the IKW. Another folder with the correspondence between "Ludendorff's Volkswarte" (LVW) and the Reichspropagandaministerium was bequeathed from an unknown source in 1938/39. The origin of this portfolio remains unclear, but it probably does not belong to the Frank estate. The IfZ began the processing of the estate in the summer of 1998 and finished it in December 1999 with the reconstruction of the original structure of the Frank's Archives according to the state of the years 1945-1950. In the summer of 1999 the IfZ contacted the daughters of Herbert Frank and received the above-mentioned documents from them. The estate comprised six linear metres, or 266 portfolios of the newspaper collection and around 110 portfolios (or files) of Herbert Frank's political and private activities prior to processing by the IfZ, including the supplement. The latter are clearly identified by documents, correspondence and handwritten notes as handsets or private documents Franks. This also applies to the newspaper collection, which the descendants of Frank also remembered, as the majority of the newspapers and writings carried Frank's postal address, handwritten notes and his two-colour text underlines. The IKW already considered the estate to be a closed, related collection. Therefore, all documents given to the IfZ, with the exception of the aforementioned folder, undoubtedly belong to the Frank estate and not to a "Ludendorff" collection of other origin, such as the archive of the Ludendorff publishing house [This archive was at least still intact in May 1934: Cf. NL Frank, vol. 55: Frank an Archiv des Ludendorff-Verlag v. 27.5.1934]. Larger gaps result from the lack of private correspondence for 1935, the materials on Frank's NSDAP activities 1923-1925 and the political documents after 1950. Within the newspaper collection, the three folders listed under the keywords "Freimaurer/Ausländische Logen", "Marx Karl" and "Wiking" in Frank's Index are missing. The BdW had emerged in May 1923 from the "Organisation Consul" (OC) and was led by officers of the former "Brigade Ehrhardt" [see below]: Kurt Finker, Tannenberg Federation. Working group of national front warriors and youth associations 1925-1933, in: Lexikon zur Parteiengeschichte. Die bürgerlichen und kleinbürgerlichen Parteien und Verbände in Deutschland (1789-1945), ed. Dieter Fricke et al., vol. 4, Leipzig 1986, p. 180-183; ders., Bund Wiking 1923-1928, in: Ebd., p. 368-373]. The OC had already played a major role in terrorist assassinations of high-ranking politicians of the Weimar Republic, including Rathenau and Erzberger. The same radicalism also shaped the elitist anti-Semitic BdW defense organization. Under his leader, the former naval officer and Freikorps leader Hermann Ehrhardt, the latter set himself the goal of radically fighting the workers' movement, eliminating the parliamentary republic through an authoritarian right-wing dictatorship and preparing a revenge for the lost First World War. Accordingly, in 1923 the federal government became involved in the Bavarian government's plans to abolish the state of Kahr. The plans to overthrow the state, which were reactivated in 1925, finally led to the federal government being banned in May and October 1926 in Prussia and Hesse, respectively, and from May 1927 also in Saxony. In these countries, the Federation continued to act illegally until it was officially dissolved throughout the Reich in April 1928, following renewed police investigations by Ehrhardt. The aggressively anti-Semitic and anti-church TBB was founded in September 1925 by General Ludendorff, former head of the German Supreme Army Command in the First World War. The Federal Government pursued similar goals as the BdW and aimed at systematically preparing the German population for a far-reaching war of spatial conquest. The TBB only initially bore the features of a military unit and its characteristic three-pole view of the enemy and the world differed from all other extreme right-wing organizations. Judaism", the Catholic Church, in particular the Vatican and the Jesuit orders, as well as Freemasonry were summarily interpreted as subversive "supranational" entities which strived both nationally and internationally for the "seizure of power". The Bund was under the patronage of Ludendorff and a federal leader appointed by him [see below]: Borst, p. 133f., 186; NL Frank, vol. 27-71: Correspondences and administrative documents Franks 1929-1933]. The territory of the Reich and Austria were divided into eleven to twelve provincial leaders, each of whom was subordinate to a different leader. Each district was in turn subdivided into circles, each circle into battle groups or shop stewards for individual local groups. In addition, various suborganizations of the TBB for students, teachers and doctors, as well as the "Kulturbund" and the "Deutsche Jugend im Tannenbergbund" (German Youth in the Tannenberg Federation) worked regionally unevenly scattered. The association "Deutschvolk", founded in 1930, collected those TBB members who had left the church and who officially confessed to Mathilde Ludendorff's "German Knowledge of God". After Konstantin Hierl had dominated the federal leadership until 1926, the TBB lived in the following years above all from the occasional almost half-religious veneration of the integration and motivation figure Ludendorff. The central organs were the "Deutsche Wochenschau" from 1925 to 1929 and then the "Ludendorffs Volkswarte" (LVW) until 1933. The LVW included the Kampfblatt "Vorm Volksgericht" as a supplement and, since August 1929, "Am Heiligen Quell"; the latter appeared as an independent monthly from 1932. The "Ludendorffsche Volkswarte-Verlag" (LVV), which published the writings of Ludendorff and his wife as well as of the TBB environment, was housed until November 1929 on the ground floor of Promenadenplatz 16 and afterwards on the second floor of Karlstraße 10 in Munich [see the correspondence addresses in the NL Frank 1928-1932]. After the Nazi seizure of power, the corresponding TBB attacks finally led to the growing state fight against the Federation, although the latter, for tactical reasons, renounced in public from 1933 on almost all topics that could be understood as a front position against the Nazi [cf. NL Frank, vol. 55-62: Korrespondenz Franks 1933-1936]. First, prohibitions hit the LVW and "Vorm Volksgericht" in June 1933 and the TBB itself in September 1933. Time and again, TBB officials were imprisoned and meetings were prevented. 1936 followed the ban on publication for the former LVV, renamed "Ludendorff-Verlag" in July 1933, and the ban on speaking for the representatives of the publishing house's writings. The latter unofficially kept the TBB structures alive since 1933. Six officially only commercially active "General Representatives" coordinated in their areas the scriptural representatives for the individual districts and cities and thus at the same time the recruitment of members and propaganda work. The role of the LVW as the central organ was finally assumed by the scripture "Am Heiligen Quell". In June 1937 Ludendorff founded the reception organization disguised as a religious association for his followers "Bund für Gotterkenntnis" [on the TBB in the "Third Reich" see also Borst, pp. 238-251]. When in 1936/37 the majority of the LVV representatives gave up their offices and died in December of the following year Ludendorff, the TBB activities were drastically reduced.BdW and TBB understood themselves as collection movements and tried to force as many other right-wing radical associations as possible under their influence in order to win a power political basis for their goals. The BdW acted accordingly, especially within the "steel helmet". But both organizations were denied success or mass effectiveness. The ideology of the former general and his wife Mathilde, which was perceived by many contemporaries as too detached and theoretically registered and, moreover, extremely aggressive and hostile to the Church, had a deterrent effect and rather gave the public the impression of a small political sect. Ludendorff's concept of rigorously demanding submission to his leadership and to the TBB ideology shaped by him and his wife on the one hand and leaving the affiliated associations their own structure and leadership on the other failed. The number of the affiliated organizations [Borst, p. 124], but also the membership, which originated in the periphery of Herbert Frank predominantly from the upper middle classes, never became very numerous. The total number of members of the TBB cannot be reconstructed, it probably oscillated between 20,000 and 90,000 during the years 1929 to 1933 [see Borst, p. 188].Herbert Frank held a leading position in the BdW from 1925 to 1928 and subsequently in the TBB until 1936 in the territory of today's North Rhine-Westphalia, which belonged to the Prussian provinces of Westphalia and Rhine Province in the Weimar Republic. In the TBB he took over the offices of a state director, district director, press director and nationally active speaker and finally the general agency of the font distribution in Lower Saxony. This position was filled by Frank through his close ties to his predecessor as Country Director West, later LVW Managing Director Helmuth Pfeiffer, and to Ludendorff. In the Tecklenburg "Landboten", which was primarily oriented towards the interests of the Protestant rural population, Frank, with the agreement of the editors and Ludendorffs, unobtrusively sought to popularize the TBB ideology [see NL Frank, vol. 31: Frank an LVV/Pfeiffer v. 14.4.1931]. Frank's lecture tours in the summer of 1933 as well as his activities as general representative until 1936 always included not only the actual tasks but also the inspection and motivation of the TBB's regional divisions, which had been beset by National Socialism, as well as general propaganda for the Federation.After 1945, Frank participated in the reorganization of the Central German TBB structures in a new guise, i.e. in the "Unabhängigen Gesellschaft zur Pflege junger Wissenschaft und Kunst" (UG), in the "Tatgemeinschaft freier Deutscher" (TG) and in the "Gesellschaft für Lebenskunde" (GfLK). The GfLK, from September 1950 renamed "Gesellschaft für Geistesfreiheit und Lebenskunde e.V.", belonged to the "Deutscher Volksbund für Geistesfreiheit", collected former TBB supporters and represented the former TBB ideology in the broadest context. The former TBB in turn reorganized itself in West Germany in 1946 within the resurgent "Bund für Gotterkenntnis". The publications of the TBB environment appeared after 1945 in the publishing house "Hohe Warte", while the LVV was transferred to the Mondial publishing house in 1953. In the autumn of 1949, the earlier publication "Am Heiligen Quell" appeared under the simplified title "Der Quell". The driving forces were Mathilde von Ludendorff and her son-in-law Martini. Borst, pp. 268-294; "Capital of the Movement". Catalogue for the exhibition in the Munich City Museum October 1993 - March 1994, edited by Stadtmuseum München, Munich 1993, p. 152]. In order to attract non-Allied or Federal Republican bans and to increase the social acceptance of their ideology, the GfLK, like the Federation, abstained, at least in public, from anti-Semitism and all aggression against the new constitution. The organizations dressed their activities in a general religious-cultural-social-critical mantle and hidden their objectives in lectures on philosophy and religion. Nevertheless, the racist and anti-constitutional efforts of the "Bund für Gotterkenntnis" finally led to its final ban in May 1961 [see Borst, p. 293f.]. After Frank first worked with all his energy for the success of the organizations and added the new enemy images of "Bolshevism" and "American capitalism" to the schema of Ludendorff's "supranational powers" [see NL Frank, vol. 101: Frank an Beinhauer v. 18.7.1950], a fundamental personal turn began in summer/autumn 1949 at the latest. Frank gradually began to detach himself from Mathilde Ludendorff and partially also from the TBB ideology [s. NL Frank, vol. 101: Frank an Gerstenberg v. 31.10.1949; ibid.: Frank an seine Vater v. 28.11.1949; ibid.: Frank an Beinhauer v. 18.7.1950]. In the Frank estate, BdW and TBB developed their regional development, legal and illegal organization, propaganda, ideology, financing, social structures, connection networks to politics and other associations, recruiting methods, dealing with internal conflicts, infiltrating other associations and their actual influence. As far as the BdW is concerned, only excerpts are available, whereas the estate allows exceptionally intensive observation of the TBB, whose documents make up the largest part of the estate. The numerous internal writings and press products of the association are also of importance here. In the correspondence, the motivation and ideological and ideological development of simple members as well as of individual high-ranking association leaders becomes particularly visible, especially that of Ludendorff, who had daily letter contact with Frank at times. Frank's own development is reflected particularly impressively in the multitude of documents, be it his school essays, the memoirs, the correspondence with his father or his speeches and essays. Interesting to follow are the different motifs of his move to the TBB in autumn 1928 and his departure from Mathilde Ludendorff in 1949. The estate reveals all varieties of the intense admiration Ludendorff enjoyed among his followers. The efforts to define these boundaries, as well as the links with other right-wing radical organisations, also bring their development into focus. In this context, the correspondence in particular documents the association's internal and private confrontation with National Socialism between 1928 and 1950. It is precisely through the specific quality and quantity of Frank's correspondence that the estate acquires its special significance. Frank's own letters have also been received in a large number of carbon copies. The constant interweaving of political themes and the coping with everyday life locates Frank's commitment. The multitude of writings and newspapers reflect the orientation within the TBB milieu, be it the TBB organs "Deutsche Wacht" and "Ludendorffs Volkswarte" or the Sunday paper "Drehscheibe. Das Blatt der denkenden Menschen", the Otto Strasser publications "Der Nationalsozialist" and "Deutsche Revolution. The organ of the Revolutionary National Socialists", the Silesian-Moravian "German Wehr. Alldeutsches Kampfblatt", the "Flame signs. Non-party newspapers for German popular consciousness and national independence, against ultramontane greed for power and all foreign spirits", the weekly "Das Neue Recht", the national-religious "Das Neue Reich", as well as the "Tägliche Rundschau. Independent newspaper for objective politics, Christian culture and German folklore". However, it is astonishing that the newspaper collection on the topics "Judaism" and "Freemasonry", actually the core topics of the TBB, is much shorter than on the topics "Economy" or "Mussolini" etc. A larger scientific publication on the development of the TBB between 1923 and 1945 as well as on the reorganization attempts after 1945 is still missing. Borst's work [see above], which is essentially based on the Frank estate, mainly analyses the propaganda content and forms of communication of the federal government. Bruno Thoss and Kurt Gossweiler, on the other hand, concentrate on the prehistory of the Federation in the years 1919 to 1923 [Bruno Thoss, Der Ludendorff-Kreis 1919-1923. Munich as the centre of the Central European Counterrevolution between Revolution and Hitler Putsch, Munich 1978; Kurt Gossweiler, Kapital, Reichswehr and NSDAP 1919-1924, Berlin (East) 1982]. The IfZ report on the TBB written by Hans Buchheim provides only a general overview [Hans Buchheim, Die organisatorische Entwicklung der Ludendorff-Bewegung und ihre Verhältnis zum Nationalsozialismus, in: Gutachten des IfZ München 1958]. The Frank estate offers an excellent supplement to the Tannenbergbund holdings of the IfZ (before the inheritance was taken over) and the Bavarian State Archives, both in Munich, as well as to those of the Federal Archives in Berlin, with its detailed insight into the development of the association. One part, the documents of private and political activities, received a new structure. Frank himself had left no evidence of his own order for this. The folders were assigned to this new structure according to their inscription; if the inscription deviated seriously from the folder content, the assignment was based on the content. This first part is divided into the private documents and the political documents, which were chronologically assigned to the respective political offices of Frank, as well as the subdivision into correspondence, administrative documents, essays, lectures and material collection. Administrative documents, such as circulars, membership lists or flyer drafts, were directly necessary for the performance of the office and thus differ from the collection of material, which includes general excerpts, newspaper articles, brochures and the like. This collection of material consists of folders, which in individual cases belonged to the respective official activity after dating, but as a rule according to their original inscription without doubt and could not be distributed to the newspaper collection. Political correspondence differs from the private correspondence of the first part of the estate in that Frank acted as a political functionary here. The second part, the newspaper collection, was rearranged according to the list found in the estate of the "Ludendorff Archive", which corresponds to the original inscriptions of most folders (or suspension files). In the process, folders containing only very few articles were basically joined together to form a single volume. This also applies in the case of folders that contain different topics. Within these IfZ archive volumes, the original Frank folders are separated by orange insert sheets. The table of contents of the newspaper collection in the index corresponds to the original index mentioned above. The respective volumes adapt to this arrangement, but additionally carry independent, newly selected titles which occasionally characterize the contents of the volume more precisely than Frank's keywords. In each volume all Frank's folders are listed one after the other according to the following scheme: The first line contains the original title of the respective Franks folder. In the following paragraphs first the contents of the folder, e.g. newspaper articles or brochures, then the topics of these sources and finally their running time are shown. The supplement, i.e. the parts of the estate, which the descendants of Frank had handed over to the IfZ in 1999, were in principle mentioned separately within the volumes of the find book and kept as far as possible in own volumes. In exceptional cases, smaller parts of the supplement, such as correspondence, were inserted into other volumes, but always delimited by orange insert sheets. The photographs contained in the supplement were scanned or copied and assigned to volumes 2 and 19. private documents included, in particular, materials on genealogy in their original context. The correspondence of Frank during his engagement for the "Bund Wiking" 1925-1928 is combined into one volume, since his activity as Gauführer Duisburg officially ended by the BdW ban in May 1926, but probably continued illegally until 1927.