History of tradition: The Badisches Staatsministerium as the highest state authority was established in 1817. It replaced the State Council, which was formed only in 1811, and which in turn emerged from the Ministerial Conference established in 1809. The State Ministry, to which the State and other ministers and other senior officials listened, served primarily to advise the sovereign and had no legislative or administrative powers of its own. From 1820 to 1825, the Ministry of State performed additional functions for the Ministry of Justice. In the years 1871 to 1893 the abolition of the Ministry of the Grand Ducal House and Foreign Affairs brought him a clear increase in competence, which at times made him a small specialist ministry himself. 1919 after the foundation of democracy the government elected by the Landtag according to the new Baden constitution of 21 March 1919 bore the name State Ministry. The documents of the Baden State Ministry cover a period from the emergence of the Grand Duchy at the beginning of the 19th century to the immediate post-war period; in individual cases it covers the margraviate of Baden in the Old Reich and the Electorate of Baden as well as the time of the emergence of the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. The tradition of the Baden State Ministry is indispensable for understanding the modern territorial state in the 19th century; it complements the holdings of the Baden Justice, Culture, Interior, Finance and War Ministries (holdings 234 to 138) and the Baden State Parliament (holdings 231 and 231a) in a select manner. Processing: The previous card index was retroconverted from 2013 to 2015 as part of a DFG project. Spelling and reading errors were corrected and terms and formulations modernised to make the title recordings easier to understand. Unclear or obviously incorrect signatures were corrected, duplications resolved and missing and incorrect running times added or improved in order to achieve better clarity of the holdings and simplify future searches. 1997-68 access was resolved and integrated into the holdings or the finding aid. Karlsruhe, December 2015Dr. Peter Exner
Inventory history: "Saved for Baden" in 1995, a rare source genre in Germany, 923 so-called homage addresses, previously unknown evidence of the lively participation of the citizens of the country in the fortunes of their princely house, were saved from the New Castle Baden-Baden. They could be acquired as an almost closed collection; only a few were sold at auction in 1995 or were excluded from sale and remained in the possession of the margravial family. Most of the addresses date from the reign of Grand Duke Friedrich I (1852-1907). During this period of constitutional monarchy, the distance between the now mature subjects and their sovereign had decreased. Above all as representatives of cities, associations, professional associations, political, cultural and charitable institutions of the country or countries connected with Baden and even individually, they paid their respects to this and his wife Luise, born Princess of Prussia, especially for weddings, birthdays and other anniversaries of their house. Due to her extensive charitable activities and as the daughter of Emperor Wilhelm I, the Grand Duchess herself also received homages. The addresses of the military associations, which honour the Grand Duke in his capacity as the supreme commander of the country, are particularly numerous and magnificent, and the connection between the two houses of Baden and Prussia is reflected both in the artistic design of the addresses and in their texts. Thus, the Grand Duke's appreciation of his role as the father of the country can sometimes evoke themes from the history of the Reich, such as Baden's relationship with Prussia, the imperial unit whose patrons included the Grand Duke, colonialism or increasing militarism. A large number of the addresses united in this collection and their containers are elaborately designed and give an impression of the craftsmanship of the time, whereby the historicist style predominates. Among them are some works of the Karlsruhe professors for decorative painting at the school of arts and crafts, Hermann Götz and Karl Eyth; the portfolios are headed by the Durlach company of Eduard Scholl and his successor, and numerous old signatures bear witness to the fact that the addresses of homage also attracted attention among their recipients. They were inventoried several times and kept in the library or in the natural history cabinet. These earlier signatures are also noted in our repertory. Among the older ones are the handwritten signatures of the Hofbibliothek Karlsruhe on rhombus-shaped labels (inventory and holdings since 1995 in the Badische Landesbibliothek; our abbreviation: H). The handwritten or stamped signatures on rectangular labels can be traced back to later inventories since the 1880s by the gallery inspector Dr. Karl Kölitz (our abbreviation: K), Richter (our abbreviation: R) and probably Count Schweinitz as well as Albert Hartmann, Baden-Baden (our abbreviation: B). Lydia Filaus took over their input into the computer program Bismas. The remaining title recordings were made by Dr. Hansmartin Schwarzmaier and after preliminary work by Hiltburg Köckert the undersigned. Since the addresses are already cited in the literature with provisional signatures during the indexing, a concordance of these and the now valid signatures is added to the repertory. The current number sequence of the addresses corresponds to their storage according to formats in the magazine. Since the title entries of the addresses in the find book are structured according to their occasions, these numbers jump there. The 11 addresses remaining in the castle Salem were taken up with the designation Salem 1ff. in the repertory and described after slides taken in the new castle Baden-Baden 1995. Older "congratulations" for the margraves of Baden (18th century) can be found in the manuscript collection of the Großherzogliches Haus-Fideicommisses, others in the collection 69 Baden, collection 1995 G. Karlsruhe, March 2002Dr. Jutta Krimm-Beumann Conversion: The online finding aid for the present inventory is a result of the project "Conversion of old finding aid data" of the General State Archive Karlsruhe, which was carried out by Guido Fögler in 2006/2007. The project was supervised by Alexander Hoffmann and Hartmut Obst.Karlsruhe, in June 2007Dr. Martin Stingl
Origin and tradition: The Grand Ducal photo collection from the reign of Frederick I and his wife Luise probably originated from gifts, orders and acquisitions (e.g. while travelling). It is not yet possible to say to what extent there was a real will to collect, but the collection was carefully preserved, partly noted in inventory lists and probably moved from Karlsruhe Castle to the New Palace in Baden-Baden in 1919. There, even after the death of Grand Duchess Luise, he occasionally grew. When the castle inventory of 1995 was dissolved, the State of Baden-Württemberg was able to acquire the entire photo collection for the General State Archives; a selection of family photos and some magnificent volumes remained the property of the House of Baden. He also owns an essential part of the photo collection of the last Grand Duke, Frederick II, who fortunately was not kept in the Freiburg Palais after 1919. Content: The medium of photography was highly valued and consciously used at the Baden court as a modern form of princely representation. The distribution of portrait series to the public can be reconstructed and the long reign of Frederick I enabled the presence of the "father of the country" or the "parents of the country", as can be found among the Hohenzollern, the Wittelsbachers or the Habsburgs. Documents from these photo commissions to the court photographers make up a not insignificant part of the collection. The proportion of gifts and souvenir pictures received after anniversaries, celebrations, manoeuvres, exhibitions, inaugurations, etc. is greater; the handing over of portraits of foreign visitors also belonged to this group, especially in the context of the summer stays in Baden-Baden. One of the most important gifts are probably the works with which photographers wanted to attract attention, acquire the title of court photographer or receive further commissions; in this way, works from the early days of photography came into the Grand Duke's possession: signed prints by Charles Clifford, the Upper Italian and Southwest German series by Jakob August Lorent in 60x80 format already admired at the time of their creation (Lorent also left to the Grand Duke a detailed description of his recording and development process) or, to name regionally effective photographers, photographs by Richard/Heidelberg, Tillman-Matter/Mannheim, Th. shoe man
Content and Evaluation Selected documents on the members of the Protestant line of the House of Baden since the late 17th century. Currently, the online inventory only provides information on Grand Duchess Luise and Prince Max of Baden. The documents relating to the other members of the House of Baden will be successively incorporated. The handwritten finding aids from the early 20th century can be consulted in the General State Archives.