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History of the Inventory Designer: Dr. Wilhelm Albers General Physician born on 02 November 1859 in Uelzen, died on 17 December 1919 in Lüneburg 29 March 1879 - 15 February 1883: Kaiser Wilhelm Academy for Military Medical Education 1891 - 1895: Doctor in the Surgical Department of the Charité in Berlin 17 July 1900 - 04 March 1904: East Asian Expeditionary Corps of the East Asian Occupation Brigade until 17 September 1904 December 1901: Chief Physician Feldlazarett 2 in Beijing and Feldlazarett 1 in Tientsin 18 December 1901 - 04 March 1904: Brigadier Physician 1910: Chief Physician and Division Physician of the 5th Division in Frankfurt/Oder 1914-1918: Corps Physician of the XXIIth Reserve Corps (consisting of 43rd and 44th Reserve Divisions), at the beginning of the First World War on the Western Front, from June 1915 on the Eastern Front. Editing note: Index inventory description: Lectures from his time in East Asia. 6 volumes field letters to his wife, 3 volumes with letters of family members and 12 volumes diary entries from the First World War as a corps doctor of the XXII reserve corps citation method: BArch, N 686/...

History of the Inventory Former: The Bank der Deutschen Luftfahrt, also known as the Aero- or Luftfahrtbank, was formed by the transformation of Luftfahrtkontor GmbH into a public limited company with shareholder resolution of 6 July 1940, the object of which, according to the articles of association of that date, was "the execution of banking transactions of all kinds and of related transactions serving directly or indirectly aviation purposes, as well as the administration and supervision of aviation companies and the execution of all such transactions, including in a fiduciary capacity" [1]. Luftfahrtkontor GmbH had been founded in 1933/34 in the context of the takeover of the Junkers group by the Reich Aviation Ministry (RLM) and in 1938 was responsible for the administration of 1. the Reich-owned facilities leased to companies in the aviation industry, 2. the Reich's holdings in companies in the aviation industry and 3. the investment loans [2]. In the course of the so-called "capital cut" to reform corporate financing, the investment loans granted until then were converted into state aid for special depreciation and firms were encouraged to use more of their own funds and borrowed capital to finance investments. To this end, both the RLM and the Reich Ministry of Finance (RFM) considered it sensible to set up their own commercial bank for aviation, whose loans were intended to stimulate the involvement of other banks and other donors and to which all Reich shareholdings in the aviation industry and aviation were to be transferred. On 9 June 1939 Luftfahrtkontor GmbH received its banking licence from the Reich Commissioner for Banking and quickly acquired the character of a "universal bank for German aviation" [3] after the start of the war. In addition to the conventional investment loans, the Luftfahrtbank increasingly granted the aerospace armaments companies - similar to the Deutsche Industriebank for the suppliers of the army and navy - the credit assistance provided by the Reich Economic Ministry (RWM) for the mobilization of arms production (in short: "mobkredite") with Reich guarantees from autumn 1939 onwards. This resulted in a substantial increase in the Bank's lending volume, which, together with the significant increase in managed participations and deposits from aviation companies, as well as increased activity on the stock exchange and the money market, led to the Bank being renamed "Bank der Deutschen Luftfahrt" and converted into a stock corporation (AG). This was in response to the wish of the General Airworthiness Officer Ernst Udet that "the company's status as a bank should be expressed in the company name" [4]. Like its predecessor Luftfahrtkontor, the Bank der Deutschen Luftfahrt initially resided in Berlin-Schöneberg, Am Park 12. In the night from March 1 to March 2, 1943, Ge‧bäude burned out completely after an Allied air raid, whereupon the bank had to move its Geschäfts‧räume to the center of Berlin (Werderstr. 7). As a result of the fire, loss of files also seems to have been the cause of complaint [5]. Dissatisfied with the accommodation that was not considered to be standes‧gemäß, the bank pushed in the spring of 1944 the efforts that had previously been made by the Jewish company Panofski

History of the Inventory Designer: Generalmajor Description of the Inventory: Mainly diary entries and letters mainly from his service as commander of the Imperial Protection Forces for Cameroon before and during World War I; records of the Cameroon campaign (1914-1916); lecture manuscripts citation method: BArch, N 521/...

7 letters (among others from A. Bastian and F. Lugard)

History of the Inventory Designer: 1887 through merger of the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation (founded 1884) with the Deutscher Kolonialverein (founded 1887). Founded 1882) in Berlin; Objective: Dissemination of national understanding and interest in the colonial question, practical solution of colonial problems through support of German-national colonization enterprises, fostering the togetherness of the Germans abroad, scientific research of the colonies, expansion of German colonial property and support of the German fleet program to secure the colonies; organs of the Society were Presidium, Committee, and Board; subdivisions into Colonial Economic Committee (founded 1896); German Colonial Economic Committee (founded 1896); German Colonial Economic Committee (founded 1896); German Colonial Committee (founded 1896); German Colonial Committee (founded 1896); German Colonial Committee (founded 1896).), Hauptverband deutscher Flottenvereine im Ausland (founded 1898), Frauenbund der deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft (founded 1907); 1936 within the framework of the National Socialist Gleichschaltung integration into Reichskolonialbund; 1943 dissolution for reasons of war economy. Editing note: Findbuch (1953) Inventory description: Archivische Bewertung und Bearbeitung It is a confirmed fact that an archive was established in the D e u t s c h e K o l o n i a l g e s c h e l l s c h a f t . The Colonial Economic Archive, which was established at the Berlin Central Office in 1909, already had records of more than 600 colonial enterprises in its founding year. Due to a lack of documents, it is not possible to determine when the documents were transferred from these archives or the registries to the Reichsarchiv. For the period of the Second World War it can be assumed that the holdings, together with other holdings of the Reichsarchiv, were outsourced and taken over by the German Central Archive Potsdam (later the Central State Archive Potsdam) after 1945. Due to the lack of old finding aids, no information can be given on war-related outsourcing losses. The first processing of the holdings was already carried out at the Central State Archives in Potsdam. In the holdings of the D e u t s c h e K o l o n i a l s c h e G e l l l s c h a f t , the majority of the traditional file titles were newly created and partly supplemented by notes on contents. In addition to the already existing series and volume sequences, additional archival ones were added where appropriate. Since the already existing thread-stitching had predetermined the creation and delimitation of files, especially of the volumes of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft holdings, temporal overlaps in the series and volume sequences could not be avoided. The transfer of the data records of the D e u t s c h e K o l o n i a l g e s e l l s c h a f t to the database took place in 2003. Content characterization: Antislavery; exhibitions, congresses, conferences and rallies; emigration; authorities and offices; Deutscher Frauenbund and its institutions; Deutscher Kolonialverein and Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft; expeditions and research trips; naval affairs; research and science; societies and associations; trade and economy; Herero uprising; church and missions; Colonial Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft; Colonial policy Colonial propaganda and honours; Colonial economic committee; Agriculture and settlement; Military affairs; Museums and archives; Personnel and correspondence; Press cuttings; Legal and administrative affairs; Shipping and waterways; School and education; Donations and lottery; Tropical hygiene; Support and loan applications; Experimental and investigation stations; Veterinary medicine. State of development: Publication Findbuch and Online Findbuch 2003 Citation method: BArch, R 8023/...

History of the Inventory Designer: NDB 8, p. 702 ff. MdR (Zentrum, 1875-1912), Bavarian Prime Minister (1912-1917), Reich Chancellor (1917-1918) Inventory description: correspondence with family members (mainly political content), manuscripts on publications and speeches, correspondence on the Zentrumspartei, Catholicism, the Görres Society, German relations with the Vatican, and matters of Reich politics. Further documents in the Archbishop's Archive in Munich. (as of 1977) Citation method: BArch, N 1036/...

Citation style: BArch, N 2139/...

History of the Inventory Designer: Andreas Dorpalen, Gerhard Ritter. In: Deutsche Historiker I, Göttingen 1971, p. 86-99 Historiker, Hochschullehrer Description of the holdings: Manuscripts of his lectures at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau, of his workers (with material collections), essays, lectures, expert opinions; extensive academic and private correspondence; documents, including on academic institutions, the Association of German Historians, historian meetings, school and university questions and the Protestant Church. Family correspondence in the State Archives Marburg/Lahn. (Status: 1977) - Special terms of use - Citation method: BArch, N 1166/...

History of the inventor: born 8.3.1840 in Saarlouis; died 17.2.1920 in Berlin; last position: Kdr. Admiral and Chief of the Imperial OKM Processing note: Search index Inventory description: Personalia: Curriculum vitae; Patents and transport documents, 1859 - 1893; Commandments and appointments, 1871 - 1903; Acknowledgements, rebukes, instructions, complaints, 1870 - 1896; Farewell petition by Knorr and replies from Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1898 - 1899; Award and ownership documents, 1864 - 1913; 5 volumes of memoirs, 1840 - 1889; Correspondence and appointments, 1871 - 1903; Acknowledgements, rebukes, instructions, complaints, 1870 - 1899; Award and ownership documents, 1864 - 1913; 5 volumes of memoirs, 1840 - 1889; Correspondence and appointments, 1871 - 1903a. with associations and as secular third class canon of the cathedral Brandenburg/Havel; Appendix: Awards for the wife Luise Viktoria von Knorr, 1870 - 1898; Press article on naval matters, 1855 - 1915; Plans for a sanatorium ship, 1904; Letter with list about estate of the admiral E.v.Knorr, 1944 citation: BArch, N 578/...

History of the inventor: Born 21 September 1865 in Baldenburg, district of Schlochau, died 31 December 1924 in Dresden. 1874 Admission to the Kulmer Kadettenkorps, then Prussian Hauptkadettenanstalt and in April 1885 entry as lieutenant second in the infantry regiment "von borcke" (4th Pommersches) No. 21 in Thorn. 1887 Transfer to the 2nd Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment No. 137 in September 1888, one year's leave of absence to go to Africa. After a short time working for the D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i kanische Gesellschaft as an officer in the Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika. On 18 May 1889 he took part in a battle at Dar-es-Salam as part of the suppression of the so-called Arab uprising. 1890 He rejoins the army. 1891-1904 Education at the Prussian Academy of War; 1895 transfer to the Grand General Staff. In the same year wedding with Luise Lindner. In 1898 he was promoted to captain during his command at the Reichsmarineamt, which from 1898 to 1899 included surveying work in the Kiautschou leasehold. 1900 Return to Germany and activity in the general staff. From 1902 company commander in infantry regiment 41. In 1904 promotion to major and transfer to the general staff of the stage command of the Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Südwestafrika. There he participated in the so-called Herero and Hottentot campaigns. During the Nama Uprising, Maercker led the Schutztruppen units in the Battle of Nubib and was wounded. 1910 Farewell to the Schutztruppe and appointment as battalion commander in the infantry regiment "König Ludwig III. von Bayern" (2nd Lower Silesian) No. 47. 1912 promotion lieutenant colonel; 1913 appointment as commander of the North Sea island Borkum. 1914 Promotion to colonel. 1915 and 1916 as regiment commander participation in the position fights at the Kormyn and at the Styr, afterwards at the western front, among others Yser, in the Wyschaete arch as well as at St. Eloi. Wounded in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, then in positional battles on the Aisne. At the end of 1916 he took part in the battles on the Narajowka and Zlota Lipa; from 1917 he was deployed on the western front: Somme, Wytschaete Arc, Yser, Arras, Champagne and Flanders with renewed wounding. Awarded the Pour le Mérite Order on 1 October 1917 and the Pour le Mérite Oak Leaf Order on 3 May 1918. On 18 August 1917 promotion to Major General and appointment as Commander of the 214th Division. In December 1918 Maercker formed the Freikorps "Landesjäger" from parts of his division; deployment of the Freikorps during the suppression of the Spartakus uprising in January 1919 in Berlin, followed by deployments in Weimar, Gotha, Erfurt, Halle, Magdeburg, Braunschweig and Helmstedt. On 2 May the Freikorps was integrated into the Reichswehr as Reichswehrbrigade 16. On 28 April 1920 Maercker was released from active military service. In 1922 he founded the Deutscher Kolonialkriegerbund. Processing note: General Wehrkreis IV (Saxony)? Description of the holdings: Major General, documents, personal letters, training documents, portrait photos, colonial history: General der Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Südwestafrika. R e i c h s k o l o n i a l a m t , surveying Tsingtau, commander of the infantry in the First World War in France and Belgium, Wehrkreiskommando IV, Freikorpsführer Geb. 21. September 1865 in Baldenburg, Kreis Schlochau, died 31. December 1924 in Dresden. 1874 Admission to the Kulmer Kadettenkorps, then Prussian Hauptkadettenanstalt and in April 1885 entry as lieutenant second in the infantry regiment "von borcke" (4th Pommersches) No. 21 in Thorn. 1887 Transfer to the 2nd Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment No. 137 in September 1888, one year's leave of absence to go to Africa. After a short time working for the D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i kanische Gesellschaft as an officer in the Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika. On 18 May 1889 he took part in a battle at Dar-es-Salam as part of the suppression of the so-called Arab uprising. 1890 He rejoins the army. 1891-1904 Education at the Prussian Academy of War; 1895 transfer to the Grand General Staff. In the same year wedding with Luise Lindner. In 1898 he was promoted to captain during his command at the Reichsmarineamt, which from 1898 to 1899 included surveying work in the Kiautschou leasehold. 1900 Return to Germany and activity in the general staff. From 1902 company commander in infantry regiment 41. In 1904 promotion to major and transfer to the general staff of the stage command of the Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Südwestafrika. There he participated in the so-called Herero and Hottentot campaigns. During the Nama Uprising, Maercker led the Schutztruppen units in the Battle of Nubib and was wounded. 1910 Farewell to the Schutztruppe and appointment as battalion commander in the infantry regiment "König Ludwig III. von Bayern" (2nd Lower Silesian) No. 47. 1912 promotion lieutenant colonel; 1913 appointment as commander of the North Sea island Borkum. 1914 Promotion to colonel. 1915 and 1916 as regiment commander participation in the position fights at the Kormyn and at the Styr, afterwards at the western front, among others Yser, in the Wyschaete arch as well as at St. Eloi. Wounded in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, then in positional battles on the Aisne. At the end of 1916 he took part in the battles on the Narajowka and Zlota Lipa; from 1917 he was deployed on the western front: Somme, Wytschaete Arc, Yser, Arras, Champagne and Flanders with renewed wounding. Awarded the Pour le Mérite Order on 1 October 1917 and the Pour le Mérite Oak Leaf Order on 3 May 1918. On 18 August 1917 promotion to Major General and appointment as Commander of the 214th Division. In December 1918 Maercker formed the Freikorps "Landesjäger" from parts of his division; deployment of the Freikorps during the suppression of the Spartakus uprising in January 1919 in Berlin, followed by deployments in Weimar, Gotha, Erfurt, Halle, Magdeburg, Braunschweig and Helmstedt. On 2 May the Freikorps was integrated into the Reichswehr as Reichswehrbrigade 16. On 28 April 1920 Maercker was released from active military service. In 1922 he founded the Deutscher Kolonialkriegerbund. Citation style: BArch, N 786/...

History of the Inventory Designer: Mirbach's Telegrafisches Büro (MTB) was founded at the beginning of the 20th century in the Rhineland as a small news agency by the editor Mirbach. Together with Professor Arthur Jung, he owned the "International Telegraph Agency (ITA)" in Cologne until November 1920. After separating from his cooperation partner Jung, Mirbach initially resumed work in his former correspondence office. The situation in the German Reich at that time played an important role in the further development of the MTB. After the defeat of the Imperial German Empire in World War I, the newly created Saar region, consisting of the southern part of the Rhine Province as well as the Saarpfalz and the western part of the Bavarian Palatinate, was separated from the German Empire by the territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1920 it was placed under French administration with a mandate from the League of Nations. The occupation of the Saar region by French troops was accompanied by the spread of French propaganda (1). This was mainly due to the purchase of some German newspapers, such as the "Südwestdeutsche Abendzeitung" by the French military administration (2). Renamed "Neuer Saar Kurier", the newspaper now appeared bilingual and was supplied with information by French news services. The German Reich government and the Foreign Office felt compelled to counteract France's efforts to separate the Palatinate. Similar efforts of the occupying powers could also be observed in the other ceded territories of Alsace-Lorraine, Rhineland, Eupen-Malmedy, Posen, North Schleswig, in parts of Upper Silesia and in the border regions. In order to counteract the propaganda of the occupying powers, the Reich government agreed to the proposal of the publishing director Kristian Kraus to create an intelligence service that would supply the ceded and occupied as well as the border regions with news from the German Reich. Kraus had been organizing the intelligence service for the Saar region and occupied areas of the Rhineland on behalf of the Reich government since 1919. This intelligence service should be further developed. Mirbach's telegraphic office was considered at that time to be the "management of the Rheinische Korrespondenz"(3). Kraus was interested in taking over the MTB, as he explains in a letter to the press department of the Reich government. After the negotiations between Kraus, Mirbach and the government the MTB was integrated into the "Reichsstelle zur Versorgung der besetzten und abgetretenen deutschen Gebiete mit deutschen Nachrichten". From 1920 to 1929, Kraus was the managing director and literary director of this Reich office, also known as the "Allgemeines Politisches Informationsbüro G.m.b.H." (General Political Information Office G.b.H.), based in Berlin (4). At the same time, the news agency Polwona was founded, also managed by Kraus, which opened several branches in the occupied and ceded German territories (5). These news agencies were outwardly issued as private-sector enterprises, but were financially dependent on the Reich. Daily messages were transmitted by telephone from Berlin to the Polwona branches. These were established in Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurter Depeschenbüro), Mannheim (Oberrheinisches Nachrichtenbüro), Saarbrücken (Saarkorrespondenz), Cologne (Mirbachs Telegraphisches Büro), Königsberg (Norel - Ost Korrespondenz) and Flensburg (Korrespondenzbüro Nordschleswig) (6). From there, the news was forwarded to the provincial press in the area. Thus the citizens in the occupied or ceded territories remained informed about politics, economy and current issues in the German Reich and were also strengthened in their sense of belonging to the German Reich. In return, the branches had the task of sending news from the occupied territories to Berlin, in particular interviews with important representatives of the occupying powers. Comments: (1) BArch R 8028 / 1 fol. 139, 166. (2) BArch R 8028/ 1 fol. 139. (3) BArch R 8028/ 1 fol. 92. (4) BArch (former BDC, RKK/ RSK Personal- und Sachakte, Kraus, Kristian. (5) BArch R 8028/ 1 fol. 180. (6) BArch R 8028/1 fol. 42. Abbreviations: MTB - Mirbach's Telegraphic Office Polwona - Political West - East - News Agency O.N.B. - Upper Rhine News Agency W.T.B. - Wolff's Telegraphic Office S.C.B. - is not clearly identifiable from the files, probably "Saar Correspondenz Büro" "Dako" - "Danziger Korrespondenzbüro" Description of the holdings: Inventory history The holdings were confiscated by the Red Army towards the end of the Second World War and handed over to the German Central Archive (later: Central State Archive of the GDR based in Potsdam) in the 1950s in the course of file returns from the Soviet Union. The inventory signature there was 61 Mi 1. With the transfer to the Federal Archives, the inventory signature was changed to R 8028. Archive processing In the course of the processing of the inventory, a finding index was created in the Central State Archives of the GDR, on the basis of which the present finding aid book with the database BASYS-S was compiled. The existing classification has been adopted. In the course of processing, series and tape sequences were created. After the inspection of the files some editorial and contentwise revisions at the data records already existing in BASYS -S were made. There were no cassations or additions. Citation BArch R 8028/........................................................... State of development: Online-Findbuch (2008) Citation method: BArch, R 8028/...

History of the Inventory Designer: After the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin, the mayors of Garmisch and Partenkirchen tried to reach the IV Olympic Games in their communities in that year. Olympic Winter Games. In June 1933 the time had come: the two communities prevailed within Germany against the competing cities Braunlage and Schreiberhau. Foreign competitors Montreal in Canada and St. Moritz in Switzerland were also left behind. In the run-up to the Winter Olympics, the two communities were united on 1 January 1935 to form a market community (Garmisch-Partenkirchen) against their resistance. In a short time, the preparatory organisation of the Winter Games had to take place from 1933 onwards, which was to be secured financially not only by support payments from other towns and municipalities, but also by an additional citizen's tax for the inhabitants of Garmisch and Partenkirchen. In total, costs of 2.6 million Reichsmarks had to be shouldered. On August 23, 1933, the Organizing Committee was founded in Garmisch-Partenkirchen to organize the Winter Games. The President of the Organizing Committee was Dr. Karl Ritter von Halt (1891-1964), Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of Munich-based Bankhaus Auffhäuser. His deputy and treasurer was the director of the Bayerische Gemeindebank Friedrich Döhlemann, general secretary was Baron Peter Le Fort. Dr. Hermann Harster was responsible as press officer. The committee was particularly responsible for organising the construction and repair work. In record time, the Olympic Ski Stadium with the Great Olympic Hill, in which the opening and closing ceremonies were also to take place, and the Olympic Art Stadium were built. At the Riessersee the sports facilities for speed skating, ice shooting and bobsleigh races were extended or newly built. The course of the skialpine competitions, which took place for the first time as part of the Olympic Games, also had to be determined. In addition, logistical planning had to be carried out, for which the 1935 German Winter Sports Championships had to be regarded as a test run. Traditionally, the significance of the Winter Olympics was still lagging behind that of the Summer Games. The IV. The Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen were a first step out of the shadow of the Summer Games. From 6 to 16 February 1936, 646 athletes from 28 nations took part in 17 competitions in bobsleigh, ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating, alpine skiing and Nordic skiing. Ice-shooting and military patrol were conducted as demonstration competitions. In the course of the ski alpine competitions, which took place for the first time, there had previously been disputes with the International Ski Federation because the IOC refused to let ski instructors take part in the competitions as professionals. The ski associations of Austria and Switzerland then boycotted the Winter Games. The logistical effort as well as the organisation of the competitions and the accommodation of the athletes were accompanied by a high number of visitors. Only with the efficient use of public transport was it possible to ensure that around 500,000 people could attend the games as spectators. The final event alone with the awarding of all medals was attended by approx. 150,000 people. Cooperation with the Reichsbahn was therefore necessary, and the Reichspost was also an important partner for radio broadcasting. The media marketing and broadcasting of the games was a prelude to the Summer Games. This shows that above all public relations work was an essential part of the work of the organising committee. At home and abroad, advertising was done for the Olympic Winter Games in order to present the Reich as a supposedly civilized and peaceful country. After it had been prevented that the USA boycotted the games because of the racist politics of Germany, the organizing committee did everything to use the Olympiad for propagandistic purposes. Karl Ritter von Halt had all signs with anti-Semitic inscriptions removed and banned anti-Jewish smear campaigns in order not to endanger the prestige object "Olympic Games". The Winter Games were a test run for the Summer Games, which is why the IOC and NOK (then the German Olympic Committee), as well as the government of the Reich, attached particular importance to them. In the presence of Adolf Hitler and numerous leading members of the NSDAP, they were opened in the ski stadium on 6 February 1936. Outstanding athletes were the Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie, the Norwegian speed skater Ivar Ballangrud and the German skier Christl Cranz. The staff of the organizing committee of the IV Olympic Winter Games included: President: Dr Karl Ritter von Halt Secretary General: Baron Peter le Fort Adjudant to the President: F. von Podewils, Raymund Nölke, Ilse Damköhler Sports organization: Hans Nölke, Renate Fischer Registration office: Anastasia Hartmann, Josephine Dangl, Toni Jeggs, Elisabeth Zehner Registration: Anni Schwab, Hans Karg, Adolf Wiedemann Head of deployment: Major Feuchtinger Traffic and Order: Captain Walter Titel, Mrs. Michael Olympic Construction Office: Joseph Dürr, Josef Hartl, Ludwig Gareis, (Arthur Vollstedt) Programme: Dr. Fritz Wasner, Ms Rönnebeck Olympic Traffic Office: Max Werneck, Max Urban, Anton Wiedemann, Heinrich Witztum, Erich Junker, Heinrich Wegener, Lina Rühling, Eva Ackert Bobsleigh top management: Alex Gruber, Hans Edgar Endres, Ms Dangl Treasurer: Friedrich Döhlemann Inventory description: Inventory history The records of the organizing committee of the IV. After the end of the Winter Games, the 1936 Winter Olympics went to the Reichsarchiv, where it remained for the time being - apart from a loan of the holdings to the Organising Committee, probably on the occasion of the 1940 Olympic Games. From 1946 the collection was in the Central State Archives of the GDR, from where it was borrowed again from 1953 to 1964, this time to the National Olympic Committee of the GDR. Copies were also made in this context. In 1964, with the exception of a few files, the holdings were returned to the Central State Archives. Since 1990 it has belonged to the holdings of the Federal Archives. The remaining 0.2 running meters, which remained with the National Olympic Committee of the GDR after 1964, were transferred from the DR 510 stock to the R 8076 stock in December 2004. A further nine archive units were subsequently transferred to R 8076 in January 2007, in the course of orderly work on various holdings, including R 8077. Archive evaluation and processing No information can be given on war-related file losses. In 1964, G. Oehmigen and W. Thilo of the Department of Contemporary History of the Research Centre at the Deutsche Hochschule für Körperkultur Leipzig drew up a list of the files on loan to the NOK of the GDR based on a file plan available in the former Reichsarchiv. In the Central State Archives of the GDR, only the first half of the stock was recorded on index cards. A new indexing took place in 2005/2006 in the Federal Archives. Since the original file titles did not appear meaningful, new titles were created and supplemented by content notes. In addition, a new classification was developed, which is oriented to the tasks of the organizing committee. In connection with the redrawing by Mathis Leibetseder, Rouven Pons and Stefan Selbmann, a post-cassation was also carried out. Due to their low information value, order slips for admission tickets, invoices for telephone calls by individual employees, receipts for Olympic badges, health stamps and documents for the payment of citizen's tax for the employees of the organising committee were collected. The photographs of the Olympic Winter Games, the German Winter Sports Championships and other sports competitions found in the collection were removed and transferred to the picture archive of the Koblenz Office of the Federal Archives. Characterisation of content: General administration: personnel 1933-1937 (44), finances 1933-1939 (84), liquidation of the committee 1935-1937 (7); preparation of the winter games: Correspondence 1932-1936 (25), meetings 1932-1937 (35), reporting 1933-1937 (23), cooperation 1927-1936 (19), awards 1933-1937 (7), sports facilities 1932-1936 (54), notifications 1934-1936 (54), tickets 1933-1936 (35), foreign exchange, transport, logistics, accommodation 1934-1936 (17), tradesmen 1934-1936 (3); organization of competitions: Public and press work 1933-1936 (112), planning and execution 1921-1936 (5), festival and supporting programme 1933-1939 (6), ice, bobsleigh and skiing 1933-1936 (54), other competitions 1933-1935 (15) State of development: online find book (2006, 2007) Citation: BArch, R 8076/...

History of the Inventory Designer: born 11.12.1894 in Staffelstein; admission to Fahnenjunker 1.10.1913; Lt. baye bayer. 1. telegr.Btl. 19.9.1914 (P. 7.1.1913); Reichsheer; Kdr. Nachr.Abt. 38 1.10.1935; Lieutenant Colonel 1.3.1937; Colonel 1.8.1939; Major General 1.8.1942; Lieutenant General 1.2.1943; General of the Intelligence Force 1.10.1944; 2. World War: N.R. 696 1.9.1939; Nafü 7. army 1.2.1940; Nafü Pz.Gr. Hoth 19.5.1940; Nafü Pz.Gr. Guderian 1.6.1940; Nafü Mil.Bez. C. France 15.7.1940; Nafü Pz.Gr. 2 11.12.1940; Nafü 2. army 6.10.1941; Führ. I.R. 482, 486, 4. Pz.Gr.Brig. and 18. Pz.Div. 25.4.1942; 129. I.D. 24.8.1942; Nafü Hgr. Mitte 1.10.1943 - 1.4.1944; 277. I.D. 12.4.1944; Chef H.Nachr.W. in OKH and Chef d. Wehrm.NVW 11.8.1944; German cross in gold; Knight's cross Processing reference: preliminary index Inventory description: Preparations, letters from the time of the war captivity 1945; news connections during the Second World War. Essays, material collections; Telephone and telex connections, 1935 - 1945; History of the Artillery Regiment 129, 1940 - 1945; Investigation into the radio service of the Russian, British and American armies in the Second World War; News connections between the command authorities during the war of agitation in 1914; Notebooks, 1926 - 1942; Manuscript on the use of television for strategic warfare in the future, 1954; Manuscript "Erich Fellgiebel, der Meister operativer Nachrichtenverbindungen" with material collection on Fellgiebel's work; Manuscript "Erich Fellgiebel, der Meister operativer Nachrichtenverbindungen" with material collection on Fellgiebel's work. July 1944; notes from the time as commander of the news department 38; IX. corps in the Eastern campaign 1941; correspondence from the activity for the Historical Division, 1946 - 1954; letters to the wife Hella, 1939 - 1945; pictures citation: BArch, N 591/...

History of the Inventory Designer: The Constitution of the German Reich of 16 April 1871, as well as the Constitution of the North German Confederation of 1867, contained no more detailed provisions on the design of the Reich Administration. Only the Reich Chancellor was the only responsible minister of the German Reich with constitutional rank. How he should fulfil his duties and tasks, on the other hand, remained largely undefined and left to the concrete will of the respective office holder. Because of this constitutional indeterminacy, the Reich level of the administration of the German Empire was bound to the character of the improvised and sometimes also the unstable until the end of the German Empire. At first it actually seemed as if Bismarck, as the only minister of the Reich, wanted to work with only one central, unified administrative authority. The Federal Chancellery, on whose organisation its later President Rudolf Delbrück had exerted considerable influence, began its work in 1867 as the office of the Federal Chancellor and was continued in the expansion of the North German Confederation into the German Reich under the name of the Reich Chancellery. The responsibilities of the Office were comprehensive and included the function of an office for the standing committees of the Federal Council, the handling of the revenues and expenditures of the Confederation and the preparation of the presidential bills. With the foundation of the German Reich, the Imperial Chancellery also took over the direct administration of the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine and the Reichseisenbahnen. Karl Hofmann, the President of the Reich Chancellery, was instructed by decree of 6 August 1877 to prepare for the creation of a special office which would take care of all the affairs of the Reich Chancellor for which he had "previously used forces of the Foreign Office for spatial reasons". Hofmann's submission of 29 Nov. 1877 then also provided for the establishment of such a central office under the designation "Special Office of the Reich Chancellor", but placed this office in the budget of the Reich Chancellery. However, Hofmann did not succeed in this attempt to fortify the position of his office again. Although Bismarck agreed with Hofmann's proposals concerning the internal organisation and salary classification of the staff in his new office, he changed the name of the new post to "Centralbureau" on the basis of his own hand. More important than this change in the nomenclature, however, was the fact that Bismarck, by decree of 16 December 1877, called on Hofmann to draw up a special budget for an independent authority not incorporated into the Imperial Chancellery. The draft of a "Budget for the Imperial Chancellor and his Central Office for the Budget Year 1878/79" provided funds for the salaries of a speaking council, an expediting secretary, a clerical secretary and a clerical servant. The new authority was to take its seat in the former Palais Radziwill in Wilhelmstraße 77; the Imperial Chancellor was also to move into an official residence there. Bismarck requested with Immediatbericht of 16 May 1878 from Wilhelm I. the permission for the constitution of the new office, which should be called Reich Chancellery, because this designation might correspond "most exactly to the position and the tasks of the same". Christoph von Tiedemann, who had been Bismarck's closest collaborator since 1876 and was therefore familiar with the habits of the Reich Chancellor to the best of his ability, became head of the Reich Chancellery. Under his leadership, the Reich Chancellery actually developed into a political relay station in the centre of the political decision-making structure, whose function was also recognised by the State Secretaries of the Reich Offices. Under constitutional law, the Reich Chancellery was never more than the office of the Reich Chancellor, which "had to mediate the official dealings of the latter with the heads of the individual departments". The office character is expressed not least in the official rank of the head of the Reich Chancellery and the very limited staff until the end of the imperial era. It was not until 1907 that the head of the Reich Chancellery was elevated to the rank of Undersecretary of State and thus placed on an equal footing with the senior officials of the Reich Offices. Although the number of employees grew from originally four in 1878 to 19 in 1908 and continued to rise to 25 in 1918 due to the requirements of the First World War, the Reich Chancellery never even came close to the number of staff of a Reich Office. The private and representative affairs of the Reich Chancellor were handled by the special office of the Reich Chancellor, which continued to reside in the Foreign Office even after the establishment of the Reich Chancellery. With the beginning of the First World War, a joint branch office of the Reich Chancellery and the Foreign Office was established at the Great Headquarters under the name "Formation Reichskanzler und Auswärtiges Amt". This branch existed until the end of the war. A permanent representative was here to represent the interests of the Reich Chancellor when he was in Berlin. In the Reich Chancellery, on the other hand, the Undersecretary of State ran the business if the Reich Chancellor was in the headquarters. In February 1917 a permanent representative of the Reich Chancellor was installed at the Supreme Army Command in order to get a better grip on the continuing disagreements between Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and the 3rd Supreme Army Command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. His task was to keep the Supreme Army Command constantly informed about the policy of the Reich Administration. With the forced abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II and the resignation of Reich Chancellor Max von Baden, business was transferred to the Council of People's Representatives on 11 Nov. 1918, which temporarily exercised the function of an imperial government until the government of Philipp Scheidemann took office on 19 February 1919. From 9 November 1918 to 3 March 1919, the head of the Reich Chancellery was the journalist Curt Baake. After the Weimar parliamentary democracy was established, the position of the Reich Chancellor also changed, as did that of the Reich Chancellery. While the Imperial Chancellor was no longer the only Imperial Minister, as he was in the Empire, he, as Chairman of the Imperial Government, determined the political guidelines in accordance with Articles 55 and 56 of the Imperial Constitution, through which he was able to exert a decisive influence on the fate of the Empire. His authority to issue directives was, of course, restricted by constitutional law and political practice to a considerable extent, for it had to be brought into line politically with the powers of other organs provided for in the Reich Constitution. These were less the Reichsrat, which as a permanent conference of delegates of the state governments had only limited powers in the field of legislation and administration and whose significance cannot be compared with that of the Bundesrat of the Kaiserreich, than the other two constitutional organs: Reichstag and Reichspräsident. With the change of the position of the Reich Chancellor in the Weimar Republic, the tasks of the Reich Chancellery also increased. The Reich Chancellery remained, as in the imperial period, the office of the Reich Chancellor for his dealings with the constitutional organs, now the Reich President, the Reichstag, the Reich Council and the individual Reich Ministers. The State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery took part in the cabinet meetings, informed the Reich Chancellor about the current fundamental issues of politics as a whole, accompanied him at all important conferences in Germany and abroad, observed the formation of opinion in parliament, the press, coordinated legislative work with the Reich parties on his behalf, and gave a lecture to the Reich Chancellor himself. The Reich Chancellery was also represented by a member in the above-mentioned intergroup meetings, in which the most important decisions of the Cabinet were discussed in advance with the party and parliamentary group leaders. She made sure that, despite the constant tensions in the constantly changing coalitions, the objective work of the Reich's departments continued. he preparation of the collegiate decisions and the reliable monitoring of their implementation, two of the Reich Chancellery's main tasks, was of particular importance in this respect. The necessary consequence of these increased tasks was an increase in the number of departments in the Reich Chancellery from three (as of 1910) to eight (as of 1927) and in the number of civil servants from 20 before the outbreak of the First World War. Formally, the Reich Chancellery had various offices attached to it, which were either directly subordinated to it, such as the Reich Headquarters for Homeland Service, or under the direct control of the Reich Chancellor. When, after the death of the Reich President von Hindenburg, the Reich Chancellor took over the powers and rights of the head of state of the German Reich by the Law of August 1, 1934 - including the supreme command of the Wehrmacht - and thus united the office of Reich President with the office of Reich Chancellor in his person, this also had an effect on his relationship with the Reich government. As head of state, Hitler had the right to appoint and dismiss the Reich Ministers without having to wait for the proposal of the Reich Chancellor, as the Reich President had done. The Reichsminister were therefore completely dependent on him. According to the Reich Law of 16 October 1934 on the Oath of the Reich Ministers and Members of the State Governments, the formula of which was later also incorporated into the German Civil Servants Law of 26 January 1937, they were obliged to loyalty and obedience to him. The Führer principle of the NSDAP now also applied to the Reich government, whose members the "Führer und Reichskanzler," as Hitler was called after the decree to the Reich Minister of the Interior of August 2, 1934, only had to advise in inner-German dealings, but were now also legally obliged to submit to his will in case of a dissenting opinion. This meant that the Reichskabinett was no longer a decision-making body in which the Reich Chancellor could possibly have been majorized, but rather a "Führerrat", which only had to advise the head of government. It was planned to also fix this changed position of the Reich Chancellor vis-à-vis the Reich government in law, an intention which, at Hitler's request, was postponed in the cabinet meeting of 26 January 1937, particularly with regard to foreign countries, until the creation of a new Basic Law. The above-mentioned concentration of state tasks on the Führer and Reich Chancellor naturally also had an effect on the responsibilities of the Reich Chancellery. Thus, for example, the Enabling Act already brought about a certain increase in tasks for them, because the laws passed by the Reich government were no longer to be drawn up and promulgated by the Reich President, but by the Reich Chancellor, and the fewest laws were still passed in the ordinary legislative process, through the Reichstag, but went the second legislative process described above, or were passed as Führer decrees or ordinances - without the participation of the Cabinet. The strengthened position of the head of the Reich Chancellery was conspicuous externally in the fact that the documents of government laws signed by Hitler and co-signed by the participating Reich Minister now always also bore the co-signature of the Reich Minister and head of the Reich Chancellery, who thus assumed responsibility for the proper course of the legislative process. After the establishment of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich at the end of August 1939, the signature of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich was also necessary in second place behind that of Hitler. In addition, the head of the Reich Chancellery also signed all the Führer decrees with legislative content and, if necessary - which never occurred - the Reichstag laws and the laws enacted on the basis of the "Volksgesetzgebung" (People's Legislation). The increasing workload of Hitler, who in addition to the powers of the Reich Chancellor and the Reich President also exercised supreme command over the Wehrmacht, meant that the cabinet meetings gradually ceased. In addition, the Reich Chancellor, who could no longer be informed by the Reich Ministers united in the cabinet about the completion of individual tasks in the departments, was increasingly dependent on information from the head of the Reich Chancellery. The task of selecting from the wealth of information supplied and processed those suitable for presentation to the Reich Chancellor and of deciding whether Hitler's intervention in certain matters appeared necessary was therefore the responsibility of the head of the Reich Chancellery, who granted him another key position in the leadership apparatus of the state civilian sector. The Reichsminister also had the opportunity to give individual lectures directly to the Reich Chancellor. But Hitler also made less and less use of this, so that the head of the Reich Chancellery practically advised him alone, which strengthened his position vis-à-vis the specialist ministers, who tried in vain to reach certain agreements among themselves through private meetings, especially towards the end of the war. The office of the Reich President, renamed "Präsidialkanzlei" and renamed "Präsidialkanzlei des Führers und Reichskanzlers" by decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor of 1 December 1937, remained responsible for the handling of all matters concerning the head of state even after the merger of the offices of the Reich President and the Reich Chancellor.B. the preparation of ceremonial receptions of foreign heads of state, princes and statesmen, the receipt of letters of attestation and recall from foreign diplomats, congratulations and condolences from the head of state, the processing of petitions in matters of grace and the entire title and religious order system. On the other hand, the political affairs in which, in addition to the decision of the Reich government, the decision of the head of the Reich was also necessary, were now taken care of by the Reich Chancellery, as was the preparation of political decisions, which up to then had to be made by the head of state, such as the enactment of organizational decrees, which were now the sole responsibility of the Reich Chancellery. Although the documents of appointment and dismissal for the higher Reich officials were still to be submitted to Hitler for execution by the office of the head of state, i.e. now by the head of the presidential chancellery, the responsible ministers and the Reich Chancellery were responsible for the factual and political preparation. Inventory description: Inventory history The day after the Reich Chancellery was established, on 19 May 1878, the expediting secretary in the Foreign Office, Hans Rudolf Sachse, who shortly afterwards began his service as a registrar in the new Reich authority, presented the draft of a registry order for the Reich Chancellery to the lecturing council of Tiedemann. His "basic features for the book and file keeping at the Reich Chancellery" were obviously based on the experience of the Foreign Office's records administration. The records were initially stored loosely in shelves in the registry, probably lying from the outset in the provided and already inscribed file covers. If a file unit had reached a thickness of 2 - 3 cm, it was provided with a linen back and another dust jacket and formed into a tape by means of thread stitching. This organisation of written records proved to be sufficient and practicable for a long series of years. With the gradual further development of the functions and activities of the Reich Chancellery, and as a result of the development of constitutional law and administrative organization in the Reich and in the federal states, however, it had to appear in need of change over time. At the turn of the century it was therefore decided to introduce a more differentiated file system, which came into force on 1 January 1900. The state's new beginning on 13 February 1919, the day on which Cabinet Scheidemann took office, brought a continuous cut in the registry of the Reich Chancellery. The entire file inventory was transferred to the old filing system and new files were created. The 30th of January meant a noticeable, but not sharp cut in the records administration of the Reich Chancellery. In order to start a new filing layer on this day, numerous files were removed from the current filing system, stapled and repositioned in the old filing system. They were replaced by new volumes. However, this only happened if the running band was filled to some extent anyway; if this was not the case, it was continued. In any case, the band counting began again with the number 1, although the series from the Weimar period continued seamlessly. The file structure, however, was left unchanged, and thread-stitching generally remained the same; standing files were used for the first time only for newly created series. In addition to the files kept in the registry, other records were also handed down by the fact that the Reich Chancellors and senior officials of the Reich Chancellery did not have handwritten records, personal papers, and a large part of their private correspondence filed in the registry, but as a rule kept them in their offices. It was not uncommon for such documents to be taken along when leaving office. Thus the estates of the Reich Chancellors Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Bülow, Hertling and Luther as well as of the chiefs of the Reich Chancellery Rottenburg and Pünder, which are kept in the Federal Archives, almost regularly contain official or semi-official documents in addition to private records, which have arisen from the exercise of official functions. The fact that the files of the Lammers Minister's Office have remained in the inventory is a consequence of their joint outsourcing with the inventory towards the end of the Second World War. In other cases, files of Reich Chancellors and senior officials with material on specific issues, with documents for conferences, meetings, etc., were handed over to the registry for safekeeping as soon as they were no longer needed and assigned to the relevant subject series as supplements. As a result, such hand files are scattered over the inventory, e.g. the hand files for the series "Execution of the Peace Treaty, Reparations" in the group "Foreign Affairs". The secret files of the Reich Chancellery formed another complex of documents separate from the registry holdings, the content, scope and structure of which unfortunately are not known in detail. According to the information available in the Federal Archives, they were probably burned before the end of the war by members of the Reich Chancellery in accordance with the decree of the Reich Minister of the Interior to the Reich Defence Commissioners of 12 October 1944 concerning "Behaviour of the Authorities in the Event of Enemy Occupation"[85] Individual fragments of secret files, which probably accidentally escaped annihilation and were in the inventory, were listed in the present find book at the end of the section "Files of the Minister's Office". In Potsdam, with a few exceptions, there are those old files of the Reich Chancellery from the period 1878 - 1919 which had been removed from the current registry in mid-February 1919 and deposited in an old file file. The Reichsarchiv had only been able to take it over in 1937 or 1938, after earlier efforts in vain. Only the old files of the service administration, including the personnel files, remained in the Authority. During the Second World War, the holdings of the Reich Archives, together with other archival materials, were moved to the Staßfurt salt mine near Magdeburg, where they fell into the hands of the Red Army in 1945. It was taken to the Soviet Union and 10 years later, in July 1955, handed over to the German Central Archive (renamed the "Central State Archive of the GDR" in 1973) in Potsdam. There it formed the inventory 07. 01. The inventory division into four departments was retained. In addition to the former Reichsarchiv holdings, the Central State Archives also kept about 800 individual records of the registry from the years 1933 - 1945, which were presumably found in the Wilhelmstraße office building. The majority of the Reichskanzleiakten from the years 1919 - 1945 as well as the old files of the office administration had been in Berlin only until the last phase of the war. As the situation in and around Berlin worsened, they were relocated to southern Germany, where they were confiscated by American troops in 1945. Via the Ministerial Collecting Center in Hessisch-Lichtenau and Fürstenhagen near Kassel, the central collection point for all material found by the Americans in their occupation zone[90], they reached the Berlin Documents Unit at the beginning of 1946. Here they - like other German files stored there - were evaluated for investigations against leading personalities from the state, the party and other areas of public life in preparation for war crimes trials. During the Berlin blockade in the summer of 1948, the files united in the Documents Unit were transferred to Whaddon Hall near Bletchley in the southern English county of Buckinghamshire. The files of the Reich Chancellery were stored there until 1958 and were provisionally arranged, recorded and selected for filming. In addition to the tradition of the Federal Foreign Office, which is primarily relevant, they also served as the basis for the edition of files on German foreign policy, which was initially edited exclusively by Anglo-Saxon and French historians. These files finally reached the Federal Archives in two transports in December 1958 and January 1959, a remainder at the end of April 1959. Here they form the listed holdings R 43 I, II. Archivische Bearbeitung During the provisional arrangement and indexing of the files of the Reich Chancellery from the years 1919 - 1945 in Whaddon Hall, the editors proceeded from two partial holdings. One of them essentially covered the tradition of the Weimar period, the other mainly the files from the period after 30 January 1933; they were briefly referred to as the "Old" and "New" Reich Chancelleries. As mentioned above, this division had already taken place in January/February 1933 in the Reich Chancellery and had been maintained during the relocation of the files during the war and after their confiscation. In the course of the processing, it was refrained from restoring the consistent arrangement of the file groups in both partial holdings, e.g. according to the alphabet of the group titles as they had existed in the registry of the Reich Chancellery. Only the registry connections within the groups that were presumably largely lost due to frequent relocations of the holdings were taken into account, whereby errors and mistakes were often made due to a lack of familiarity with the registry relationships and the file management of the Reich Chancellery. Nevertheless, it was possible to restore the mass of files to their original order with the help of the old signatures and tape numbers. Less satisfactorily, the classification of the not insignificant remnant of the tradition was resolved, which consisted of files of the minister's office, hand files of officials, secret file fragments, volumes with collections of circulars, circulars and press cuttings, registration aids, etc. Materials of this kind came to various places, especially at the end of both parts of the stock. In each part of the collection, the volumes were numbered consecutively. The distortion was also differentiated between the two partial stocks. The sequential number, the old signature and the runtime were included as formal specifications. In order to identify the contents of the file, the serial title was taken from the inscription of the file as the subject of the thread-stitched volumes, i.e. above all the files of the older part. In the case of standing folders, on the other hand, the titles of the individual transactions were entered in the list, as far as Rotuli was available with the corresponding information, and the subject series title was usually dispensed with. As a result, two very different lists were drawn up in terms of their degree of resolution. In the Federal Archives, these directories served for a long time as exclusive finding aids. This meant that the division into two parts, R 43 I (Old Reich Chancellery) and R 43 II (New Reich Chancellery), was retained. The consecutive numbering carried out in Waddon Hall also remained unchanged, since the files had already frequently been quoted in scientific publications afterwards. For conservation reasons, however, the documents stored in standing files and folders had to be transferred to archive folders; as a rule, two or three or sometimes more volumes were formed from the contents of one folder. This was necessary in order to separate files from various subject series that had been united in the Reich Chancellery and to form handy, not too extensive volumes. The volumes formed from the documents of a standing file, however, retained its serial number and were distinguished by the addition of letters (a, b, c, etc.). Within the volumes, the delimitation of the processes from each other, which had previously been recognizable by filing them in hanging binders, was marked by the insertion of separator sheets. On the other hand it turned out that 84 volumes from R 43 I and 205 volumes from R 43 II could not be separated and destroyed. The largest part (125 volumes) concerned the administration of the Aid Fund and the Disposition Fund of the Reich Chancellor; it consisted of individual files on the acceptance and use of donations from private sources, on the granting or refusal of support, other donations or gifts of honour to private individuals, associations and federations in emergencies, birthdays, anniversaries, events and on the occasion of the assumption of honorary sponsorships by the Reich Chancellor. The corresponding activity of the Reich Chancellery is already documented by several series in the groups "Reich Chancellor" and "Welfare" as well as by a number of files of the minister's office. The second largest group of documents collected (about 120 volumes) were files of the service administration. They mainly contained cash documents, invoices and receipts, company offers, correspondence with individual companies about deliveries and services for the Reich Chancellery as well as irrelevant documents about various house matters. The rest of the non-archival material consisted of volumes with multiple traditions and collections of official printed matter, in a few cases volumes containing only individual transmission letters. Finally, 44 volumes with documents of foreign provenances were removed from the holdings and assigned to other holdings, in some cases also to places outside the house. The majority of the documents are from the Community of Student Associations, which Reichsminister Dr. Lammers managed and whose business he had led through his office. Details are given in the Annex. The maps and plans, which were taken from the files for conservation reasons, were combined in the map archive to an independent group "Plan R 43 II". These are in particular planning breaks for the new building from the years 1943 ff. They are indexed by a separate index. The holdings of the Central State Archives (07.01) and the Federal Archives (R 43) were merged into holdings R 43 following the merger of the two archives in 1990. For the files of the Reich Chancellery from the years 1919 to 1945, a publication index was available since 1984, which also takes into account the files of this epoch kept in the Central State Archives until 1990. For the files of the "Old Reich Chancellery" (1878-1919), the Central State Archives had a finding aid book that had already been compiled in the Reich Archives. State of development: finding aids: publication find book (1984); online find book citation method: BArch, R 43-I/...

History of the Inventory Designer: The Constitution of the German Reich of 16 April 1871, as well as the Constitution of the North German Confederation of 1867, contained no more detailed provisions on the design of the Reich Administration. Only the Reich Chancellor was the only responsible minister of the German Reich with constitutional rank. How he should fulfil his duties and tasks, on the other hand, remained largely undefined and left to the concrete will of the respective office holder. Because of this constitutional indeterminacy, the Reich level of the administration of the German Empire was bound to the character of the improvised and sometimes also the unstable until the end of the German Empire. At first it actually seemed as if Bismarck, as the only minister of the Reich, wanted to work with only one central, unified administrative authority. The Federal Chancellery, on whose organisation its later President Rudolf Delbrück had exerted considerable influence, began its work in 1867 as the office of the Federal Chancellor and was continued in the expansion of the North German Confederation into the German Reich under the name of the Reich Chancellery. The responsibilities of the Office were comprehensive and included the function of an office for the standing committees of the Federal Council, the handling of the revenues and expenditures of the Confederation and the preparation of the presidential bills. With the foundation of the German Reich, the Imperial Chancellery also took over the direct administration of the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine and the Reichseisenbahnen. Karl Hofmann, the President of the Reich Chancellery, was instructed by decree of 6 August 1877 to prepare for the creation of a special office which would take care of all the affairs of the Reich Chancellor for which he had "previously used forces of the Foreign Office for spatial reasons". Hofmann's submission of 29 Nov. 1877 then also provided for the establishment of such a central office under the designation "Special Office of the Reich Chancellor", but placed this office in the budget of the Reich Chancellery. However, Hofmann did not succeed in this attempt to fortify the position of his office again. Although Bismarck agreed with Hofmann's proposals concerning the internal organisation and salary classification of the staff in his new office, he changed the name of the new post to "Centralbureau" on the basis of his own hand. More important than this change in the nomenclature, however, was the fact that Bismarck, by decree of 16 December 1877, called on Hofmann to draw up a special budget for an independent authority not incorporated into the Imperial Chancellery. The draft of a "Budget for the Imperial Chancellor and his Central Office for the Budget Year 1878/79" provided funds for the salaries of a speaking council, an expediting secretary, a clerical secretary and a clerical servant. The new authority was to take its seat in the former Palais Radziwill in Wilhelmstraße 77; the Imperial Chancellor was also to move into an official residence there. Bismarck requested with Immediatbericht of 16 May 1878 from Wilhelm I. the permission for the constitution of the new office, which should be called Reich Chancellery, because this designation might correspond "most exactly to the position and the tasks of the same". Christoph von Tiedemann, who had been Bismarck's closest collaborator since 1876 and was therefore familiar with the habits of the Reich Chancellor to the best of his ability, became head of the Reich Chancellery. Under his leadership, the Reich Chancellery actually developed into a political relay station in the centre of the political decision-making structure, whose function was also recognised by the State Secretaries of the Reich Offices. Under constitutional law, the Reich Chancellery was never more than the office of the Reich Chancellor, which "had to mediate the official dealings of the latter with the heads of the individual departments". The office character is expressed not least in the official rank of the head of the Reich Chancellery and the very limited staff until the end of the imperial era. It was not until 1907 that the head of the Reich Chancellery was elevated to the rank of Undersecretary of State and thus placed on an equal footing with the senior officials of the Reich Offices. Although the number of employees grew from originally four in 1878 to 19 in 1908 and continued to rise to 25 in 1918 due to the requirements of the First World War, the Reich Chancellery never even came close to the number of staff of a Reich Office. The private and representative affairs of the Reich Chancellor were handled by the special office of the Reich Chancellor, which continued to reside in the Foreign Office even after the establishment of the Reich Chancellery. With the beginning of the First World War, a joint branch office of the Reich Chancellery and the Foreign Office was established at the Great Headquarters under the name "Formation Reichskanzler und Auswärtiges Amt". This branch existed until the end of the war. A permanent representative was here to represent the interests of the Reich Chancellor when he was in Berlin. In the Reich Chancellery, on the other hand, the Undersecretary of State ran the business if the Reich Chancellor was in the headquarters. In February 1917 a permanent representative of the Reich Chancellor was installed at the Supreme Army Command in order to get a better grip on the continuing disagreements between Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and the 3rd Supreme Army Command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. His task was to keep the Supreme Army Command constantly informed about the policy of the Reich Administration. With the forced abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II and the resignation of Reich Chancellor Max von Baden, business was transferred to the Council of People's Representatives on 11 Nov. 1918, which temporarily exercised the function of an imperial government until the government of Philipp Scheidemann took office on 19 February 1919. From 9 November 1918 to 3 March 1919, the head of the Reich Chancellery was the journalist Curt Baake. After the Weimar parliamentary democracy was established, the position of the Reich Chancellor also changed, as did that of the Reich Chancellery. While the Imperial Chancellor was no longer the only Imperial Minister, as he was in the Empire, he, as Chairman of the Imperial Government, determined the political guidelines in accordance with Articles 55 and 56 of the Imperial Constitution, through which he was able to exert a decisive influence on the fate of the Empire. His authority to issue directives was, of course, restricted by constitutional law and political practice to a considerable extent, for it had to be brought into line politically with the powers of other organs provided for in the Reich Constitution. These were less the Reichsrat, which as a permanent conference of delegates of the state governments had only limited powers in the field of legislation and administration and whose significance cannot be compared with that of the Bundesrat of the Kaiserreich, than the other two constitutional organs: Reichstag and Reichspräsident. With the change of the position of the Reich Chancellor in the Weimar Republic, the tasks of the Reich Chancellery also increased. The Reich Chancellery remained, as in the imperial period, the office of the Reich Chancellor for his dealings with the constitutional organs, now the Reich President, the Reichstag, the Reich Council and the individual Reich Ministers. The State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery took part in the cabinet meetings, informed the Reich Chancellor about the current fundamental issues of politics as a whole, accompanied him at all important conferences in Germany and abroad, observed the formation of opinion in parliament, the press, coordinated legislative work with the Reich parties on his behalf, and gave a lecture to the Reich Chancellor himself. The Reich Chancellery was also represented by a member in the above-mentioned intergroup meetings, in which the most important decisions of the Cabinet were discussed in advance with the party and parliamentary group leaders. She made sure that, despite the constant tensions in the constantly changing coalitions, the objective work of the Reich's departments continued. he preparation of the collegiate decisions and the reliable monitoring of their implementation, two of the Reich Chancellery's main tasks, was of particular importance in this respect. The necessary consequence of these increased tasks was an increase in the number of departments in the Reich Chancellery from three (as of 1910) to eight (as of 1927) and in the number of civil servants from 20 before the outbreak of the First World War. Formally, the Reich Chancellery had various offices attached to it, which were either directly subordinated to it, such as the Reich Headquarters for Homeland Service, or under the direct control of the Reich Chancellor. When, after the death of the Reich President von Hindenburg, the Reich Chancellor took over the powers and rights of the head of state of the German Reich by the Law of August 1, 1934 - including the supreme command of the Wehrmacht - and thus united the office of Reich President with the office of Reich Chancellor in his person, this also had an effect on his relationship with the Reich government. As head of state, Hitler had the right to appoint and dismiss the Reich Ministers without having to wait for the proposal of the Reich Chancellor, as the Reich President had done. The Reichsminister were therefore completely dependent on him. According to the Reich Law of 16 October 1934 on the Oath of the Reich Ministers and Members of the State Governments, the formula of which was later also incorporated into the German Civil Servants Law of 26 January 1937, they were obliged to loyalty and obedience to him. The Führer principle of the NSDAP now also applied to the Reich government, whose members the "Führer und Reichskanzler," as Hitler was called after the decree to the Reich Minister of the Interior of August 2, 1934, only had to advise in inner-German dealings, but were now also legally obliged to submit to his will in case of a dissenting opinion. This meant that the Reichskabinett was no longer a decision-making body in which the Reich Chancellor could possibly have been majorized, but rather a "Führerrat", which only had to advise the head of government. It was planned to also fix this changed position of the Reich Chancellor vis-à-vis the Reich government in law, an intention which, at Hitler's request, was postponed in the cabinet meeting of 26 January 1937, particularly with regard to foreign countries, until the creation of a new Basic Law. The above-mentioned concentration of state tasks on the Führer and Reich Chancellor naturally also had an effect on the responsibilities of the Reich Chancellery. Thus, for example, the Enabling Act already brought about a certain increase in tasks for them, because the laws passed by the Reich government were no longer to be drawn up and promulgated by the Reich President, but by the Reich Chancellor, and the fewest laws were still passed in the ordinary legislative process, through the Reichstag, but went the second legislative process described above, or were passed as Führer decrees or ordinances - without the participation of the Cabinet. The strengthened position of the head of the Reich Chancellery was conspicuous externally in the fact that the documents of government laws signed by Hitler and co-signed by the participating Reich Minister now always also bore the co-signature of the Reich Minister and head of the Reich Chancellery, who thus assumed responsibility for the proper course of the legislative process. After the establishment of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich at the end of August 1939, the signature of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich was also necessary in second place behind that of Hitler. In addition, the head of the Reich Chancellery also signed all the Führer decrees with legislative content and, if necessary - which never occurred - the Reichstag laws and the laws enacted on the basis of the "Volksgesetzgebung" (People's Legislation). The increasing workload of Hitler, who in addition to the powers of the Reich Chancellor and the Reich President also exercised supreme command over the Wehrmacht, meant that the cabinet meetings gradually ceased. In addition, the Reich Chancellor, who could no longer be informed by the Reich Ministers united in the cabinet about the completion of individual tasks in the departments, was increasingly dependent on information from the head of the Reich Chancellery. The task of selecting from the wealth of information supplied and processed those suitable for presentation to the Reich Chancellor and of deciding whether Hitler's intervention in certain matters appeared necessary was therefore the responsibility of the head of the Reich Chancellery, who granted him another key position in the leadership apparatus of the state civilian sector. The Reichsminister also had the opportunity to give individual lectures directly to the Reich Chancellor. But Hitler also made less and less use of this, so that the head of the Reich Chancellery practically advised him alone, which strengthened his position vis-à-vis the specialist ministers, who tried in vain to reach certain agreements among themselves through private meetings, especially towards the end of the war. The office of the Reich President, renamed "Präsidialkanzlei" and renamed "Präsidialkanzlei des Führers und Reichskanzlers" by decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor of 1 December 1937, remained responsible for the handling of all matters concerning the head of state even after the merger of the offices of the Reich President and the Reich Chancellor.B. the preparation of ceremonial receptions of foreign heads of state, princes and statesmen, the receipt of letters of attestation and recall from foreign diplomats, congratulations and condolences from the head of state, the processing of petitions in matters of grace and the entire title and religious order system. On the other hand, the political affairs in which, in addition to the decision of the Reich government, the decision of the head of the Reich was also necessary, were now taken care of by the Reich Chancellery, as was the preparation of political decisions, which up to then had to be made by the head of state, such as the enactment of organizational decrees, which were now the sole responsibility of the Reich Chancellery. Although the documents of appointment and dismissal for the higher Reich officials were still to be submitted to Hitler for execution by the office of the head of state, i.e. now by the head of the presidential chancellery, the responsible ministers and the Reich Chancellery were responsible for the factual and political preparation. Inventory description: Inventory history The day after the Reich Chancellery was established, on 19 May 1878, the expediting secretary in the Foreign Office, Hans Rudolf Sachse, who shortly afterwards began his service as a registrar in the new Reich authority, presented the draft of a registry order for the Reich Chancellery to the lecturing council of Tiedemann. His "basic features for the book and file keeping at the Reich Chancellery" were obviously based on the experience of the Foreign Office's records administration. The records were initially stored loosely in shelves in the registry, probably lying from the outset in the provided and already inscribed file covers. If a file unit had reached a thickness of 2 - 3 cm, it was provided with a linen back and another dust jacket and formed into a tape by means of thread stitching. This organisation of written records proved to be sufficient and practicable for a long series of years. With the gradual further development of the functions and activities of the Reich Chancellery, and as a result of the development of constitutional law and administrative organization in the Reich and in the federal states, however, it had to appear in need of change over time. At the turn of the century it was therefore decided to introduce a more differentiated file system, which came into force on 1 January 1900. The state's new beginning on 13 February 1919, the day on which Cabinet Scheidemann took office, brought a continuous cut in the registry of the Reich Chancellery. The entire file inventory was transferred to the old filing system and new files were created. The 30th of January meant a noticeable, but not sharp cut in the records administration of the Reich Chancellery. In order to start a new filing layer on this day, numerous files were removed from the current filing system, stapled and repositioned in the old filing system. They were replaced by new volumes. However, this only happened if the running band was filled to some extent anyway; if this was not the case, it was continued. In any case, the band counting began again with the number 1, although the series from the Weimar period continued seamlessly. The file structure, however, was left unchanged, and thread-stitching generally remained the same; standing files were used for the first time only for newly created series. In addition to the files kept in the registry, other records were also handed down by the fact that the Reich Chancellors and senior officials of the Reich Chancellery did not have handwritten records, personal papers, and a large part of their private correspondence filed in the registry, but as a rule kept them in their offices. It was not uncommon for such documents to be taken along when leaving office. Thus the estates of the Reich Chancellors Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Bülow, Hertling and Luther as well as of the chiefs of the Reich Chancellery Rottenburg and Pünder, which are kept in the Federal Archives, almost regularly contain official or semi-official documents in addition to private records, which have arisen from the exercise of official functions. The fact that the files of the Lammers Minister's Office have remained in the inventory is a consequence of their joint outsourcing with the inventory towards the end of the Second World War. In other cases, files of Reich Chancellors and senior officials with material on specific issues, with documents for conferences, meetings, etc., were handed over to the registry for safekeeping as soon as they were no longer needed and assigned to the relevant subject series as supplements. As a result, such hand files are scattered over the inventory, e.g. the hand files for the series "Execution of the Peace Treaty, Reparations" in the group "Foreign Affairs". The secret files of the Reich Chancellery formed another complex of documents separate from the registry holdings, the content, scope and structure of which unfortunately are not known in detail. According to the information available in the Federal Archives, they were probably burned before the end of the war by members of the Reich Chancellery in accordance with the decree of the Reich Minister of the Interior to the Reich Defence Commissioners of 12 October 1944 concerning "Behaviour of the Authorities in the Event of Enemy Occupation"[85] Individual fragments of secret files, which probably accidentally escaped annihilation and were in the inventory, were listed in the present find book at the end of the section "Files of the Minister's Office". In Potsdam, with a few exceptions, there are those old files of the Reich Chancellery from the period 1878 - 1919 which had been removed from the current registry in mid-February 1919 and deposited in an old file file. The Reichsarchiv had only been able to take it over in 1937 or 1938, after earlier efforts in vain. Only the old files of the service administration, including the personnel files, remained in the Authority. During the Second World War, the holdings of the Reich Archives, together with other archival materials, were moved to the Staßfurt salt mine near Magdeburg, where they fell into the hands of the Red Army in 1945. It was taken to the Soviet Union and 10 years later, in July 1955, handed over to the German Central Archive (renamed the "Central State Archive of the GDR" in 1973) in Potsdam. There it formed the inventory 07. 01. The inventory division into four departments was retained. In addition to the former Reichsarchiv holdings, the Central State Archives also kept about 800 individual records of the registry from the years 1933 - 1945, which were presumably found in the Wilhelmstraße office building. The majority of the Reichskanzleiakten from the years 1919 - 1945 as well as the old files of the office administration had been in Berlin only until the last phase of the war. As the situation in and around Berlin worsened, they were relocated to southern Germany, where they were confiscated by American troops in 1945. Via the Ministerial Collecting Center in Hessisch-Lichtenau and Fürstenhagen near Kassel, the central collection point for all material found by the Americans in their occupation zone[90], they reached the Berlin Documents Unit at the beginning of 1946. Here they - like other German files stored there - were evaluated for investigations against leading personalities from the state, the party and other areas of public life in preparation for war crimes trials. During the Berlin blockade in the summer of 1948, the files united in the Documents Unit were transferred to Whaddon Hall near Bletchley in the southern English county of Buckinghamshire. The files of the Reich Chancellery were stored there until 1958 and were provisionally arranged, recorded and selected for filming. In addition to the tradition of the Federal Foreign Office, which is primarily relevant, they also served as the basis for the edition of files on German foreign policy, which was initially edited exclusively by Anglo-Saxon and French historians. These files finally reached the Federal Archives in two transports in December 1958 and January 1959, a remainder at the end of April 1959. Here they form the listed holdings R 43 I, II. Archivische Bearbeitung During the provisional arrangement and indexing of the files of the Reich Chancellery from the years 1919 - 1945 in Whaddon Hall, the editors proceeded from two partial holdings. One of them essentially covered the tradition of the Weimar period, the other mainly the files from the period after 30 January 1933; they were briefly referred to as the "Old" and "New" Reich Chancelleries. As mentioned above, this division had already taken place in January/February 1933 in the Reich Chancellery and had been maintained during the relocation of the files during the war and after their confiscation. In the course of the processing, it was refrained from restoring the consistent arrangement of the file groups in both partial holdings, e.g. according to the alphabet of the group titles as they had existed in the registry of the Reich Chancellery. Only the registry connections within the groups that were presumably largely lost due to frequent relocations of the holdings were taken into account, whereby errors and mistakes were often made due to a lack of familiarity with the registry relationships and the file management of the Reich Chancellery. Nevertheless, it was possible to restore the mass of files to their original order with the help of the old signatures and tape numbers. Less satisfactorily, the classification of the not insignificant remnant of the tradition was resolved, which consisted of files of the minister's office, hand files of officials, secret file fragments, volumes with collections of circulars, circulars and press cuttings, registration aids, etc. Materials of this kind came to various places, especially at the end of both parts of the stock. In each part of the collection, the volumes were numbered consecutively. The distortion was also differentiated between the two partial stocks. The sequential number, the old signature and the runtime were included as formal specifications. In order to identify the contents of the file, the serial title was taken from the inscription of the file as the subject of the thread-stitched volumes, i.e. above all the files of the older part. In the case of standing folders, on the other hand, the titles of the individual transactions were entered in the list, as far as Rotuli was available with the corresponding information, and the subject series title was usually dispensed with. As a result, two very different lists were drawn up in terms of their degree of resolution. In the Federal Archives, these directories served for a long time as exclusive finding aids. This meant that the division into two parts, R 43 I (Old Reich Chancellery) and R 43 II (New Reich Chancellery), was retained. The consecutive numbering carried out in Waddon Hall also remained unchanged, since the files had already frequently been quoted in scientific publications afterwards. For conservation reasons, however, the documents stored in standing files and folders had to be transferred to archive folders; as a rule, two or three or sometimes more volumes were formed from the contents of one folder. This was necessary in order to separate files from various subject series that had been united in the Reich Chancellery and to form handy, not too extensive volumes. The volumes formed from the documents of a standing file, however, retained its serial number and were distinguished by the addition of letters (a, b, c, etc.). Within the volumes, the delimitation of the processes from each other, which had previously been recognizable by filing them in hanging binders, was marked by the insertion of separator sheets. On the other hand it turned out that 84 volumes from R 43 I and 205 volumes from R 43 II could not be separated and destroyed. The largest part (125 volumes) concerned the administration of the Aid Fund and the Disposition Fund of the Reich Chancellor; it consisted of individual files on the acceptance and use of donations from private sources, on the granting or refusal of support, other donations or gifts of honour to private individuals, associations and federations in emergencies, birthdays, anniversaries, events and on the occasion of the assumption of honorary sponsorships by the Reich Chancellor. The corresponding activity of the Reich Chancellery is already documented by several series in the groups "Reich Chancellor" and "Welfare" as well as by a number of files of the minister's office. The second largest group of documents collected (about 120 volumes) were files of the service administration. They mainly contained cash documents, invoices and receipts, company offers, correspondence with individual companies about deliveries and services for the Reich Chancellery as well as irrelevant documents about various house matters. The rest of the non-archival material consisted of volumes with multiple traditions and collections of official printed matter, in a few cases volumes containing only individual transmission letters. Finally, 44 volumes with documents of foreign provenances were removed from the holdings and assigned to other holdings, in some cases also to places outside the house. The majority of the documents are from the Community of Student Associations, which Reichsminister Dr. Lammers managed and whose business he had led through his office. Details are given in the Annex. The maps and plans, which were taken from the files for conservation reasons, were combined in the map archive to an independent group "Plan R 43 II". These are in particular planning breaks for the new building from the years 1943 ff. They are indexed by a separate index. The holdings of the Central State Archives (07.01) and the Federal Archives (R 43) were merged into holdings R 43 following the merger of the two archives in 1990. For the files of the Reich Chancellery from the years 1919 to 1945, a publication index was available since 1984, which also takes into account the files of this epoch kept in the Central State Archives until 1990. For the files of the "Old Reich Chancellery" (1878-1919), the Central State Archives had a finding aid book that had already been compiled in the Reich Archives. In addition to the files of the "old" Reich Chancellery from the years 1878 - 1918 described since January 2005 with an online find book (editor: Mr. Hollmann), those of the so-called "new" Reich Chancellery for the years 1919 - 1945 were also added in September 2006 (editor: Simone Walther). Because of the recording of the approx. 10,000 archive units in three different signature systems or partial inventories at that time, there were some database-technical peculiarities to consider. A re-signing of the microfilmed files for easier integration as closed holdings in the database of the Federal Archives was out of the question for various archival reasons. The units of description (files) identified with various text programs in the 1984 Publication Findbuch were imported into the database using a retroco-version procedure. Three so-called partial or secondary stocks were created, which differ from each other by their signature system. In the earlier distortion, the editors formed tape series or series that very often consisted of two or three of the "partial stocks". In the database, however, it is technically not possible to create such a tape or series across all stocks. The presentation of the series and volume series in the now available online finding aid required the relatively time-consuming "manual" merging of the various parts of a volume sequence in the cross-folder classification scheme (classification). In such a volume series, the volume sequence title appears repeatedly within the volume sequence before the volume or the volumes from another "partial stock". Since the creation of series, partly with additional subordinate volume sequences from different partial stocks, was just as impossible to implement, the corresponding information was partly recorded in supplementary classification points. As a rule, however, the structure handed down in the Publication Findbuch has been retained and the units of description have been classified according to their order. In the course of the processing, the signatures displayed incorrectly or incompletely in the printed finding aids could be corrected. A revision of the directory data according to the now valid archive rules did not seem to be necessary due to the very high effort involved. Minor corrections were made to the titles. Dates in titles that did not belong directly to the title were moved from there to the differentiated runtime field. Citation style: BArch, R 43/...

History of the inventor: Joseph Goebbels, who had already been head of the NSDAP's Reich Propaganda Department since 1929, had certainly developed plans for a Ministry of Propaganda even before the seizure of power.(1) The Reichskabinett (Reich Cabinet) dealt with the issue of the Propaganda Department on 11 September. The arguments for the foundation, which the Reich Chancellor (Hitler) himself presented, sounded extremely harmless ex post and far from future realities: "One of the predominant tasks of this ministry would be the preparation of important acts of government. On the oil and fat issue, for example, which now occupies the cabinet, the people should be enlightened in the direction that the farmer would perish if something were not done to improve the sale of his products. The importance of this matter also for the war measures would have to be pointed out ..." Government action would only begin if the awareness-raising work had taken place and worked for some time. ..."(2) On 16 March 1933, however, Goebbels described the future tasks of his ministry programmatically three days after his appointment in a remarkably open manner in front of press representatives: "If this government is now determined never to give way again, never and under no circumstances, then it need not make use of the dead power of the bayonet, then in the long run it will not be able to be satisfied with knowing 52 percent behind it ..., but it will have to see its next task in winning the remaining 48 percent for itself. This is not only possible through objective work". And about the nature of his propaganda he proclaimed: "Not any aesthete can judge the methods of propaganda. A binding judgment can only be given on the basis of success. For propaganda is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.(3) A timid attempt by Hugenberg to at least delay the decision to establish the Ministry of Propaganda in the cabinet meeting of March 11, 1933 failed miserably. Already on 13 March 1933 the law on the establishment of the RMVP was signed by the Reich President and the "writer" Dr. Goebbels was appointed minister.(4) Almost three weeks later, on 5 April 1933, Goebbels noted in his diary: "The organisation of the ministry is finished".(5) In difficult negotiations(6) with the ministries, which had to cede parts of their competences to the new ministry, the responsibilities were determined in detail. The RMVP was responsible for all tasks relating to intellectual influence on the nation, advertising for the state, culture and economy, informing the domestic and foreign public about them, and the administration of all institutions serving these purposes. As a result, the business area of the RMVP will be: 1. from the business area of the Federal Foreign Office: News and education abroad, art, art exhibitions, film and sports abroad. 2. From the RMI division: General Domestic Enlightenment, Hochschule für Politik, introduction and celebration of national holidays and celebration of national holidays with the participation of the RMI, press (with Institute for Newspaper Science), radio, national anthem, German Library in Leipzig, art (but without art-historical institute in Florence, copyright protection for works of literature and art, directory of nationally valuable works of art, German-Austrian Convention on the Export of Art, Protection of Works of Art and Monuments, Protection and Maintenance of Landscape and Natural Monuments, Nature Parks, Preservation of Buildings of Special Historical Importance, Preservation of National Monuments, Verband Deutscher Vereine für Volkskunde, Reich Memorial), Music Conservation, including the Philharmonic Orchestra, Theatre Matters, Cinema, Combating Trash and Dirt 3. From the business areas of the Reich Ministry of Economics and the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture: Economic Advertising, Exhibitions, Trade Fairs and Advertising 4. From the business areas of the Reich Ministry of Posts and the Reich Ministry of Transportation: Traffic Advertising Furthermore, all radio matters dealt with by the Reich Ministry of Posts and the Reich Ministry of Transportation are transferred from the business area of the Reich Ministry of Posts, unless they concern the technical administration outside the premises of the Reich Broadcasting Company and the radio companies. In matters of technical administration, the RMVP shall be involved to the extent necessary to carry out its own tasks, in particular in determining the conditions for the awarding of broadcasting rights and the regulation of fees. In particular, the representation of the Reich in the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft and the broadcasting companies is fully transferred to the RMVP. The RMVP is in charge of all tasks, including legislation, in the designated areas. The general principles shall apply to the participation of the other Reich Ministers." (RGBl. 1933 I, p. 449) These competences were exercised by seven departments, so that the business distribution plan of 1 Oct. 1933 (7) shows the following picture: Ministerial office (with five employees), directly subordinated to the Minister. State Secretary, at the same time Head of Press of the Reich Government I. Administration and Law with one main office Administration, three departments as well as the registry II. Propaganda with 10 departments 1. Positive world view propaganda, shaping in state life, press photography 2. Jewish question, foundation for victims of work, Versailles treaty, national literature, publishing etc. 3. Demonstrations and regional organisation 4. Opposing world views 5. German University of Politics 6. Youth and sports issues 7. Economic and social policy 8. Agricultural and eastern issues 9. Transport 10. Public health III. Broadcasting with three sections 1. Broadcasting 2. Political and cultural affairs of broadcasting 3. Organisation and administrative issues of German broadcasting IV. Press, simultaneously press department of the Reich government with eleven papers V. Film with three papers VI. Theatre, music and art with three papers VII. Defence (defence against lies at home and abroad) with eight papers Goebbels was obviously not satisfied with the official title of his ministry. The extensive tasks in the fields of culture and the arts did not come into their own and the word propaganda, of which he was aware, had a "bitter aftertaste" (8). His proposal to rename his department "Reichsministerium für Kultur und Volksaufklärung", however, met with Hitler's rejection. (9) In July 1933, a circular issued by the Reich Chancellor drew the attention of the Reich governors to the exclusive competence of the Reich or of the new Ministry for the above-mentioned competences and called on them to cede to the RMVP any existing budget funds and offices of the Länder. (10) At the same time, 13 regional offices were established as the substructure of the Ministry, the sprinkles of which corresponded approximately to those of the regional employment offices, and 18 imperial propaganda offices, which subdivided the territory of the regional offices once again. After the Reichspropagandastellen were already converted after short time (approx. 1934) to Landesstellen, in each Gau of the NSDAP a Landesstelle of the RMVP was located. Their leaders were in personal union at the same time leaders of the Gaupropagandaleitungen of the NSDAP, which in its leadership, the Reichspropagandalleitung, was also perceived by Goebbels in personal union. (11) As a result, conflicts of loyalty between the Gaupropaganda leaders/leaders of the RMVP regional offices were unavoidable in disputes between Goebbels and individual Gauleiters. According to theory, the regional offices were supposed to monitor and implement the political decisions made in the ministry in the individual districts, but in practice their heads were often more dependent on their respective Gauleiter than on the ministry due to the above-mentioned personal union. By the Führer decree of 9 September 1937 (RGBl. 1937 I, p. 1009), the Landesstellen were renamed Reichspropagandaämter and elevated to Reich authorities. After the integration of Austria there were no less than 42 Reichspropagandaämter with 1400 full-time employees. (12) In addition to the state offices and Reich Propaganda Offices, a whole range of offices, organizations, associations, societies and societies soon developed, which are to be counted to the subordinate area of the Ministry. (13) Despite the apparently clear regulation on the responsibilities of the RMVP, the 13 years of its existence were marked by disputes over responsibilities with other ministries, in particular with the ministers Rust, Rosenberg and Ribbentrop, of whom Goebbels, as is known, held very little personally. Successes and failures in the competence disputes cannot be followed in detail here; they depended to a large extent on Hitler's relationship with Goebbels. For example, Goebbels did not succeed in extending his competence in theatre to the Prussian State Theatres in Berlin. By contrast, in 1943 the RMVP assumed responsibility for carrying out the Eastern propaganda, while Rosenberg, as Reich Minister for the occupied Eastern territories, was left with only the authority to issue guidelines. (14) In the conflict with the Federal Foreign Office over the delimitation of responsibilities for foreign propaganda, an arrangement was reached in a working agreement in October 1941. (15) Wehrmacht propaganda also remained long and controversial. Despite many efforts (16), Goebbels did not succeed in making a decisive break in the competencies of the OKW/Wpr department until the end of the war in March 1945. Propaganda into the Wehrmacht and about the Wehrmacht at home and abroad was then to be taken in charge by the RMVP. It is not possible to determine whether the planned organizational consequences have yet been implemented. (17) Another major success for Goebbels was the establishment of the Reichsinspektion für zivile Luftschutzmaßnahmen (Reich Inspection for Civilian Air Defence Measures), which was headed by the RMVP (18), and his appointment as Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War Operations by Führer Decree of 25 July 1944 (19). For the last months of the Third Reich, Goebbels had reached the zenith of power with this function, apart from his appointment as Reich Chancellor in Hitler's last will and testament of April 29, 1945, which had become effective only theoretically. As Reich Plenipotentiary for the total deployment in war, he had extremely far-reaching powers over the entire state apparatus with the exception of the Wehrmacht. (20) Until that date, the competences of the RMVP had changed only slightly in the main features of all disputes over jurisdiction. That it nevertheless grew enormously and steadily until 1943 (21) was mainly due to diversification and intensification in the performance of its tasks. After 1938, the expansive foreign policy of the Third Reich necessitated further propaganda agencies to direct and influence public opinion in the incorporated and occupied territories. In the occupied territories with civil administrations, "departments" (main departments) for "popular enlightenment and propaganda" were usually set up in the territories with military administration, "propaganda departments", which exercised roughly the functions of the Reich Propaganda Offices. Their position between their superior military services and the RMVP, which sought to influence the content of the propaganda and from where part of the personnel came, was a constant source of conflict. As an indication for the weighting of the individual areas of responsibility of the Ministry in relation to each other, the expenditures for the individual areas in the 10 years from March 1933 to March 1943 are mentioned. With a total volume of 881,541,376.78 RM (22), the expenses for the Active propaganda: 21.8 Communications: 17.8 Music, visual arts, literature: 6.2 Film: 11.5 Theatres: 26.4 Civil servants and equipment: 4.3 Salaries, business needs, including film testing agencies and RPÄ: 12.0 By 1942, the RMVP and its division had been continuously expanded, before facilities in the subordinate area were shut down and departments in the ministry were merged as part of the total war from 1943 onwards. The business distribution plan of Nov. 1942 was as follows: (23) Ministerial Office, reporting directly to the Minister with adjutants, personal advisers and press officers of the Minister, a total of 10 employees State Secretaries Leopold Gutterer, Reich Press Head Dr. Otto Dietrich, Hermann Esser Budget Department (H) with 11 departments; reporting to the Head of the Department, the Main Office and the House Administration Personnel Department (Pers) with seven departments Legal and Organisation Department (R) with three departments Propaganda Department (Pro) with the following ten departments: 1. Political Propaganda 2. Cultural Propaganda 3. Propaganda Exploration 4. Public Health, Social Policy 5. Economy 6. Imperial Propaganda Offices 7. Major Events 8. Youth and Sports 9. Representation 10. Budget of the Department, Preparation of the Peace Treaties, Stagma and other Press Department of the Imperial Government I. Department German Press (DP) with 13 Speeches II. Foreign Press Department (AP) with 19 papers III. Journal Press Department /ZP) with five papers Foreign Press Department (A) with the following five groups: 1. Organization 2. Europe and Middle East 3. Non-European 4. Propaganda Media 5. Deployment abroad and in the Reich Tourism Department (FV) with four units Broadcasting Department (Rfk) with the following eight units 1. Coordination, Interradio and others 2. Broadcasting Command Office 3. Mob Department 4. Broadcasting Programme Support 5. Foreign Broadcasting 6. Broadcasting Industry 7. Broadcasting Organisation 8. Rundfunk-Erkundungsdienst Filmabteilung (F) with five departments Schrifttumsabteilung (S ) with eight departments Theaterabteilung (T) with seven departments Bildende Kunst (BK) with four departments Musik-Abteilung (M) with ten departments Reichsverteidigung (RV) with six departments Abteilung für die besetztischen Ostgebiete (Ost) with twelve departments Generalreferate with State Secretary Gutterer directly subordinated: 1. Exhibitions and Fairs 2nd General Cultural Department (General Cultural Department for the Reich Capital) 3rd General Department for Reich Chamber of Culture Matters 4th Technology (propaganda, radio, film, sound, stage, press, service installations of the RMVP) Press Recording Office for the PK reports of the Press Department of the Reich Government (directly subordinated to the Reich Press Head) A major change in this distribution of responsibilities took place in September 1944 (24). The art departments of theatre, music and visual arts were dissolved and merged into a single department of culture (cult). The East Department was integrated into the Propaganda Department as a main department, the Tourism Department was shut down and the General Departments of the Reich Cultural Chamber, Armaments and Construction and Propaganda Troops were dissolved. Notes (1) J. Goebbels: Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, p. 28. (2) R 43 II/1149, p. 5, excerpt from the minutes of the ministerial meeting of 11 March 1933. (3) R 43 II/1149, pp. 25 - 29, wording of Goebbels' speech of 16 March 1933 according to W. T. B. (4) R 43 II/1149, RGBl. 1933 I, p. 104 (5) J. Goebbels: Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, p. 293 (6) In an elaboration presumably by Goebbels on a "Reichskommissariat für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda" to be created (R 43 II/1149, pp. 49 - 53) further competences had been demanded. In particular, additional responsibilities were demanded of the German section of the RMI and section VI of the AA, as well as in foreign propaganda. (7) R 43 II/1449, pp. 126 - 133. Heiber gives a diagram of the organisational development of the RMVP at department level with the names of the department heads on the inside of the cover of his Goebbels biography. (8) See speech to representatives of the press on the tasks of the RMVP of 16 March 1933 in R 43 II/1149. It was not without reason that there was a language regulation for the press according to which the term propaganda was to be used only in a positive sense (R 55/1410, Decree of the RMVP to the RPA Nuremberg, 8 Nov. 1940). (9) R 43 II/1149, p. 169, Note by Lammers of 9 May 1934 on a lecture to the Reich Chancellor. (10) R 43 II/1149. (11) After the establishment of the Reichskulturkammer organization, they were also state cultural administrators in the substructure of the RKK. (12) Boelcke, Kriegspropaganda, p. 185. (13) Ebendort, p. 136 ff. there are hints for some institutions. (14) The Führer's order concerning the delimitation of responsibilities dated 15 Aug. 1943, cf. R 55/1435, 1390. (15) Boelcke, Kriegspropaganda, p. 126/127. (16) Lochner, Joseph Goebbels, p. 334, p. 442. (17) R 55/618, p. 123; cf. also the depiction of Hasso v. Wedel, the propaganda troops of the German Wehrmacht. Neckargemünd 1962, Die Wehrmacht im Kampf, vol. 34 (18) Führer decree of Dec. 21, 1943, R 55/441 (19) RGBl. 1944, p. 161, R 43 II/664 a. (20) This competence is virtually not reflected in the RMVP files available in the BA. However, it is well documented in R 43 II. See R 43 II/664 a. (21) See the annual budget negotiations on increasing the number of posts in R 2/4752 - 4762. (22) R 55/862, Statistical overview of monetary transactions. Accordingly, 88,5 % of the expenditure was covered by the licence fee. It remains unclear whether the old budgetary expenditure has been taken into account. (23) R 55/1314 According to this schedule of responsibilities, the files held in the Federal Archives were essentially classified. (24) Newsletter of 13 Sept. 1944 in R 55/441. Inventory description: Inventory history The RMVP records have suffered substantial losses, although the main building of the Ministry, the Ordenspalais am Wilhelmplatz, was destroyed relatively late and almost accidentally in March 1945. Large parts of the old registries, including the previous files from the Federal Foreign Office and the Reich Ministry of the Interior (1), had already been destroyed by air raids in 1944. Moreover, in the last days of the war before and during the conquest of Berlin by the Soviet Russian army, files were also systematically destroyed. (2) In view of the total collapse and devastation of Berlin by the air war, it is not surprising that hardly any manual or private files of RMVP employees have been handed down. Notable exceptions are, in particular, documents from Ministerialrat Bade (press department) (3) and hand files of the head of the broadcasting department, Ministerialdirigent Fritzsche. In this context, the diaries of Goebbels should also be mentioned, which, with the exception of those edited by Lochner in 1948, had been lost for almost 30 years. (4) The bulk of the volumes available in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz until 1996 was transferred from Alexandria (cf. Guide No. 22) and from the Berlin Document Center to the Bundesarchiv in the years 1959 - 1963. The personnel files still held back were added to the portfolio in 2007. The RMVP files kept by the Ministry of State Security of the GDR (mainly personnel files, personnel processes of the theatre, music and defence departments), which were stored in the so-called NS archive until 2006, are also assigned to the holdings. Not in Allied hands was only a small collection from the Music Department and some documents from the German Press Department, which were transferred to the Federal Archives in 1969 as part of the land consolidation with the Secret State Archives of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Some original RMVP files can still be found at the Hoover Institution Standford, the Yivo Institute New York and the Wiener Library London. Fortunately, all three institutions were willing to produce microfilms for the Federal Archives (5). In 1974, the Rijksinstitut voor Oologsdocumentatie Amsterdam (Rijksinstitut for Oologsdocumentatie Amsterdam) kindly handed over some original fragments of files to the Federal Archives. In 1946, officers of the French and Soviet secret services found films of about 35,000 documents that had been filmed in the RMVP and buried near Potsdam at the end of the war with the help of an American mine detector (6). The films were taken to Paris to make re-enlargements of them, and it is possible that they will still be kept in the French secret service. The Americans apparently did not receive copies because they had withheld from the French documents of other provenance found in the CSSR. Only incomplete information is available about the content of the films; it can be assumed, however, that not exactly unimportant files have been filmed. Notes (1) Only a few handfiles and a few volumes on the promotion of music have survived. (2) Files of the Reichsfilmarchiv that had been moved to Grasleben/Helmstedt were even to be destroyed by agents of the RSHA when they threatened to fall into the hands of the English (cf. R 55/618). (3) Cf. Kl. Erw. 615, which is a selection of the bath papers from the time around 1933 in the Hoover library. (4) Frankfurter Allgemeine, 21 Nov. 1974, reader's letter. Insignificant fragments from Goebbels' estate from his student days can be found in the Federal Archives under the signature Kl. Erw. 254. (5) A collection of newspaper clippings concerning Goebbels in the amount of 82 Bde for the years 1931 - 1943 was not filmed at the Yivo-Institut. (6) See the documents in: National Archives Washington, RG 260 OMGUS 35/35 folder 19. Archival processing The order and indexing work on the holdings was relatively time-consuming and difficult, as the order of the files was extremely poor. On the one hand there were no detailed file plans or other registry aids for the mass of files from the budget and personnel departments, on the other hand the file management in the ministry, which at least in its development phase was always deliberately unbureaucratic, left a lot to be desired. Especially during the war, when inexperienced auxiliaries had to be used more and more during the war, the Ministry's staff often complained about the inadequacy of the registries. The organisation of the RMVP's records management showed typical features of office reform (1): Registries were kept on a departmental basis, with each registry having a "self-contained partial list of files". The documents were stored in standing folders (System Herdegen). Instead of a diary, an alphabetical mailing card was kept, separated according to authorities and private persons. The reference numbers consisted of the department letter, file number, date as well as an indication, on which card of an order file the procedure was seized. All in all, the files of the Budget and Human Resources Department were in a certain, albeit unsatisfactory, state of order when they entered the Federal Archives. Numerous volumes from the other departments, on the other hand, were formed in a chaotic manner, possibly as a result of a provisional recording of loose written material when it was confiscated. These were often amorphous and fragmentary materials that lacked the characteristics of organically grown writing. So it was practically impossible to form meaningful band units in all subjects. In the case of some "mixed volumes" with written material on numerous file numbers, only the most frequent ones were noted in the finding aid book. Due to the high loss of files, no strict evaluation standard was applied to the files. The main items collected were volumes from the budget department on preliminary checks in the subordinate area and individual procedures for the procurement and management of managed goods for the purposes of the Ministry. Formal records of non-compliant positions in the business division and a number of unarchivalable documents from the Human Resources Department will still be kept for the foreseeable future for the purpose of issuing service time statements. It is not listed in this guide. Preparatory work for the indexing of the Koblenz part of the stock was carried out by Mr. Oberarchivrat Regel (1967) with regard to the files of the budget department on the Reich's own film assets, Mr. Ltd. Archivdirektor Dr. Boberach (1966) with regard to correspondence and the reference files of the head of the broadcasting department, Hans Fritzsche and Ms. Archivoberinspektorin Schneider, née Fisch (1966) for files of the propaganda department. In 2005, the inventories of the finding aids of both sections of the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda were imported into the database of the Federal Archives via a retroconversion procedure. The data records were then combined in a classification. Despite the inhomogeneity of the traditions of most specialist departments, it was advisable to maintain the division by departments. (2) Within the departments, the structure was essentially based on file numbers and factual contexts. The file numbers used in the RMVP were - as far as possible - used as aids for further subdivision. The final step was the integration of the personnel files and personal documents from the NS archive (approx. 5000 individual transactions) and the former Berlin Document Center (approx. 700 transactions). The documents taken over are mainly documents from the personnel department (in addition to personnel files also questionnaires and index cards), theatre (applications, appointments, confirmation procedures) and imperial defence (applications in propaganda companies). The personal records also contain isolated documents on denazification from the period 1946-1950. Since a relatively large number of individual transactions from the NS archives were often only a few sheets, transactions that objectively related to one transaction (e.g. applications for interpreting) were merged into one file. The names of the individual persons as well as the old signatures from the NS archive can still be traced via the BASYS-P database. Both the files from the NS archive and those from the former BDC are not always filed according to the provenance principle. However, the files were not separated again. Most of the files taken over from the former BDC are personal files and questionnaires as well as personnel index cards of individual employees of broadcasting stations. A search is still possible via the BASYS-P database. The procedures for the donation "Artist's thanks" still present in the personal records of the former BDC concerning the Theatre Department were not adopted in this context (approx. 15,000 procedures). The names are entered in the BASYS-P database and can be searched there. Notes (1) Rules of Procedure and Registration of 8 May 1942 in R 55/ 618. (2) The structure of the business distribution plan of Nov. 1942 was used as a basis. Abbreviations AA = Federal Foreign Office Department A = Department Abroad AP = Foreign Press BDC = Berlin Document Center BdS = Commander of the Security Police ChdZ = Chief of the Civil Administration DAF = German Labour Front DASD = German Amateur Broadcasting Service e.V. DNB = Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro DRK = Deutsches Rotes Kreuz Dt. = Deutsch DVO = Durchführungsverordnung french = French Gestapo = Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt KdF = Kraft durch Freude KdG = Kommandeur der Gendarmerie KdS = Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei Kl. Erw. Small acquisition KLV = Kinderlandverschickung LG = District Court MA = Military Archives, Department of the Federal Archives MdR = Member of the Reichstag MinRat = Ministerialrat MdL = Member of the Landtag NDR = Norddeutscher Rundfunk NSV = National Socialist Volkswohlfahrt o. Az. = without file number or date = without date OKW = Oberkommando der Wehrmacht OLG = Oberstes Landesgericht OLT = Oberleutnant ORR = Oberregierungsrat OT = Organisation Todt PG = Parteigenosse PK = Propagandakompanie RAVAG = Österreichische Radio-Verkehrs-AG Reg. Pres. RMI = Reich Ministry of the Interior RMJ = Reich Ministry of the Interior RMK = Reich Ministry of Justice RMK = Reich Chamber of Music RMVP = Reich Ministry of Education and Propaganda ROI = Reichsoberinspektor RPA = Reichspropagandaamt RPÄ = Reichspropagandaämter RPL = Reichspropagandalleitung RR = Regierungsrat RRG = Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft RS = Reichssender RSHA = Reichssicherheitshauptamt RSK = Reichsschrifttumskammer SBZ = Soviet Occupation Zone SD = Security Service SD-LA = SD-Leitabschnitt SDR = Süddeutscher Rundfunk Sipo = Security Police STS = Secretary of State and a. = among others v. a. = above all VGH = Volksgerichtshof VO = Regulation WDR = Westdeutscher Rundfunk ZSTA = Zentrales Staatsarchiv (Potsdam) citation method: BArch R 55/ 23456 Content characterization: Rounded delivery complexes are available only from the budget department and from the personnel department. From the point of view of financing and personnel management, they illuminate almost all areas of the Ministry's activities. From the specialist departments, the volumes from the Propaganda Department should be emphasized, which document above all the design of propaganda and the propagandistic support of foreign workers and resettled persons in the last years of the war. Also worth mentioning are mood and activity reports of individual RPÄ and suggestions from the population for propaganda and for leading the total war. In the Radio Department there is some material about the design of the radio program and the propaganda reconnaissance with reports about the opposing propaganda, which were compiled from the bugging reports of the special service Seehaus. A separate complex of this department are 14 volumes of pre-files from the RMI with handfiles of the Oberregierungsrat Scholz as representative of the Reich in supervisory committees of broadcasting companies in Berlin from 1926 - 1932. Of the film department there are only a few, but interesting volumes about the film production of the last war years with numerous ministerial documents. The majority of the theatre department's traditions are based on documents on professional issues and the Reich's dramaturgy. From the music department the promotion of musical organizations from the years 1933 - 1935 with pre-files from the RMI, the support and job placement of artists as well as material about the musical foreign relations is handed down. The files of the Department for the Occupied Eastern Territories offer rich sources for questions of Eastern propaganda. The losses are greatest in the departments Law and Organization, Magazine Press, Foreign Press, Foreign Countries, Tourism, Literature and Fine Arts. State of development: Publication Findbuch (1976, reprint 1996), Online Findbuch (2007). Citation style: BArch, R 55/...

History of the Inventor: After the unification of the court organization and the procedural law of the federal states on January 1, 1877, the legal department of the Reich Chancellery became independent as Reichsju‧stizamt (since 1919 Reich Ministry of Justice); October 22, 1934, unification with the Prussian Ministry of Justice; 1934/35, takeover of the state justice administrations.01): Old registry (alphabetically sorted by keywords) 1877-1934: Civil servants 1872-1937 (250), civil service law 1872-1933 (229), public authorities 1875-1932 (36), Berg‧recht 1882-1934 (7), relations with foreign countries 1872-1933 (23), land law 1875-1934 (80), civil law 1869-1934 (931), Alsace-Lorraine 1875-1920 (42), financial law 1876-1934 (329), business 1873-1936 (185), industrial law 1867-1934 (178), finance law 1876-1934 (329), business 1873-1936 (185), trade law 1867-1934 (178), Berg‧recht - Criminal cases 1869-1934 (914), special law 1876-1920 (10), citizenship 1876-1934 (68), Heads of State 1875-1934 (103), constitutional law 1885-1929 (45), criminal procedure and code of criminal procedure 1871-1934 (481), criminal law and criminal law commission 1867-1935 (598), copyright 1875-1934 (215), Association Law 1878-1934 (23), Constitution 1868-1934 (279), Traffic Law 1875-1934 (188), Administrative Law 1908-1934 (49), International Law 1868-1934 (793), Commercial Law 1884-1934 (178), Civil Procedure and Code of Civil Procedure 1874-1934 (222) New Registry 1934-1945: Loss of German citizenship 1934-1938 (57), staff and Organisationsan‧gelegenheiten 1934-1945 (120), occupation of the district courts and the district attorneys 1900-1943 (1.050), occupation of regional courts and public prosecutor's offices 1903-1945 (134), lawyers and notaries 1940-1945 (78), criminal legislation and youth law 1935-1944 (63), individual criminal cases 1934-1945 (ca. 800.000), criminal justice 1929-1944 (30), penal system 1930-1945 (291), civil law, peasant law and administration of justice 1934-1944 (130), commercial law 1934-1943 (12), public limited companies and stock corporation law 1933-1945 (191), conversion of corporations 1934-1943 (220), Traffic and Genos‧senschaftsrecht 1933-1943 (39), commercial law 1934-1942 (42), banks and savings banks 1934-1942 (72), stock exchange 1934-1943 (6), insurance law 1934-1943 (17), Gewer‧bewesen 1934-1944 (23), air raid 1935-1940 (5), colonial activity of Germany 1936-1943 (2), Absences care 1939-1944 (51), foreign affairs 1934-1942 (29), budget and administration 1934-1943 (220), justice budget 1917-1938 (8), state and economy, four-year plan 1936-1943 (15), Reichsgrundbesitzverzeichnisse der Reichsjustizverwaltung 1935-1939 (41), Buildings in individual Higher Regional Court districts 1879-1941 (85), accommodation of the court prisons 1934-1937 (93), accommodation of the Local Courts 1935-1938 (122), accommodation of the Regional Courts 1936-1937 (10), verschie‧dene Office building of the Reichsjustizverwaltung 1936-1937 (3) Part 2 (formerly: BArch, R 22) (1877-1933) 1933-1945: Main office.- Circular decrees 1936-1945 (23), Office of the Minister Gürtner: Service diary with personal and material registers 1933-1935 (18), private correspondence 1932-1941 (67), submissions and notes on individual criminal proceedings 1940-1941 (1), Office of the Minister Thierack: Correspondence with the Reichsführer SS and the Reichssicherheitshauptamt 1942-1944 (1), speeches, lectures and essays 1943-1945 (2), office of the State Secretaries Schlegelberger, Freisler, Rothenberger and Klemm: Lectures and essays 1942-1943 (1), legal treatment of Poles and Jews as well as matters of Oberreichsanwalt‧schaft at the People's Court 1941-1942 (1), correspondence with the head of Sicherheits‧polizei and the SD Kaltenbrunner 1944 (1) Constitution and Administration: Circular orders 1936-1945 (1), Constitution in general 1933-1944 (4), Sudetenland 1938-1942 (1), Großhamburggesetz 1937-1944 (1), Staats‧oberhaupt 1936-1944 (2), Austrian affairs 1938-1939 (1), Legislation in general 1934-1945 (8), constitutional treatment of international treaties 1936-1943 (1), Reichstag, Reichsrat, Preußischer Landtag and Staatsrat 1931-1938 (1), Volksab‧stimmung from 10. April 1938, 1938 (1), legal status of the NSDAP, its branches and affiliated associations 1934-1945 (4), NS-Rechtswahrerbund 1942-1945 (2), Deut‧sche Arbeitsfront, Deutsches Frauenwerk und Hitlerjugend 1935-1945 (3), Parteigerichtsbar‧keit of the NSDAP as well as SS and police jurisdiction 1938-1945 (2), Simplification of Ju‧stizverwaltung on the occasion of the Second World War 1939-1945 (2), Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 1938-1944 (10), economic disputes between parts of the former Tsche‧choslowakei 1939-1941 (1), Generalgouvernement 1942-1945 (1), Reich citizenship and citizenship 1935-1944 (2), resettlement of Reich and ethnic Germans 1939-1944 (2), name changes and management of titles of nobility, orders and decorations, Berufsbe‧zeichnungen 1934-1944 (8), replacement of aristocratic pensions 1838 (1), blood protection legislation, Treatment of Jews and Minorities 1935-1945 (5), Supreme Reich and Landesbehör‧den, History of the Administration of Justice 1801-1944 (4), Distribution of Responsibilities in Reichsjustizmi‧nisterium 1935-1945 (17), Distribution of Responsibilities of Other Supreme Reich Authorities and the Offices of the NSDAP 1934-1944 (3), Press and Publications, v.a. "German Justice" 1935-1945 (3), other Reich and state authorities, corporations and Stiftun‧gen 1934-1943 (2), statistics and surveying 1935-1944 (2), Repräsentationsver‧pflichtungen 1934-1945 (11), national holidays and ceremonies 1939-1944 (1), Öffentlich‧keitsarbeit and disputes in the press 1934-1945 (20), Reichshauptstadt Ber‧lin, municipalities and associations of municipalities 1935-1944 (6), course of business and internal service 1934-1945 (25), rules of procedure and participation of the NSDAP party chancellery 1933-1945 (16), communications in criminal cases, criminal service cases and personnel matters of other authorities, v.a. Security Police and SD 1934-1944 (7), Statistics of Geschäfts‧entwicklung in the Reich Ministry of Justice 1934-1945 (5), Administration of written records and Aktenein‧sicht by third parties, Rules of Procedure for the Supreme Reich Authorities 1934-1945 (14) Legal and service relationships: Officials in general 1937-1944 (7), German Beamtenge‧setz 1937-1945 (2), training and career for the judicial and administrative service 1936-1945 (19), seniority 1934-1944 (5), application of legislation in Alsace, in Loth‧ringen and Luxembourg 1939-1945 (6), secondment of officials, in particular to the NSDAP and the Wehrmacht as well as to the Generalgouvernement and the occupied territories 1938-1945 (72), civil servant organizations 1934-1944 (5), overviews of the staff in Reichs‧justizministerium 1935-1945 (3), appointment, transfer and promotion of civil servants 1940-1945 (17), waiting and retirement officials 1935-1944 (3), Criminal law 1937-1944 (4), civil servant duties 1934-1945 (10), uniforms 1934-1945 (5), civil servant rights, Per‧sonalakten, job titles and leave of absence 1934-1945 (14), training and Schu‧lung of civil servants 1934-1945 (17), property rights of civil servants 1934-1945 (37), Employment contracts of judges, prosecutors and trainees 1935-1945 (19), law studies, legal examinations and preparatory service 1934-1945 (79), employment contracts of civil servants in the upper and lower middle grades 1934-1945 (33), Employment contracts of lawyers and interpreters 1935-1945 (3), employment contracts of bailiffs and other enforcement officers 1934-1945 (39), legal contracts of employees and workers 1934-1945 (36), honours gefalle‧ner Followers 1941-1944 (1) Civil law and civil law: General administration of justice 1932-1944 (48), judicial reform 1933-1945 (45), court constitution 1933-1944 (32), judicial office and letters 1933-1944 (14), administration of justice and control of the administration of justice 1932-1945 (74), legal profession 1934-1945 (31), court organisation 1931-1945 (24), Reichsgerichtsentscheidungen in Zi‧vil- und Strafsachen 1938-1945 (16), Staatsanwaltschaften und Volksgerichtshof 1934-1945 (9), substantive civil law 1933-1945 (17), Schuldrecht und einzelnen Schuldverhält‧nisse 1933-1945 (104), Sachenrecht 1926-1944 (29), Familienrecht 1934-1944 (5), Marriage Law, v.a. Individual cases 1932-1945 (122), family and guardianship law 1934-1945 (20), inheritance law 1935-1944 (12), commercial law 1875-1945 (98), list of companies exempt from compliance with commercial law regulations 1940-1944 (25), copyright and industrial property law 1934-1944 (25), patent law 1934-1945 (15), Verfahrens‧recht der Streitigen Zivilgerichtsbarkeit 1934-1945 (89), procedural law of the voluntary Ge‧richtsbarkeit, v. v. guardianship law 1934-1945 (20), inheritance law 1935-1944 (12), commercial law 1875-1945 (98), list of companies exempt from compliance with commercial law regulations 1934-1944 (25), procedural law of the voluntary Ge‧richtsbarkeit, v. v.a. Civil status matters, registry matters, notaries and notaries' offices, land register matters and depositing 1934-1945 (111) Criminal law, criminal law and police: substantive criminal law 1933-1945 (11), judgments and decisions of special and local courts in individual criminal cases 1937-1945 (402), criminal law reform 1933-1944 (134), punishment of crimes and misdemeanours in Allgemei‧nen 1934-1945 (18), high treason and treason 1934-1945 (15), "Protection of the People's Power".- An‧griffe on military strength, labour and public health, "racial disgrace", abortion, maintenance and morality offences, "common nuisance", foreign exchange and Kriegswirtschafts‧vergehen 1934-1945 (19), political criminal law, in particular Insidiousness Act, interference with powers of the churches and the NSDAP, oath violations 1934-1944 (10), killing (also "worthless life"), bodily injury and coercion 1933-1945 (5), insult to honour and Be‧leidigung 1934-1945 (4), war adultery, fraud, extortion, embezzlement, falsification of documents 1934-1945 (3), Attacks on property 1930-1945 (18), thwarting the law, Geheimnis‧schutz 1934-1939 (2), police criminal law and secondary criminal areas 1934-1942 (7), criminal procedural law including reform efforts 1934-1944 (65), special areas of criminal justice 1933-1945 (14), Criminal policy and statistics 1934-1945 (17), Jugendstraf‧recht 1932-1945 (29), compensation of innocent convicts and prisoners 1935-1944 (1), costs of criminal justice, criminal records 1933-1945 (15), the law of grace 1933-1945 (20), execution and enforcement of sentences 1934-1945 (290), Work deployment of prisoners 1942-1945 (30), "murder register" 1939-1945 (4/11 microfilm rolls), organization of police 1935-1944 (9), secret state police and SD 1934-1944 (3), protection and preventive detention 1934-1944 (7), building police 1936-1942 (3), health and food police 1934-1944 (15), security police, v.a. Unrest and state of emergency 1934-1945 (12), passport and registration 1933-1943 (4), press and literature 1934-1944 (6), order and Sittenpo‧lizei 1933-1945 (4) finance: Representation of the German Reich in court 1940-1944 (1), budget 1933-1945 (32), cash and accounting 1936-1945 (22), property and construction matters 1934-1945 (79), government procurement 1934-1945 (30), levies, taxes and fees 1934-1944 (12), court costs 1934-1945 (77) culture and welfare: Church and religious communities, Jewish Kultusvereini‧gungen 1934-1944 (11), science, art and popular education, language care and Recht‧schreibung, German shorthand, calendar and time determination 1935-1944 (6), Fürsorge‧wesen, Winterhilfswerk, Jugendwohlfahrt, Physical training, housing and Gesundheitswe‧sen, hereditary health care, registration and treatment of antisocial, hereditary health courts, medical persons and pharmacists 1933-1944 (29), social insurance 1934-1944 (11), Rundver‧fügungen 1936-1944 (1) Economic affairs: Supply of the population during the war 1934-1944 (7), mining 1935-1944 (5), state and economy, four-year plan 1936-1945 (12), economic Schutz‧maßnahmen 1934-1944 (3), organization of the German economy 1936-1943 (2), money and credit system, foreign exchange control 1934-1945 (15), insurance law and Versi‧cherungsunternehmungen 1934-1945 (32), Traffic criminal cases 1936-1944 (3), Reichswas‧serstraßen and railway 1934-1944 (6), post, telephone, telegraph and radio 1934-1945 (7), motor transport 1934-1944 (4), air transport 1933-1944 (5), shipping 1934-1944 (4), trade matters 1935-1942 (10), labour law and Ar‧beitsgerichts-wesen 1934-1944 (26) agriculture and forestry: Economic Situation and Credit Relations 1933-1944 (34), Natur‧schutz and Pest Control 1934-1943 (4), Animal and Plant Breeding 1936-1942 (1), State Forests and Forest Protection 1934-1943 (2), State Culture, Rural and Urban Sied‧lungen, Lease Protection 1934-1944 (36), Land and Habitat Law 1934-1944 (5), Fidei‧kommisse, v.a. Individual cases 1934-1945 (175), Inheritance Court Law, including deviations from legal succession in individual cases 1934-1945 (67), Water Law 1934-1945 (6), Hunting and Fishing 1934-1944 (8) Wehrmacht and Foreign Affairs: Wehrmacht and Wehrverfassung 1936-1944 (1), Kriegsmarine 1939-1944 (1), Luftwaffe 1935-1944 (1), Wehrmacht Administration and Be‧schaffungswesen 1935-1944 (1), Volkssturm 1944-1945 (1), Duties and rights of the Ange‧hörigen of the Wehrmacht 1934-1944 (6), military administration of justice and disciplinary punishment 1934-1945 (12), benefits for the Wehrmacht 1934-1944 (5), air-raid protection 1935-1945 (35), aus‧wärtige Affairs, u.a. Monthly reports of national groups of the Auslandsorgani‧sation of the NSDAP 1934-1945 (9), legalization of documents 1929-1945 (10), violation of German sovereign rights 1930-1938 (1), foreign foreign legions 1935-1942 (1), Si‧cherung of the Reich border 1938-1941 (1), colonialism and German interests in Aus‧land 1934-1944 (14), exchange of experience and material with foreign countries, v.a. for legislation and administration 1925-1945 (309), Reich defence and war deployment, welfare for soldiers, soldier letters, air raids on German cities, treatment "feindli‧chen" and Jewish property, civil service law, private law, criminal law and civil law, court constitution and administration of justice, industrial property protection and copyright, labour law and social law, Simplification of legal examinations, economic Maßnah‧men 1939-1945 (132), Treaty of Versailles and territorial losses and reintegration of the Saar area 1934-1945 (36), Integration of the Sudeten German territories 1938-1944 (18), Introduction of German law in affiliated and occupied territories, Waffenstill‧standsvertrag with France 1938-1945 (28), International law, v.a. intergovernmental agreements with individual countries 1938-1945 (248), legations and consuls 1934-1944 (10), constitutional organisations under international law, above all League of Nations and Inter‧nationaler Court of Justice 1934-1942 (7), War Prevention Law 1934-1944 (5), Martial Law, Prisenrecht and Air War Law 1914-1945 (38), International Communities of Interests in the Field of Public Law, Commercial and Private Law, Economy, Transport, Culture and Welfare 1934-1944 (122) Personnel Management: Lawyers in the service of the administration of justice including lawyers and notaries 1934-1936 (54), general index of seniority of the Reichsjustizverwaltung: höhe‧rer Dienst 1934-1945 (25), personnel files of the Reichsjustizministerium for the entire business area, including the previous files 1933-1945 (31.500), members of Reichsjustiz‧verwaltung in Austria, with previous files 1938-1945 (200), members of the Academy for Deut‧sches Law 1934-1945 (43), occupation files for the individual Higher Regional Court districts of the German Reich: formerly Prussian Higher Regional Court districts, with previous files 1933-1945 (700), formerly non-Prussian Higher Regional Court districts 1935-1945 (300), Personal‧übersichten on members of the Reichsjustizverwaltung including the Reichsgericht and the Volksgerichtshof 1934-1945 (304), "Golden Book".- Promotions 1940-1942 (8), "Braunes Buch", list of members of the higher judicial service who joined the NSDAP before 30 Jan. 1933 (2), birthday congratulations of judges for Wilhelm II. 1938-1942 (1), congratulatory letter on service anniversaries, awards of orders and Kriegsaus‧zeichnungen in the area of the Reichsjustizverwaltung 1939-1945 (63), Personalangelegen‧heiten of the chambers for commercial matters at the regional courts 1934-1945 (28): in Kammer‧gerichtsbezirk (3), Braunschweig Higher Regional Court districts, Bres‧lau, Celle, Darmstadt, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hamm, Innsbruck, Jena, Karlsruhe, Kassel, Kiel, Königsberg, Linz, Marienwerder, Naumburg, Oldenburg, Rostock, Stettin, Stutt‧gart, Vienna and Zweibrücken (23), personnel matters of lawyers and notaries 1939-1945 (131), Reichsrechtsanwalts- und Reichsnotarkammer (3), Patentanwälte (2), Kammer‧gerichtsbezirk (2), Oberlandesgerichtsbezirk Bamberg (3), Oberlandesgerichtsbezirk Braunschweig (4), Oberlandesgerichtsbezirk Breslau (4), Celle Higher Regional Court District (4), Gdansk Higher Regional Court District (5), Darmstadt Higher Regional Court District (5), Dresden Higher Regional Court District (4), Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court District (9), Frankfurt am Main Higher Regional Court District (4), Hamburg Higher Regional Court District (4), Hamm Higher Regional Court District (4), Jena Higher Regional Court District (4), Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court District (3), Katowice Higher Regional Court District (4), Kassel Higher Regional Court District (4), Kiel Higher Regional Court District (4), Leitmeritz Higher Regional Court District (4), Cologne Higher Regional Court District (10), Königsberg Higher Regional Court District (4), Munich Higher Regional Court District (4), Naumburg Higher Regional Court District (4), Nuremberg Higher Regional Court District (3), Oldenburg Higher Regional Court District (4), Poznan Higher Regional Court District (4), Prague Higher Regional Court District (4), Szczecin Higher Regional Court District (4), Stuttgart Higher Regional Court District (4) Zweibrücken Higher Regional Court District (5), Directories of Names (1); Replacement files in personnel and other administrative matters, for exampleT. with processes about the restoration of the civil service 1939-1945 (623): District of the Higher Regional Court (66), District of the Higher Regional Court Braunschweig (15), District of the Higher Regional Court Breslau (26), District of the Higher Regional Court Celle (30), District of the Higher Regional Court Gdansk (17), District of the Higher Regional Court Darmstadt (17), District of the Higher Regional Court Dresden (33), Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court District (43), Frankfurt Higher Regional Court District (23), Ham‧burg Higher Regional Court District (8), Hamm Higher Regional Court District (14), Jena Higher Regional Court District (19), Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court District (19), Kassel Higher Regional Court District (19), Katowice Higher Regional Court District (20), Kiel Higher Regional Court District (19), Cologne Higher Regional Court District (40), Königsberg Higher Regional Court District (24), Leitmeritz Higher Regional Court District (25), Marienwerder Higher Regional Court District (13), Naumburg Higher Regional Court District (28), Oldenburg Higher Regional Court District (13), Poznan Higher Regional Court District (11), Prague Higher Regional Court District (14), Rostock Higher Regional Court District, Schwerin (11), Stettin Higher Regional Court District (18), Stuttgart Higher Regional Court District (21) Zweibrücken Higher Regional Court District (21); Press and Political Criminal Cases 1939-1945 (2), Criminal and Service Criminal Proceedings against Judicial Servants 1939-1945 (13), Allegations against the Administration of Justice, v.a. Be‧schwerden and applications of the NSDAP 1939-1945 (6), lists of names (60), reference files in personnel matters 1934-1945 (18) Part 3: (formerly: ZPA, St 1) 1918-1939: documents on political criminal proceedings, in particular against members of the Kommunisti‧schen Partei Deutschlands 1918-1939 (123), Lageberichte des Reichskommissars für die Überwachung der öffentlichen Ordnung 1920-1923 (15) Part 4: (formerly: Collection "NS-Archiv des Miniums für Staatssicherheit der DDR"): Individual Case Files on Political Criminal Proceedings from the "RJM" Part 1933-1945 (11. Edition)402), various criminal proceedings files 1933-1945 (11.425) State of development: Part 1 (former: ZStA, 30.01): Findbuch, vol. 2-4 Part 2 (former: BArch, R 22) (1877-1933) 1933-1945: Findbuch, vol. 2-9, index of finds, list of deliveries Part 3: (formerly: ZPA, St 1): index of finds Part 4: (formerly: collection "NS-Archiv des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit der DDR"): database citation method: BArch, R 3001/...

History of the Inventory Designer: 1. On the history of the Deutsche Reichspost Prehistory up to 1867 In Germany, a uniform postal system had not been able to develop due to the territorial fragmentation of the Reich. Still in the first half of the 19th century, 17 independent state postal regions existed alongside the "Reichs-Post" of the Princes of Thurn and Taxis, which had already been commissioned by the Emperor in the 16th century to carry out the postal shelf and which had since then operated primarily in the smaller and smallest German territories. The conclusion of agreements between individual Länder of the German Confederation, including the establishment of the German-Austrian Postal Association in 1850, did indeed lead to unity in postal traffic; however, in 1866 there were still 9 postal regions in Germany. The post office in the Kingdom of Prussia had developed into the most important national post office at the national level. From the North German Confederation to the Foundation of the Reich (1867-1871) The constitution of the North German Confederation of 24 June 1867 declared the postal and telegraph system to be a federal matter. In the structure of the North German postal administration, the upper postal directorates existing in Prussia since 1849 were taken over as central authorities. The Prussian postal system was thus transferred to the Federation and the North German postal administrations were merged into it, so that the Norddeutsche Bundespost (1868-1871) under the leadership of Prussia was the first unified state postal service on German soil. The Federal Chancellery was in charge of its upper management, and the former Prussian General Post Office was integrated into it as Department I. In addition, the Directorate-General for Telegraphs was renamed Division II. The Post Office in the German Reich from 1871 to 1919 The foundation stone of the Deutsche Reichspost is the Reich Constitution of 16 April 1871. The only area of transport in which the Reich was able to directly promote its state and transport policy purposes was the postal and telegraph system. The Reichspost, which was set up as a direct Reich administration, extended its effectiveness to the entire territory of the Reich with the exception of the states of Bavaria and Württemberg, which had the so-called Postreservat granted to them for their internal postal relations. The postal service and the telegraph system, which were still independent at that time, were therefore a matter for the Reich. On 1 January 1876, both administrations merged organizationally with the creation of the "Reichspost- und Telegraphenverwaltung" (Reich Post and Telegraph Administration) as the highest authority, which consisted of the General Post Office and the General Directorate of Telegraphs. Both were subject to the postmaster general and formed first the I. and II. Department of the Reich Chancellery. The connection between post and telegraph created in this way was no longer solved afterwards. In addition, the postmaster general was removed from the Reich Chancellery and made independent. The Imperial Decree of 23 February 1880 also consolidated the General Post Office and the General Telegraph Office organisationally. The now established Reichspostamt was thus on an equal footing with the other supreme Reich authorities. He was directed by the Prussian Postmaster General Heinrich von Stephan (1831-1897), who had already become the head of the General Post Office in 1870. The new design of the imperial postal system undoubtedly meant progress for traffic development. Economic advancement, the increasing importance of German foreign trade, the acquisition of colonies and the opening up of the oceans, and thus the global political and economic importance of Germany, posed special challenges for the postal service and telegraphy. Under Heinrich von Stephan's leadership, the Universal Postal Union was created in 1874. Foreign and colonial post offices took up their work. During the 1st World War the field post, which had existed in Prussia since the 18th century during the war, was reactivated. It was subordinate to the Field Chief Postmaster in the Great Headquarters and was subdivided into Army Post Offices, Field Post Inspections, Offices and Stations. In the occupied territories, the Deutsche Reichspost eliminated the state postal administrations there and created its own postal facilities in Belgium, Poland and Romania. The German Post and Telegraph Administration operating in the Baltic States in the postal area of the Commander-in-Chief East (November 1915 to December 1918; since August 1918: Military Post Office of the Commander-in-Chief East) was a military office and attached to the Oberost staff. Weimar Republic (1919-1933) The Reich Constitution of 1919 brought significant progress by unifying the postal and telecommunications systems in the hands of the Reich. In connection with the creation of Reich Ministers with parliamentary responsibility by the Law on the Provisional Imperial Authority of 10 February 1919, the decree of the Reich President of 21 March 1919 laid down the new names of the supreme Reich authorities. The Reichspostamt was also renamed the Reichspostministerium. A further consequence of the state revolution of 1918/19 were the state treaties of 29 and 31 March 1920, which also transferred the postal administrations of Württemberg and Bavaria to the Reich. However, they still retained a certain special position. The Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart was responsible for all internal affairs of the traffic area assigned to it, the Land of Württemberg, insofar as they were not generally reserved for the Reich Ministry of Posts, and for Bavaria even a separate Department VII (since 1924 Department VI) was created with its seat in Munich, a State Secretary at the head and the same extensive competence as in the Oberpostdirektion in Stuttgart. The character of the Reichspost was decisively influenced by the Reichspostfinanzgesetz, which came into force on 1 April 1924. The most important point was the separation of the post office from the rest of the Reich's budget. This made the Deutsche Reichspost economically independent as a special fund of the Reich. The Reichspostfinanzgesetz created the administrative board of the Deutsche Reichspost under the chairmanship of the Reichspost Minister. The Board of Directors had to decide on all significant business, financial and personnel matters. The implementation of the decisions of the Board of Administration was the responsibility of the Minister or the responsible structural parts of the Reich Ministry of Posts. National Socialism (1933-1945) From the outset, the authority left no doubt as to its attitude to National Socialism: "For the Deutsche Reichspost it was a matter of course to put National Socialist ideas into practice with all its might wherever it was possible, and to serve the Führer with all its being and doing". The formal repeal of the Reichspostfinanzgesetz by the Gesetz zur Vereinfachung und Verbilligung der Verwaltung of 27 February 1934 did not change anything about the special asset status of the Deutsche Reichspost, but it brought some fundamental changes. For example, the Administrative Board was dissolved and replaced by an Advisory Board, which had no decisive powers but only an advisory function. The law eliminated both Division VI in Munich and the special position of the Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart, after Hitler had rejected as premature an attempt by the Reichspost and Reich Traffic Minister, Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach, to repeal it, which he had already made in May 1933. From 1 April 1934, the last special agreements of the Reichspost with the states of Bavaria and Württemberg expired, so that it was only from this point on that the "complete uniformity of the postal and telecommunications system in law and administration for the entire territory of the Reich" was established. On 1 October 1934, the Oberpostdirektionen received the designation "Reichspostdirektionen". The offices and offices were subordinated to them. By "Führererlass" of 2 February 1937, the personal union between the Reich Transport Minister and the Reich Post Minister, which had existed since 1932, was abolished and Wilhelm Ohnesorge (1872 to 1962) was again appointed Reich Post Minister. The occasion was the subordination of the Reichsbahn to Reich sovereignty. The unconditional capitulation of Germany at the end of the Second World War also meant the end of the German Reichspost. His written fixation of this fact was found in Articles 5 and 9 of a declaration of the Allied Control Council of June 5, 1945, according to which "all facilities and objects of the ... intelligence ... to hold at the disposal of the Allies' representatives" and "until the establishment of supervision over all means of communication" any broadcasting operation was prohibited. The postal and telecommunications services and the operation of their facilities were finally restarted at different times and separately by the respective Commanders-in-Chief according to the four occupation zones of Germany. 2 The tasks of the Deutsche Reichspost (German Imperial Postal Service) in the fields of social and technical progress as well as the effects of important inventions inevitably necessitated both the quantitative expansion of communication relations and their continuous improvement up to the introduction and application of new services in the postal and telegraph sectors. One of the main tasks of the Deutsche Reichspost, the carriage of news items, did not initially extend to all postal items. In the beginning, only closed letters and political newspapers that did not remain in the sender's town were affected by the so-called post compulsion. All open items (especially postcards and printed matter) for a place other than the place of dispatch and letters, parcels etc. for recipients in the place of dispatch could also be collected, transported and distributed by so-called private transport companies. Such "private posts" settled above all in large cities and increasingly opposed the German Reichspost as fierce competitors, for example through lower fee rates. The Reichspost had to get rid of this competition, especially since it was obliged to maintain expensive and sometimes even unprofitable delivery facilities even in the remotest areas of the Reich. The Postal Act Amendment of 20 Dec. 1899 therefore prohibited all commercially operated private post offices in the German Reich from 1 April 1900 and extended the postal obligation to sealed letters within the place of dispatch. The carriage of passengers From time immemorial, Swiss Post also dealt with the carriage of passengers. Before the advent of the railways, passenger transport by stagecoach was the most important means of public transport and, as such, was also part of the postal monopoly in many countries. The expansion of the railway network initially limited this traffic activity of the post office, but after the invention and further perfection of the automobile it gained importance again. Thus, since 1906/07, bus routes have been established ("Postkraftwagen-Überlandverkehr", often also called "Kraftposten" for short). They were expanded mainly in the years 1924 to 1929, so that on 1 April 1929 the Deutsche Reichspost operated almost 2000 Kraftpost lines with an operating length of more than 37,000 km and by that time had already carried 68 million passengers. The enormous economic and technical upswing in Germany after the foundation of the German Empire also meant that the Imperial Post and Telegraph Administration had to make use of its cash register facilities for the ever more flowing payment transactions. In addition to the banks, Swiss Post took over the regulation of cashless payment transactions: on 1 January 1909, the postal transfer and postal cheque service was opened in Germany (13 Postscheckkämter). Both the number of accounts and the amount of assets increased steadily in the following decades, with the exception of the two world wars. The banking activities of the Deutsche Reichspost, 'which serve to fulfil state activities and not to compete with the private sector', were divided into five main branches: postal order service, cash on delivery service, postal order service, postal transfer service, cheque service and postal savings bank service. The latter was introduced only after the annexation of Austria (a post office savings bank had existed here since 1883) on 1 January 1939. Telegraphs and radio telegraphy Although telegraphs were administered by an independent authority equivalent to the general post office before the Reichspost was founded, they had been closely related to the post office since 1854. In that year, the telegraph service in small communities in Prussia was transferred to the respective post office. Own telegraph stations usually existed only in cities and larger municipalities, where the operation was profitable. In 1871 there were a total of 3,535 telegraph stations in the German Reich (including Bavaria and Württemberg) with 107,485 km of telegraph lines and an annual output of over 10 million telegrams. By the beginning of the First World War, this figure had been six times higher. In contrast to the USA, where the population quickly made use of telephone traffic, the German public apparently did not initially want to make friends with the new telephone system. As early as 1877, General Postmaster Stephan had the first telephone line set up between the General Post Office in Leipzig and the General Telegraph Office in Französische Straße, and soon thereafter arranged for attempts to be made at longer distances. As late as 1880, however, Stephans' call for participation in a city telephone system in Berlin met with little approval, so that the first local traffic exchange began operations here in January 1881 with only 8 subscribers. However, the advantages of telephone traffic were soon recognised and the spread of the telephone increased rapidly. The 24-hour telephone service was first introduced in Munich in 1884, and Berlin opened its 10,000th telephone station in May 1889. As early as 1896 there were 130,000 "telephone stations" in Germany; in 1920 there were about 1.8 million, in 1930 over 3 million and in 1940 almost 5 million connections. Since the practical testing of Hertzian electromagnetic waves, i.e. since 1895, Swiss Post has paid great attention to the development and expansion of wireless telegraphy. From the very beginning, there was no doubt that the Reichspost was responsible for radio communications (as a type of communication). After the first radio telegraphy devices had been produced in Germany by Siemens and AEG and the first public radio stations had been put into operation in 1890, a regulated radio service began in the German Reich. In the following decades, the Reichspost retained the exclusive right to install and operate radio equipment. However, it was not in a position to carry out all the associated services itself and therefore delegated some of this right to other companies. Thus there were finally 3 groups of radio services: - the radio service operated by the Reichspost with its own radio stations (maritime radio, aeronautical radio), - the radio service operated by companies. The "Transradio AG für drahtlose Überseeverkehr" carried out the entire overseas radio traffic in the years 1921-1932 on behalf of the Deutsche Reichspost. Deep sea radio, train radio and police radio have been granted rights in their fields in a similar manner, - the radio services of public transport carriers such as Reichsbahn, Reichsautobahnen and waterways. Radio and television The exclusive competence for radio broadcasting also extended to radio broadcasting, which was established after the First World War. Legal and organisational issues had to be resolved for this new area of activity of Swiss Post more than for other areas. There are two phases to the relationship between the postal service and broadcasting: a) From 1923 to 1933, the Deutsche Reichspost was responsible for all legislative matters, the issuing of user regulations, the granting of licenses, the fixing and collection of fees, the setting up of transmitters, the technical operation and monitoring of economic management. The Reich Ministry of the Interior, together with the Länder governments, was responsible for the fundamental regulation of the political and cultural issues arising in the course of programme planning. The Reichspost left the broadcasting operations themselves to companies to which it granted a licence. The Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft, founded in 1923, acted as the umbrella organization, in which the Deutsche Reichspost held a major share through a majority of capital and votes and was headed by the Broadcasting Commissioner of the Deutsche Reichspost. b) In 1933, the newly created Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda assumed responsibility for all organizational and managerial issues relating to broadcasting; the Deutsche Reichspost remained only responsible for the cable network and transmitters, for licenses, fee collection and accounting. As a result of the Reichskulturkammergesetz of 22 September 1933, the Reichsrundfunkkammer was at the forefront of broadcasting, in which the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft and several other associations were represented. This marked the beginning of the absolute subordination of broadcasting to the National Socialist dictatorship. The first attempts at television were made in the 1920s, also under the direction of the Deutsche Reichspost. Swiss Post continued to play a major role in the scientific and technical development of television in the following years. After an improved Braun tube had been shown at the Funkausstellung Berlin in 1932, the 1933 annual report of the Deutsche Reichspost described trial television broadcasts in a large urban area as practically feasible. In March 1935, the Deutsche Reichspost set up the world's first public television station at the Reichspostmuseum in Berlin, where the public could follow the reception of the programmes free of charge. The Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda and the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG) shared the programming. The Reichspost Ministry subsidiary "Reichspost-Fernseh-GmbH" (since 1939) and the Reichsministerium für Luftfahrt (Reich Ministry of Aviation) were responsible for the transmitters "in view of their special significance for air traffic control and national air protection". 3. the organization and structure of the Deutsche Reichspost Of all the branches of the Reich administration, Die Post possessed the most extensive and clearly structured official substructure. It was taken over by the Prussian postal service in 1871 and was divided into the following 3 stages until the destruction of the German Reich in 1945: Since 1880, the new supreme Reich authority had been divided into three departments: Post (I), Telegraph (and soon Telephone) (II) and Personnel, Budget, Accounting and Construction (III). A short time later Stephan was appointed Secretary of State and was thus placed on an equal footing with the heads of the other Imperial Offices established in the meantime. Division III was divided in 1896. General administrative matters were assigned to the new Division III, while Division IV was now responsible for personnel, cash management and accounting. Later, cash and accounting were transferred back to Division III and Division IV retained only personnel matters. From 1919, now as the Reich Post Ministry, a fifth department for radio communications and a sixth for social affairs expanded the organizational structure. Section VI, however, fell away again after inflation in 1924, and at the same time sections III and V exchanged their designations, so that in this section the household, cash register and building trade, in that the telegraph and radio trade were dealt with, while section II was responsible for the telephone trade, initially still united with the telegraph building trade. On 1 June 1926 another department for economic and organisational questions was added, which was formed from the previous economic department. Since 1926 there have been eight departments: Abt. I Postwesen Abt. II Telegraphen- und Fernsprechtechnik und Fernsprachbetrieb Abt. III Telegraphenbetrieb und Funkwesen Abt. IV Personalwesen Abt. V Haushalts-, Kassen, Postscheck- und Bauwesen Abt. VI in Munich, for Bavaria, dissolved in 1934 Abt. VII for Württemberg, dissolved in 1934 Abt. VIII Wirtschaftsabteilung. From 1934 Abt. VI, later referred to as Abt. für Kraftfahrwesen, Maschinentechnik und Beschaffungswesen. From 30.11. 1942 Abt. VII: Independence of all radio and television affairs from Abt. III (since 1940 already under the direct control of State Secretary Flanze [at the same time President of the Reichspostzentralamt] as the "Special Department Fl") Under National Socialist rule in 1938, the Ministry was expanded by a Central Department (Min-Z) for political tasks and questions of personnel management. During the war, a foreign policy department, a colonial department and an eastern department were added. A special division F 1 for broadcasting affairs was also set up temporarily. During the Second World War, the organization of the postal system in the annexed and occupied territories was determined by the nature and intensity of its integration into the National Socialist sphere of power. In the annexed areas, the postal administration was completely taken over by the Deutsche Reichspost. In most occupied territories, on the other hand, the postal services of the respective countries remained unchanged. Next to them, the field post continued to work. A German service post was created in various administrative areas to supply the German occupation authorities, such as the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" (1939-1945), the Netherlands (1940-1945), Norway (1942-1945), the Adriatic and Alpine regions (both 1943-1945), the East and the Ukraine (both 1941-1944). The German service posts "Ostland" and "Ukraine", each under a general postal commissioner, simultaneously provided the business of the "Deutsche Post Ostland" and "Deutsche Post Ukraine", which were fictitious as Landespost. The attempts made by the Reich Ministry of Posts to establish a central management of the intelligence system of all annexed and invaded territories failed because of the principle of the unity of the administration in the respective territory. The Reich Ministry of Posts had a number of specialist offices for the handling of special subjects, such as the field post office, the motor vehicle office, the building administration office and the cheque office. The following departments were directly affiliated or subordinated to the Reich Ministry of Posts: - the General Post Office as the body responsible for the entire administration of the post office and telegraph system - the Postal Money Order Office. From 1 April 1912 it was placed under the control of the Postal Newspaper Office, from 1 January 1918 also under the control of the Berlin Postal Directorate; - the Postal Insurance Commission for Accident and Other Matters, which was transferred to the newly founded Versorgungsanstalt der Deutschen Reichspost on 1 August 1926. With this public corporation, the previously differently regulated supplementary provision for postal staff was standardised: two thirds of the contributions were paid by the Deutsche Reichspost and one third by the insured themselves. - the Reichsamt Telegraph Technical Office, founded in 1920. In 1928, it took over other tasks from the Reich Post Ministry area, such as railway postal issues, postal statistics, training and educational matters, cash and accounting and procurement, and was renamed the Reich Post Central Office - the Reich Post Museum, created in 1872; - the Reich Post Building Inspectorate, formed in 1937 to realize the postal service needs in the structural redesign of Berlin. - the Postal Savings Bank Office in Vienna, which was taken over after the annexation of Austria in March 1938. In direct subordination to the Reich Ministry of Posts, it was responsible for the central account management of the Postal Savings Bank Service after it had been extended to the Old Empire. The "Postschutz", a paramilitary association under the umbrella of the Postal Ministry, had a special position. In June 1935, the Reich leadership of the SS and the Supreme SA leadership agreed on binding regulations regarding the affiliation of postal workers to the SA or SS. The postal service and thus also the postal security service were given priority over 'any use by the SA and SS. The claim for purposes of the SA and SS outside the postal service must not be to the detriment of the proper operation of the postal service', it said. Postal security was uniformed and uniformly armed. The research institute of the Deutsche Reichspost, founded on 1 January 1937, investigated special problems in television technology. The Reichspostforschungsanstalt was responsible for the coordination of all television armaments projects and orders to industry. It dealt with the further development of the research areas for military purposes. The scope of tasks is outlined in a document signed by Ohnesorge: "1. television; 2. general physics, in particular atomic physics, optics, acoustics, electronics; 3. chemistry; 4. special tasks for the four-year plan". The Reichsdruckerei was not integrated into the structure of the Reichspost, but was associated with its top management in personal union. On 1 Apr. 1879 it was placed under the control of the Reichspost- und Telegraphenverwaltung as an independent imperial enterprise. Through its products it maintained very close relations with the Reichspost, since, for example, postage stamps, postal cheques, the Reichskursbuch, etc. were produced for the account of the post office cashier. The Oberpostdirektionen/Reichspostdirektionen The Oberpostdirektionen (OPD) as intermediate authorities between the Berlin headquarters and the post offices were established as early as 1850 in Prussia. After their transfer to the Reichspost, they were among the higher Reich authorities. The Ministry of Postal Affairs has delegated more and more responsibilities to the OPDen, so that their freedom of action grew steadily and they gradually became the focus of the postal administration. 1928 saw the establishment of Managing Directorates of Higher Postal Services, which together assumed responsibility for certain tasks for a district group (= several OPD districts) (e.g. training and education, procurement and utilities). 1934-1945 as Reichspostdirektionen (RPD), they were subject to many changes in their area and in their number. In 1943 there were 51 RPD. The post office cheque offices (established in 1909), the telegraph building offices and the telegraph tool offices (established in 1920) were responsible for several OPD/RPDs and thus also to be regarded as intermediate authorities. The Post Offices The Post Offices, referred to in the area of the Deutsche Reichspost as Verkehrsämter and Amtsstellen, formed the local offices of the lowest level; they were subordinate to the OPD/RPD closest to each other. The local offices included not only the post offices, which were divided into three classes until 1924 (only since 1924 did they have a uniform designation as post offices), but also the post agencies, postal assistance offices, railway post offices, telegraph and telephone offices as well as public pay telephones in the municipalities which were subordinate to them. In 1942 there were about 70,000 such offices and offices in the German Reich. Inventory description: Introduction The history of the Deutsche Reichspost Prehistory up to 1867 Due to the territorial fragmentation of the Reich, a uniform postal system had not been able to develop in Germany. Still in the first half of the 19th century, 17 independent state postal regions existed alongside the "Reichs-Post" of the Princes of Thurn and Taxis, which had already been commissioned by the Emperor in the 16th century to carry out the postal shelf and which had since then operated primarily in the smaller and smallest German territories. The conclusion of treaties between individual Länder of the German Confederation, including the establishment of the German-Austrian Postal Association in 1850, did indeed lead to the unification of postal traffic; however, in 1866 there were still 9 land despatch areas in Germany. The post office in the Kingdom of Prussia had developed into the most important national post office at the national level. The Prussian postal area included the duchy of Anhalt, the principalities of Waldeck-Pyrmont and Oldenburg-Birkenfeld, parts of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Sondershausen, parts of Saxony-Weimar, as well as post offices in Hamburg and Bremen. From 1866 the Duchy of Lauenburg and the Province of Hanover, from 1867 Schleswig-Holstein and the Oldenburg Principality of Lübeck as well as former Bavarian areas in the Rhön, Spessart, the exclave Caulsdorf and from 1 July 1867 the states in Thuringia and Southern Germany which had previously been united in the Thurn und Taxischer Postverein were added. From the North German Confederation to the Foundation of the Reich (1867-1871) The constitution of the North German Confederation of 24 June 1867 declared the postal and telegraph system to be a federal matter. In the structure of the North German postal administration, the upper postal directorates existing in Prussia since 1849 were taken over as central authorities. The Prussian postal system was thus transferred to the Federation and the North German postal administrations were merged into it, so that the Norddeutsche Bundespost (1868-1871) under the leadership of Prussia was the first unified state postal service on German soil. The Federal Chancellery was in charge of its upper management, and the former Prussian General Post Office was integrated into it as Department I. In addition, the Directorate-General for Telegraphs was renamed Division II. The Post Office in the German Reich from 1871 to 1919 The cornerstone of the Deutsche Reichspost was the Reich Constitution of 16 April 1871. The only area of transport in which the Reich was able to directly promote its state and transport policy purposes was the postal and telegraph system. The Reichspost, which was set up as a direct Reich administration, extended its effectiveness to the entire territory of the Reich with the exception of the states of Bavaria and Württemberg, which had the so-called Postreservat granted to them for their internal postal relations. The postal system and the telegraph system, which were still independent at that time, were therefore a matter for the Reich. On 1 January 1876, both administrations merged organizationally with the creation of the "Reichspost- und Telegrafenverwaltung" as the highest authority, consisting of the Generalpostamt and the Generaldirektion der Telegrafen. Both were subject to the postmaster general and formed first the I. and II. Department of the Reich Chancellery. The connection between the postal and telegraph systems created in this way was no longer resolved afterwards. In addition, the postmaster general was removed from the Reich Chancellery and made independent. The Imperial Decree of 23 February 1880 also combined the General Post Office and the General Telegraph Office organisationally. The now established Reichspostamt was thus on an equal footing with the other supreme Reich authorities. He was directed by the Prussian Postmaster General Heinrich von Stephan (1831-1897), who had already become the head of the General Post Office in 1870. The new design of the imperial postal system undoubtedly meant progress for traffic development. Economic advancement, the increasing importance of German foreign trade, the acquisition of colonies and the opening up of the oceans, and thus the global political and economic importance of Germany, posed special challenges for the postal service and telegraphy. Under Heinrich von Stephan's leadership, the Universal Postal Union was created in 1874; foreign and colonial post offices began their work. During the 1st World War the field post, which had existed in Prussia since the 18th century during the war, was reactivated. It was subordinate to the Field Chief Postmaster in the Great Headquarters and was subdivided into Army Post Offices, Field Post Inspections, Offices and Stations. In the occupied territories, the Deutsche Reichspost eliminated the state postal administrations there and created its own postal facilities in Belgium, Poland and Romania. The German Post and Telegraph Administration operating in the Baltic States in the postal area of the Supreme Commander East (November 1915 to December 1918; since August 1918: Military Post Office of the Supreme Commander East) was a military office and attached to the Oberost Staff. Weimar Republic (1919-1933) The Reich Constitution of 1919 brought significant progress by unifying the postal and telecommunications systems in the hands of the Reich. In connection with the creation of Reich Ministers with parliamentary responsibility by the law on the provisional power of the Reich of 10 February 1919, the decree of the Reich President of 21 March 1919 laid down the new names of the supreme Reich authorities. The Reichspostamt was also renamed the Reichspostministerium. A further consequence of the state revolution of 1918/19 were the state treaties of 29 and 31 March 1920, which also transferred the postal administrations of Württemberg and Bavaria to the Reich. However, they still retained a certain special position. The Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart was responsible for all internal affairs of the traffic area assigned to it, the State of Württemberg, insofar as they were not generally reserved for the Reich Ministry of Posts, and for Bavaria even a separate Department VII (since 1924 Department VI) was created with its seat in Munich, a State Secretary at the head and the same extensive competence as in the Oberpostdirektion in Stuttgart. The character of the Reichspost was decisively influenced by the Reichs-postfinanzgesetz, which came into force on 1 April 1924. The most important point was the separation of the post office from the rest of the Reich's budget. This made the Deutsche Reichspost economically independent as a special fund of the Reich. The Reichspostfinanzgesetz created the administrative board of the Deutsche Reichspost under the chairmanship of the Reichspost Minister. The Board of Directors had to decide on all significant business, financial and personnel matters. The implementation of the decisions of the Board of Administration was the responsibility of the Minister or the responsible structural parts of the Reich Ministry of Posts. National Socialism (1933-1945) From the outset, the authority left no doubt as to its attitude to National Socialism: "For the Deutsche Reichspost it was a matter of course to put National Socialist ideas into practice with all its might wherever it was possible, and to serve the Führer with all its being and doing". The formal repeal of the Reichspostfinanzgesetz by the Gesetz zur Vereinfachung und Verbilligung der Verwaltung of 27 February 1934 did not change anything about the special asset status of the Deutsche Reichspost, but it brought some fundamental changes. For example, the Administrative Board was dissolved and replaced by an Advisory Board, which had no decisive powers but only an advisory function. The law eliminated both Division VI in Munich and the special position of the Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart, after Hitler had rejected as premature an attempt by the Reichspost and Reich Traffic Minister, Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach, to repeal it, which he had already made in May 1933. From 1 April 1934, the last special agreements of the Reichspost with the states of Bavaria and Württemberg expired, so that it was only from this point on that the "complete uniformity of the postal and telecommunications system in law and administration for the entire territory of the Reich" was established. On 1 October 1934, the Oberpostdirektionen received the designation "Reichspostdirektionen". The offices and offices were subordinated to them. By "Führererlass" of 2 February 1937, the personal union between the Reich Transport Minister and the Reich Post Minister, which had existed since 1932, was abolished and Wilhelm Ohnesorge (1872 to 1962) was again appointed Reich Post Minister. The occasion was the subordination of the Reichsbahn to Reich sovereignty. The unconditional capitulation of Germany at the end of the Second World War also meant the end of the German Reichspost. His written fixation of this fact was found in Articles 5 and 9 of a declaration of the Allied Control Council of June 5, 1945, according to which "all facilities and objects of the ... intelligence ... to hold at the disposal of the Allies' representatives" and "until the establishment of supervision over all means of communication" any broadcasting operation was prohibited. The postal and telecommunications services and the operation of their facilities were finally restarted at different times and separately by the respective Commanders-in-Chief according to the four occupation zones of Germany. The tasks of the Deutsche Reichspost (German Imperial Postal Service) were social and technical progress, as well as the effects of important inventions, which inevitably led to both the quantitative expansion of communication relations and their continuous improvement, right up to the introduction and application of new services in the postal, telegraph and radio sectors. One of the main tasks of the Deutsche Reichspost, the carriage of news items, did not initially extend to all postal items. In the beginning, only closed letters and political newspapers that did not remain in the sender's town were affected by the so-called post compulsion. All open items (especially postcards and printed matter) for a place other than the place of dispatch and letters, parcels etc. for recipients in the place of dispatch could also be collected, transported and distributed by so-called private transport companies. Such "private posts" settled above all in large cities and increasingly opposed the German Reichspost as fierce competitors, for example through lower fee rates. The Reichspost had to get rid of this competition, especially since it was obliged to maintain expensive and sometimes even unprofitable delivery facilities even in the remotest areas of the Reich. The Postal Act Amendment of 20 Dec. 1899 therefore prohibited all commercially operated private post offices in the German Reich from 1 April 1900 and extended the postal obligation to sealed letters within the place of dispatch. The carriage of passengers From time immemorial, Swiss Post also dealt with the carriage of passengers. Before the advent of the railways, passenger transport by stagecoach was the most important means of public transport and, as such, was also part of the postal monopoly in many countries. The expansion of the railway network initially limited this traffic activity of the post office, but after the invention and further perfection of the automobile it gained importance again. Thus, since 1906/07, bus routes have been established ("Postkraftwagen-Überlandverkehr", often also called "Kraftposten" for short). They were expanded mainly in the years 1924 to 1929, so that on 1 April 1929 the Deutsche Reichspost operated almost 2000 Kraftpost lines with an operating length of more than 37,000 km and by that time had already carried 68 million passengers. The enormous economic and technical upswing in Germany after the foundation of the German Empire also meant that the Imperial Post Office and Telegraph Administration had to make use of their cash register facilities for the ever-increasing flow of payment transactions. In addition to the banks, Swiss Post took over the regulation of cashless payment transactions: on 1 January 1909, the postal transfer and postal cheque service was opened in Germany (13 Postscheckkämter). Both the number of accounts and the amount of assets increased steadily in the following decades, with the exception of the two world wars. The banking activity of the Deutsche Reichspost, 'which serves the fulfilment of state activities, not competition with the private sector', was divided into five main branches: postal order service, postal COD service, postal order service, postal transfer and cheque service, postal savings bank service. The latter was introduced only after the annexation of Austria (a post office savings bank had existed here since 1883) on 1 January 1939. Telegraphy and radio telegraphy Although telegraphy was administered by an independent authority equivalent to the general post office before the Reichspost was founded, it had been closely related to the post office since 1854. In that year, in Prussia, the telegraph service in small communities was transferred to the respective postal service. Own telegraph stations usually existed only in cities and larger municipalities, where the operation was profitable. In 1871 there were a total of 3,535 telegraph stations in the German Reich (including Bavaria and Württemberg) with 107,485 km of telegraph lines and an annual output of over 10 million telegrams. By the beginning of the First World War, this figure had been six times higher. In contrast to the USA, where the population quickly made use of telephone traffic, the German public apparently did not initially want to make friends with the new telephone system. As early as 1877, General Postmaster Stephan had the first telephone line set up between the General Post Office in Leipzig and the General Telegraph Office in Französische Straße, and soon thereafter arranged for attempts to be made at longer distances. As late as 1880, however, Stephans' call for participation in a city telephone system in Berlin met with little approval, so that the first local traffic exchange began operations here in January 1881 with only 8 subscribers. However, the advantages of telephone traffic were soon recognised and the spread of the telephone increased rapidly. The 24-hour telephone service was first introduced in Munich in 1884, and Berlin opened its 10,000th telephone station in May 1889. As early as 1896 there were 130,000 "telephone stations" in Germany; in 1920 there were about 1.8 million, in 1930 over 3 million and in 1940 almost 5 million connections. Since the practical testing of Hertzian electromagnetic waves, i.e. since 1895, Swiss Post has paid great attention to the development and expansion of wireless telegraphy. From the very beginning, there was no doubt that the Reichspost was responsible for radio communications (as a type of communication). After the first radio telegraphy devices had been produced in Germany by Siemens and AEG and the first public radio stations had been put into operation in 1890, a regulated radio service began in the German Reich. In the following decades, the Reichspost retained the exclusive right to install and operate radio equipment. However, it was not in a position to carry out all the associated services itself and therefore delegated some of this right to other companies. Thus there were finally 3 groups of radio services: - the radio service operated by the Reichspost with its own radio stations (maritime radio, aeronautical radio), - the radio service operated by companies. The "Transradio AG für drahtlose Überseeverkehr" carried out the entire overseas radio traffic in the years 1921-1932 on behalf of the Deutsche Reichspost. Deep sea radio, train radio and police radio have been granted rights in their fields in a similar manner, - the radio services of public transport carriers such as Reichsbahn, Reichsautobahnen and waterways. Radio and television The exclusive competence for radio broadcasting also extended to radio broadcasting, which was established after the First World War. Legal and organisational issues had to be resolved for this new area of activity of Swiss Post more than for other areas. There are two phases to the relationship between the postal service and broadcasting: a) From 1923 to 1933, the Deutsche Reichspost was responsible for all legislative matters, the issuing of user regulations, the granting of licenses, the fixing and collection of fees, the setting up of transmitters, the technical operation and monitoring of economic management. The Reich Ministry of the Interior, together with the Länder governments, was responsible for the fundamental regulation of the political and cultural issues arising in the course of programme planning. The Reichspost left the broadcasting operations themselves to companies to which it granted a licence. The Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft, founded in 1923, acted as the umbrella organization, in which the Deutsche Reichspost held a major share through a majority of capital and votes and was headed by the Broadcasting Commissioner of the Deutsche Reichspost. b) In 1933, the newly created Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda assumed responsibility for all organizational and managerial issues relating to broadcasting; the Deutsche Reichspost remained only responsible for the cable network and transmitters, for licenses, fee collection and accounting. As a result of the Reichskulturkammergesetz of 22 September 1933, the Reichsrundfunkkammer was at the forefront of broadcasting, in which the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft and several other associations were represented. This marked the beginning of the absolute subordination of broadcasting to the National Socialist dictatorship. The first attempts at television were made in the 1920s, also under the direction of the Deutsche Reichspost. Swiss Post continued to play a major role in the scientific and technical development of television in the following years. After an improved Braun tube had been shown at the Funkausstellung Berlin in 1932, the 1933 annual report of the Deutsche Reichspost described trial television broadcasts in a large urban area as practically feasible. In March 1935, the Deutsche Reichspost set up the world's first public television station at the Reichspostmuseum in Berlin, where the public could follow the reception of the programmes free of charge. The Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda and the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG) shared the programming. The Reichspost Ministry subsidiary "Reichspost-Fernseh-GmbH" (since 1939) and the Reichsministerium für Luftfahrt (Reich Ministry of Aviation) were responsible for the transmitters "in view of their special significance for air traffic control and national air protection". The organisation and structure of the Deutsche Reichspost Of all the branches of the Reich administration, Die Post possessed the most extensive and clearly structured official substructure. It was taken over by the Prussian postal service in 1871 and was divided into the following 3 stages until the destruction of the German Reich in 1945: The Reichspostamt / Reichspostministerium Since 1880, the supreme Reichsbehörde has been divided into three departments: Post (I), Telegraph (and soon Telephone) (II) and Personnel, Budget, Accounting and Construction (III). A short time later Stephan was appointed Secretary of State and was thus placed on an equal footing with the heads of the other Imperial Offices established in the meantime. Division III was divided in 1896. General administrative matters were assigned to the new Division III, while Division IV was now responsible for personnel, cash management and accounting. Later, cash and accounting were transferred back to Division III and Division IV retained only personnel matters. From 1919, now as the Reich Post Ministry, a fifth department for radio communications and a sixth for social affairs expanded the organizational structure. Section VI, however, was discontinued after inflation in 1924, and at the same time Sections III and V exchanged their designations, so that in this Section the household, cash register and building trade, in that Section the telegraph and radio trade were dealt with, while Section II was responsible for the telephone trade, initially still combined with the telegraph building trade. On 1 June 1926 another department for economic and organisational questions was added, which was formed from the previous economic department. Since 1926 there have been eight departments: Abt. I Postwesen Abt. II Telegrafen- und Fernsprechtechnik und Fernsprachbetrieb Abt. III Telegrafenbetrieb und Funkwesen Abt. IV Personalwesen Abt. V Haushalts-, Kassen, Postscheck- und Bauwesen Abt. VI in Munich, for Bavaria, dissolved in 1934 Abt. VII for Württemberg, dissolved in 1934 Abt. VIII Wirtschaftsabteilung. From 1934 Abt. VI, later referred to as Abt. für Kraftfahrwesen, Maschinentechnik und Beschaffungswesen. From 30.11. 1942 Abt. VII: Independence of all radio and television affairs from Abt. III (since 1940 already under the direct control of State Secretary Flanze [at the same time President of the Reichspostzentralamt] as the "Special Department Fl") Under National Socialist rule in 1938, the Ministry was expanded by a Central Department (Min-Z) for political tasks and questions of personnel management. During the war, a foreign policy department, a colonial department and an eastern department were added. A special division F 1 for broadcasting affairs was also set up temporarily. During the Second World War, the organization of the postal system in the annexed and occupied territories was determined by the nature and intensity of its integration into the National Socialist sphere of power. In the annexed areas, the postal administration was completely taken over by the Deutsche Reichspost. In most occupied territories, on the other hand, the postal services of the respective countries remained unchanged. Next to them, the field post continued to work. A German service post was created in various administrative areas to supply the German occupation authorities, such as the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" (1939-1945), the Netherlands (1940-1945), Norway (1942-1945), the Adriatic and Alpine regions (both 1943-1945), the East and the Ukraine (both 1941-1944). The German service posts "Ostland" and "Ukraine", each under a general postal commissioner, simultaneously provided the business of the "Deutsche Post Ostland" and "Deutsche Post Ukraine", which were fictitious as Landespost. The attempts made by the Reich Ministry of Posts to establish a central management of the intelligence system of all annexed and invaded territories failed because of the principle of the unity of the administration in the respective territory. The Reich Ministry of Posts had a number of specialist offices for the handling of special subjects, such as the field post office, the motor vehicle office, the building administration office and the cheque office. The following departments were directly affiliated or subordinated to the Reich Ministry of Posts: - the General Post Office as the body responsible for the entire administration of the post office and telegraph system, - the Postal Money Order Office. From 1 April 1912 it was subordinated to the Oberpostdirektion Berlin as the postal accounting office from 1 April 1912, - the Postzeitungsamt, from 1 January 1918 also subordinated to the Oberpostdirektion Berlin, - the Postversicherungskommission für Angelegenheiten der Unfall- u.a. -fürsorge, which was transferred to the newly founded Versorgungsanstalt der Deutschen Reichspost on 1 August 1926. With this public corporation, the previously differently regulated supplementary provision for postal staff was unified: two thirds of the contributions were paid by the Deutsche Reichspost and one third by the insured themselves, - the Telegrafentechnische Reichsamt, founded in 1920. In 1928, it assumed further tasks from the Reich Post Ministry, such as railway postal issues, postal statistics, training and teaching matters, cash and accounting and procurement, and was renamed the Reich Post Central Office, - the Reich Post Museum, created in 1872, - the Reich Post Building Inspectorate, formed in 1937 to meet the postal service's needs in the structural redesign of Berlin, - the Postal Savings Bank Office in Vienna, which was taken over after the annexation of Austria in March 1938. In direct subordination to the Reich Ministry of Posts, it was responsible for the central account management of the Postal Savings Bank Service after it had been extended to the Old Empire. The "Postschutz", a paramilitary association under the umbrella of the Postal Ministry, had a special position. In June 1935, the Reich leadership of the SS and the Supreme SA leadership agreed on binding regulations regarding the affiliation of postal workers to the SA or SS. The postal service and thus also the postal security service were given priority over 'any use by the SA and SS. The claim for purposes of the SA and SS outside the postal service must not be to the detriment of the proper operation of the postal service', it said. Postal security was uniformed and uniformly armed. The research institute of the Deutsche Reichspost, founded on 1 January 1937, investigated special problems in television technology. The Reichspostforschungsanstalt was responsible for the coordination of all television armaments projects and orders to industry. It dealt with the further development of research areas for military purposes. The tasks are outlined in a document signed by Ohnesorge: "1. television; 2. general physics, in particular nuclear physics, optics, acoustics, electronics; 3. chemistry; 4. special tasks for the four-year plan". The Reichsdruckerei was not integrated into the structure of the Reichspost, but was associated with its top management in personal union. On 1 April 1879 it was placed under the control of the Reich Post and Telegraph Administration as an independent Reich enterprise. Through its products it maintained very close relations with the Reichspost, since, for example, postage stamps, postal cheques, the Reichskursbuch, etc. were produced for the account of the post office cashier. The Oberpostdirektionen/Reichspostdirektionen The Oberpostdirektionen (OPD) as intermediate authorities between the Berlin headquarters and the post offices were established as early as 1850 in Prussia. After their transfer to the Reichspost, they were among the higher Reich authorities. The Ministry of Postal Affairs has delegated more and more responsibilities to the OPDen, so that their freedom of action grew steadily and they gradually became the focus of the postal administration. 1928 saw the establishment of managing higher postal directorates, which together took over the leadership of a district group (several OPD districts) for certain tasks (e.g. training and education as well as procurement and supply). 1934 to 1945 as Reichspostdirektionen (RPD), they were subject to many changes in their area and in their number. In 1943 there were 51 RPD. The post office cheque offices (formed in 1909), the telegraph construction offices and the telegraph tool offices (set up in 1920) were responsible for several OPD/RPDs and thus also to be regarded as intermediate authorities. The Post Offices The Post Offices, referred to in the area of the Deutsche Reichspost as Verkehrsämter and Amtsstellen, formed the local offices of the lowest level; they were subordinate to the OPD/RPD closest to each other. The local offices included not only the post offices, which were divided into three classes until 1924 (only since 1924 did they have a uniform designation as post offices), but also the post agencies, postal assistance offices, railway post offices, telegraph and telephone offices as well as public pay telephones in the municipalities which were subordinate to them. In 1942 there were about 70,000 such offices and offices in the German Reich. The division into "secret archive" and "secret registry" was characteristic of the registry relations in the RPM until 1928. The general files and most important special files from the "Secret Registry" were transferred to the "Secret Archive", as were historically valuable files from the dissolved postal administrations of the German Länder, so that the "Secret Archive" developed more and more into a selection archive. In contrast, the "secret registry" was the actual general registry of the RPM. It consisted of a frequently changing number of registries. In the mid-twenties there were seventeen of them. The number of registries was greatly reduced by the formation of so-called specialist parties for individual fields of activity, such as Bp (Postbankverkehr) or Zp (Postal Newspapers). On January 1, 1928, a file plan was put into effect in the RPM and a little later in the entire area of the Deutsche Reichspost, the main features of which were still valid in the Deutsche Bundespost and in the Deutsche Post of the GDR until their end. It consisted of eight main groups, which essentially correspond to the present classification of the file stock, here on the basis of the file plan from the year 1938 under consideration of structural conditions of the inventory creator. In the period from 1933 to 1941, the Reich Ministry of Posts had handed over about 2,200 historically valuable file units, which were no longer needed in the service, to the Reich Archives. Towards the end of the war, most of the files, together with other holdings, were moved to the potash shafts near Staßfurt and Schönebeck. They survived the war there without any significant casualties. The files that had not been removed from the Reichsarchiv, above all the partial holdings of the Reichsdruckerei, were burnt during the air raid on Potsdam in April 1945. Losses were also recorded in the files remaining in the various departments of the RPM, in particular in a total of 15 alternative offices in the countryside, where the documents had been successively transferred since 1943, but also in the RPM building itself, which had been severely damaged by several bomb hits in the years 1943 to 1945. The total file loss of the RPM after 1945 was estimated at 2,417 files. The existing files formed the basis for the later named component R 4701 I, which until 1990 was located in the Central State Archives in Potsdam (ZStA) and was transferred to the Federal Archives with German unity. The holdings in the Federal Archives at the time of the retroconversion of the finding aids in 2009 For the period from 1945 onwards, the RPM file holdings must be viewed in a differentiated way, because its four parts have reached the Federal Archives in very different ways and accordingly had received not only their own history of tradition, but also their own finding aids, their own signatures, etc. For example, the letters B, D, GA, and P were used as signature additions, which sometimes proved to be quite impractical, not only in archival practice. For a long time it had been planned to record all parts in a common finding aid book. Since around 1990, the following distinguishing features have been used, but these have hardly had any effect on everyday archival life. Part R 4701 I, formerly R 47.01 - Potsdam until 1990 This is the bulk of the collection stored in the Central State Archives in Potsdam. As a rule, the designation R 4701 I was not used, but only R 4701 with the following signature, formerly R 47.01. This also contained the above-mentioned files with the additional identification letters. This part of the collection, which was outsourced by the Reichsarchiv, was transferred to the then Deutsche Zentralarchiv Potsdam in 1950. The DZA Potsdam received the majority of the files in 1957, 1960 and 1966 from the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of the GDR, but initially only the old files with a term until 1928 were handed over. The files since the introduction of the file plan in 1928 still remained in the GDR Ministry and were only handed over to the ZStA Potsdam in 1983, but by far not completely (cf. remarks on R 4701 II). In addition, RPM files from former storage sites in Potsdam had also been transferred to the DZA Potsdam in 1961. Also at the beginning of the 1960s, all files that were stored in

History of the Inventor: By order of 7 Sept. 1929, the Federal Foreign Office and the Reich Economic Ministry merged the Central Office for the Foreign Economic Intelligence Service, the Customs Office in the Reich Economic Ministry and the German Economic Service GmbH for the tasks assigned to them in the field of foreign trade promotion with immediate effect under the common name of the Central Office for Foreign Trade (ZFA). The ZFA is structured as follows: - Intelligence service - Trade information service - Customs service. The legal basis was enshrined in the Law on Measures to Promote Foreign Trade of 18 Oct 1933. The previous ZFA had proved its worth in practice and was now legally recognised as the Reichsstelle für den Außenhandel (RFA), which was a joint department of the Foreign Office and the Reich Economic Ministry. It was empowered to issue instructions to the regional (most recently 22) foreign trade offices under its supervision. In the course of the reorganisation of the commercial economy, the previous branch offices were closed or integrated into the Gauwirtschaftskammern. Their activities have now been carried out by departments established at the Gauwirtschaftskammern for the promotion of economic relations with foreign countries (foreign trade departments). The RFA existed until its collapse in 1945. Inventory description: Inventory history The documents arrived in September 1955 as part of a Custodian's levy for the Reich offices, economic groups and other state economic offices in the American, British and French sectors of Berlin without a delivery list and in disorder in the Federal Archives. Apart from the fact that the inventory is only one part of the registry, it has also been seized by the British occupying power, which confiscated it in 1945 and examined it at the beginning of 1948. At the end of 1949, the files were released to the custodian, who took over the files himself at the beginning of 1951. Another extensive part of the registry is still in US hands. Among them several card indexes, which could be the Jewish card indexes and the card index of insecure foreign companies, which survived the bombing of the RFA (to 50 in Nov. 1943 demonstrably without loss). Archival evaluation and processing The holdings, which entered the Federal Archives without a list of deliveries and in disorder, consisted mainly of standing files, whose state of preservation was generally good. An exception to this is the specialist archive of Department III A, which contained almost exclusively loose items. In the course of its existence, this collection has undergone a number of recognizable changes, which are reflected in changing signatures according to false criteria. The entire material of the subject archives is listed by country in the find book. In principle, the country names used in the collection itself and valid at the time are used, i.e. Croatia, Serbia instead of Yugoslavia, etc., which are used at that time. All country names, whether they concern a single country, a group of countries (such as Scandinavia) or parts of countries (such as Scotland), are in alphabetical order. Only the possessions of the European colonial states are listed under their respective names (British possessions, Dutch possessions, etc.). Documents from foreign trade offices were handed over to the regionally responsible state archives. Characterization of content: The main focus of the transmission is on correspondence with the foreign trade offices (Gauwirtschaftskammern) A-Z: Information on foreign representative and trading companies 1940-1945 (510) Letter and telegram switching 1940-1945 Administrative matters, including personnel procedures A-Z, business distribution plans, budget questions 1922-1945 General matters of foreign trade promotion, legal and organizational questions of the RfA and its predecessor institutions 1934-1945 Collection of material on all countries of the world (newspaper clippings, brochures, mission reports, official announcements, company and private letters, etc.).a.) within the countries or country groups according to subject areas (economic situation, industry, trade, banking, social situation, foreign trade, legal system, press etc.) State of development: Findbuch (2014) Citation method: BArch, R 9-I/...

History of the Inventory Designer: History After the foundation of the Reich in 1871, the creation of a common railway administration for all German states was not initially on the agenda. The southern German states feared the overweight of Prussia and finally rejected Bismarck's rich railroad law of 1875. Only the railway lines in Alsace and Lorraine, which were separated from France, were subject to the Imperial Chancellor since 1871. For the railway system in Germany the network of the Alsace-Lorraine Railways (besides 7 state administrations at that time) existed as the only state administration until the transfer of the state railway administrations of the Länder into the possession of the Reich. This railway network consisted of the parts of the French Ostbahn assigned to the German Reich on the basis of the Frankfurt Peace Treaty of 10 May 1871 and the lines of the Wilhelm-Luxemburg-Eisenbahnen taken over on a lease basis by the State Treaty of 11 June 1872 with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The newly formed "Kaiserliche Generaldirektion der Reichseisenbahnen in Elsass-Lothringen" had been established for this purpose by the Most High Decree of 9 December 1871 with the powers and duties of a public authority. At first it was directly subordinated to the Reich Chancellery (Department III for Alsace-Lorraine). Until the French occupation of Alsace-Lorraine in November 1918, it was also the focal point of operations and administration. For the development of transport in Alsace-Lorraine, in addition to the special traffic situation on the Upper Rhine road and the Burgundy Gate, the development of industry was of importance. While originally the textile industry in the area of Mulhouse stood in the first place, the German heavy industry, which shifted to Lorraine and Luxembourg, came more and more into the foreground, in addition the potash works in the Upper Alsace, which developed on a coincidental discovery, and the not very important but in Germany at that time almost only petroleum extraction near Pechelbronn. In the interests of smooth cooperation between transport operators and production units, a "Railway Committee" was set up on 1 October 1874, composed of representatives of chambers of commerce, industry and agriculture. This first Railway Committee later became the model for the Railway Councils affiliated to the other German State Railway Administrations. The Directorate-General also broke new ground on the question of tariffs by creating the so-called wagon room tariff. The inauguration of the first railways in Alsace-Lorraine, the Strasbourg - Basel line, took place on 19 and 20 September 1841. Thirty years later, when the Alsace-Lorraine Railways were taken over by the German Reich, the length of the line was 768.21 km, plus 174.54 km of the Wilhelm-Luxemburg Railway Company. Under German administration more than 1200 km were added. From a technical point of view, the railways were regarded as model installations in every respect: the transhipment facilities between railways and inland waterways were brought to the highest level of technical efficiency; the stations in Strasbourg and Metz were converted from small provincial stations into metropolitan stations with all the requirements of modern times. Net revenues in 1872 amounted to more than 5 million Marks, increased to 20 million Marks in 1890, 86 million Marks in 1900 and 153 million Marks in 1913, the last year of peace. On 27 May 1878, the Imperial Decree established the Reichsamt für die Verwaltung der Reichseisenbahnen in Berlin. It was a central authority under the direct authority of the Imperial Chancellor to manage the administration of the railways in Alsace-Lorraine and the neighbouring regions. The General Directorate of the Reichseisenbahnen in Alsace-Lorraine was now subordinated to the Reichsamt für die Verwaltung der Reichseisenbahnen, which acted as the state supervisory authority. The respective Prussian Minister of Public Works was entrusted with the management of the authority. First head of the Reich Office was State Minister Albert von Maybach (1822-1904), later Karl von Thielen (1832-1906) followed from June 1891, Hermann von Budde (1851-1906) from June 1902 and Paul von Breitenbach (1850-1930) from 1906. Direct management was the responsibility of the Directorate-General for Railways in Alsace-Lorraine, based in Strasbourg. Until 1 October 1909 it consisted of three departments: Division 1 for Operations, Division 2 for Construction, Division 3 for Transport and General Administration. To this end, the company management, traffic inspections, machine inspections, workshop inspections and a telegraph inspection managed the various branches of the company and traffic, while the central technical offices (the technical office, the construction office, the mechanical office and the materials office) independently handled a number of general transactions falling within the scope of the central administration. On 1 October 1909, a reorganisation came into force, the importance of which lay essentially in the removal of the operational directorates without replacement and the abolition of the central offices and the telegraph inspection, whose business was now handled by the Directorate-General itself. At the same time, the number of departments increased to 5: Department 1 for General Administration, Finance and Budgeting, Department 2 for Operations, Department 3 for Transportation, Department 4 for Construction, Department 5 for Machinery and Workshops. The 17 operational inspections in Alsace-Lorraine and 3 operational inspections in Luxembourg were directly carried out by the Directorate-General. The Executive Board of the German operations administration in Luxembourg was the superior authority for all departments of the district. There were 8 traffic inspections in Basel, Mulhouse, Colmar, Strasbourg, Saargemünd, Metz, Diedenhofen and Luxembourg. The traffic inspector in Basel also held the post of representative of the German administration vis-à-vis Switzerland. There were 6 machine inspections: in Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Saargemünd, Metz, Diedenhofen and Luxembourg. The main workshops were in Mulhouse, Bischheim near Strasbourg, Montigny near Metz and Niederjeutz near Diedenhofen. They were subject to the workshop inspections in Bischheim and Montigny two each (for locomotive construction and for carriage construction one each). Secondary workshops subject to machine inspections were located in Saargemünd and Luxembourg. Since 1911, all inspections have been called Offices, Plant Office, Machine Office, etc.). The incorporation of the Prussian Minister of Public Works into the administrative organization of the Reich strengthened the influence of the head of the Prussian State Railways over the heads of the other federal railway administrations and reduced the importance of the Reich Railway Office for issues related to national defence. 7 After the assignment of Alsace-Lorraine to France as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, the Reich Ministry of Transport took over the Reich Office's execution tasks in the autumn of 1919. The source value of the files taken over from the General Directorate in Strasbourg was described by the Reichsarchiv as "sufficient" at the time. "Apart from some historically interesting details from the recent times of Emperor Wilhelm I and Prince Bismarck, their value for the history of the German Empire lies in the... 9 Reference should be made to the peculiarities of Alsace-Lorraine's traffic situation at the intersection of important north-south and east-west connections and the resulting tradition of archival sources. The files contain documents from negotiations on the construction of major Alpine passes (Gotthard Railway, Eastern Alpine Railway, Simplon Railway), traffic between England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy, traffic between the Balkan states, Austria-Hungary and the southern German administrations on the one hand and France and Spain on the other. Further documents are available on construction and engineering, operational services, passenger, baggage and freight traffic. A comprehensive component reflects the collective bargaining system, including social aspects taking into account foreign language problems. Measures against espionage, sabotage and agent activity, also persecution of political opponents are recorded in the "Secret Acts A and B", statements on military facts, especially the mobilization, the war 1914/18, the armistice and the peace negotiations can be found in the "Secret Acts M". Inventory description: Inventory history The files of the Directorate-General of the Reichseisenbahnen in Strasbourg have been transferred to France. A few files from the former Central State Archives in Potsdam are in the inventory R 4202 General Directorate of the Reich Railways in Alsace-Lorraine in the Federal Archives. The files of the Reichsamt for the administration of the Reichseisenbahnen were offered to the Reichsarchiv for takeover in autumn 1931. From the entire file stock of about 4000 volumes, 1313 volumes were transferred to the Reichsarchiv for permanent storage in accordance with the then existing regulations. Obviously, there were no war losses. Archival evaluation and processing The files of the Reich Office for the Administration of the Reich Railways taken over by the Reichsarchiv were arranged, listed and recorded on index cards in 1932, followed by a finding aid book for the holdings (today: R 4201). In 2008, the inventory was recorded in the BASYS-S database of the Federal Archives on the basis of the find book available from 1932. This was done by entering the data into the BASYS-S database of the Federal Archives for the purpose of making the search results available online. The intensive index data were taken over for the most part original with the abbreviations used at that time. Only the numerical archive signatures were retained for the indexing; for found files with volume numbering (e.g. 154 a), each volume received a new archive signature. This concerned all files with the now new archive signature R 4201/729 to R 4201/1430. The previous signatures were listed as old signatures, the files themselves were re-signed in 2008 in the course of an inventory revision and magazine-technical work. Content: Organization and administration of the Reichsamt 1870-1920 (186), budget and cash administration 1870-1921(386), personnel matters: Civil servant matters 1871-1920 (385), special personnel matters (secret files B) 1872-1919 (13), building and construction 1864-1919 (152), operational services 1871-1918 (86), passenger and baggage traffic 1871-1918 (21), freight traffic 1871-1919 (169), collective bargaining 1871-1919 (145), Measures against espionage, sabotage and agent activity, also persecution of political opponents (secret files A) 1881-1919 (14), mobilization, war, armistice, peace negotiations (secret files M) 1872-1920 (93) Online Findbuch (2009) In total, the holdings in the Federal Archives include 1430 files. Together with the holdings of the Reichseisenbahnamt (R 4101) and the Generaldirektion der Eisenbahnen in Elsass-Lothringen (R 4202), a rather complete set of files exists for the early period of traffic organisation in the railway age in Germany - regardless of its correspondence with the files of the Prussian Ministry of Public Works, which are located in the Prussian Secret State Archives in Berlin-Dahlem, and the large number of archival sources on railway history in the archives of the Länder, districts and cities. The source value of the files taken over from the General Directorate in Strasbourg was described by the Reichsarchiv as "sufficient" at the time. Apart from some historically interesting details from the recent time of Emperor Wilhelm I. and Prince Bismarck, their value for the history of the German Empire [lies] in the... that at the Reichsamt almost all the questions that the Prussian Ministry of Public Works had to deal with were reflected in a more concise and concise form. Reference should be made to the special features of Alsace-Lorraine's traffic situation at the intersection of important north-south and east-west connections and the resulting tradition of archival sources. The files contain documents from negotiations on the construction of major Alpine passes (Gotthard Railway, Eastern Alpine Railway, Simplon Railway), traffic between England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy, traffic between the Balkan states, Austria-Hungary and the southern German administrations on the one hand and France and Spain on the other. Further documents are available on construction and engineering, operational services, passenger, baggage and freight traffic. A comprehensive component reflects the collective bargaining system, including social aspects taking into account foreign language problems. Measures against espionage, sabotage and agent activity, also persecution of political opponents are recorded in the "Secret Acts A and B", statements on military facts, especially the mobilization, the war 1914/18, the armistice and the peace negotiations can be found in the "Secret Acts M". Supplementary traditions Further traditions include the inventories R 4101 Reichseisenbahnamt and R 4202 Generaldirektion der Eisenbahnen in Elsass-Lothringen. The Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin contain the files of the Prussian Ministry of Public Works (holdings I. HA Rep. 93 B Ministry of Public Works). Citation style: BArch, R 4201/...

History of the Inventory Designer: The Reichsschrifttumskammer was established with the First Ordinance on the Implementation of the Reichskulturkammergesetz of 01 November 1933 [1]. It was intended to bring together 'all those persons who, from the initial production of the poetry to commercial distribution, worked on German literature' [2]. However, this did not include newspapers and magazines which were regarded as press products and were therefore under the supervision of the Reich Press Chamber. The demarcation between the two chambers was regulated in the "Joint Announcement on the Integration Obligation of Business and Publishing Enterprises at the Reichsschrifttums- or Reichspressekammer of 4 April 1934" [3]. At the beginning, the registration of professionals working in the field of literature was limited to the Reichsverband deutscher Schriftsteller. However, this already changed on 22 December 1933 with the "Bekanntmachung über die Gliederung der Reichsschrifttumskammer" [4]. Thus existing professional associations such as the "Verband der Deutschen Volksbibliothekare E.V.", the "Verein Deutscher Bibliothekare E.V.", the "Reichsfachschaft Buchhandel im Deutschen Handlungsgehilfen-Verband" were integrated into the Reichsschrifttumskammer. Its members became members of the Chamber and were thus subject to the disciplinary power of the Chamber. In addition, new working groups were formed and various professional groups joined together in associations. These included, among others, the "German Book Communities" and the "Society of Bibliophiles". The German public libraries were to be combined by the German Community Day "in order to integrate them into the Reichsschrifttumskammer"[5]. As in all other areas of culture, membership of the Reichsschrifttumskammer was absolutely necessary in order not to be subject to a de facto ban on employment. Thus the "Order of 30 July 1934 on Proof of Membership in the Reichsschrifttumskammer"[6] ensured that the publishing and book trade enterprises were only allowed to enter into business relations with members of the RSK. In order to facilitate the implementation of that order, all members had to indicate 'in their business correspondence the membership number of their competent professional association'[7]. Violations should be punished with disciplinary action. Information on authors and translators was provided by the publishers at the request of the "Kontrollstelle des Reichsverbandes Deutscher Schriftsteller". In any case, the authors had to provide considerable personal information and expert opinions (e.g. expert opinions of the NSDAP, the Gestapo and the responsible state leadership of the RSK[8]) in order to become members. "Unreliable" authors were thus prohibited from exercising their profession by refusing membership. The rejected applicants and exclusions from the RSK were published in the Börsenblatt des Deutschen Buchhandels, in the Großdeutscher Leihbüchereiblatt and in the magazines "Der Schriftsteller" and "Der Autor". In addition to professional representation and support, the RSK had the task of maintaining a "list of harmful and undesirable literature", which appeared in print for the first time in 1936. However, the decision on book prohibitions was taken by the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. "The political influence of the German literature [...] is a matter of the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda (Department VIII), which uses the Reichsschrifttumsstelle established at the Ministry to solve this task"[9] The organisational structure [10] consisted of the President, two Vice-Presidents, the former President and the Presidential Council at the management level. The first President Hans Friedrich Blunck was replaced by Hanns Johst in October 1935. Blunck received the title of "former president" and was entrusted with overseeing the Chamber's foreign relations. The office was divided into five departments: I. Central Division II. Writers' Group III. Book Trade Group IV. Book Advertising V. Librarianship VI. Address and Advertising Book Trade VII. Economic Office of the German Book Trade The regional substructure consisted of the regional managements of the chamber in the respective district. They were to be addressed with applications for admission, general requests for literature and professional matters. Notes [1]Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 I, p. 797 [2]Handbuch der Reichskulturkammer, p. 136 [3]Das Recht der Reichsschrifttumskammer, p. 21-22 [4]ibid., p. 12-17 [5]ibid., p. 14 [6]ibid., p. 37-38 [7]ibid., p. 38 [8]R 56 V/170 [9]Handbuch der Reichskulturkammer, p. 136 [10]Beschreibung nach Handbuch der Reichskulturkammer, p. 135-200 Overview of the Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Managing Directors Presidents Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Hans Friedrich Blunck (from Oct. 1935 "Old President"), 1933 - Oct. 1935 Hans Johst, Oct. 1935 - 1945 Vice Presidents Dr. Heinz Wismann, 1933 - 1937 Wilhelm Baur, 1938 - 1945 Karl Heinz Hederich, 1937 - 1938 Managing Director Prof. Dr. Dr. Hans Hederich, 1937 - 1938 Richard Suchenwirth (1st Managing Director), 1935 Günter Haupt (2nd Managing Director), 1935 Karl Heinl, 1936 - May 1937 Wilhelm Ihde, May 1937 - Dec. 1943 Günther Gentz, Jan. 1944 - 1945 Inventory description: Inventory history In contrast to the other Chambers of Culture, the file tradition in the old Koblenz inventory R 56 V (see Publication Findbuch No. 31) was quite extensive (archive numbers R 56 V/1-196). These were included in the present distortion. The material files in the "Reichsschrifttumskammer" collections of the former Berlin Document Center were sorted out, newly recorded and assigned to the holdings. The content is essentially as follows: 1.) Review and permission to publish books, booklets and publications 2.) Inclusion in the "List of harmful and undesirable literature" 3.) Differences of opinion (disputes) between writers and publishers 4.) Correspondence between the RSK Headquarters and its national management in the individual districts. Archive processing The file titles available in the Koblenz partial stock are recorded in the online find book edited by Mr. Tim Storch. The signatures assigned at that time were retained. Information on the BDC stocks is already contained in the Findbuch R 56 [11]. However, the titles listed there do not reflect the full range of files listed here. On the one hand, this was the "Review and Approval of the Publication of Books, Booklets and Publications" (R 56 V/215-827), in which the publishers only informed the RSK about new editions and publications. Secondly, the RSK included various books (mostly foreign) in the "List of harmful and undesirable literature", mostly at the suggestion of the RMVP, which was tantamount to a ban. These documents were classified in the series "Inclusion in the "List of harmful and undesirable literature" - individual cases. The specimen copies found in the files were left there and included in the note containing them. Wolfram Werner's classification, 'which was not strictly based on the administrative structure'[12], had to be extended to include 'management', since it became apparent during the recording that the disputes in the file did not fit into that scheme. According to the "Handbuch der Reichskulturkammer" (Handbook of the Reich Chamber of Culture), an arbitration board was responsible for "differences of opinion between writers on the one hand, publishers and other exploiters of literary works on the other"[13], which was attached to the Rechtsreferenten. This legal officer in turn was directly subordinated to the management of the RSK [14]. Therefore the management was subdivided into the 3 areas "Legal Officer", "Supervisor" and "Intelligence and Statistics Unit". The classification point "Rechtsreferent" was divided into the areas "Allgemeine Rechtsfragen der Kammer" (R 56V/1050) and the so-called "Schlichtungsstelle" (litigation). In order to maintain uniformity, the old classification point "Surveillance and prohibition of literature" has been moved to the point "Supervisor". For disputes between individual writers, it was again not the conciliation body in the management that was responsible, but Division II (Writers' Group), which was subdivided into "Technical, Legal and Social Support for Writers". The old classification did not correspond so stringently to these individual areas. However, the newly recorded files made this necessary. The old classification point "Individual writers, in particular membership matters" was renamed "Technical support, also membership matters". The second classification point is "Legal support". The remaining classification points of the "Writers' Group" have been retained. Notes [11]Find books on holdings of the Federal Archives, volume 31, Reichskulturkammer und ihre Einzelkammern, p. 119 [12]ibid., p. 93 [13]Handbuch der Reichskulturkammer, p. 140 [14]ibid. Citation method BArch R 56-V/... State of development: Publication index of the Reich Chamber of Culture (1987), online index (2006). Citation style: BArch, R 56-V/...

History of the Inventory Designer: Alfred Rosenberg, who had been one of Adolf Hitler's close collaborators since the beginnings of the National Socialist movement, united - especially since 1929/30 - a wealth of political offices and functions in his hand. In order to be able to carry out all the tasks assigned to him, Rosenberg, since his appointment as head of the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP (APA) in April 1933, made use of a private secretariat headed by Thilo von Trotha (b. 12.04.1909, d. 24.02.1938), who was also responsible for the North Division of the APA. In April 1934, by order of the Reich Treasurer, von Trothas, initially only volunteered for Rosenberg, was converted into a full-time regular employment relationship with Rosenberg as Reichsleiter of the NSDAP. As private secretary, he was responsible for processing all correspondence that Rosenberg had to conduct personally as head of the APA, but also as Reichsführer of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (KfdK) and as main editor of the "Völkischer Beobachters" (VB). In January 1934, Rosenberg was appointed the Führer's representative for monitoring the entire spiritual and ideological training and education of the NSDAP. Probably because of this new expansion of his duties, on 26 April 1934 Rosenberg ordered the conversion of his private secretariat into a "Rosenberg Chancellery". It continued to be under the direction of Thilo von Trothas, but was now assigned a clearly defined scope of duties: From now on, the Rosenberg Chancellery was responsible for all correspondence conducted by Rosenberg himself within the scope of duties of the APA, the KfdK and other ideological offices as well as for the "NS-Monatshefte", the appointment calendar and the visit regulations of the Reichsleiter. The firm had its own "archive" whose task it was to collect information material and newspaper clippings about Rosenberg. The DBFU was one of the administrators. On 15 August 1937, Rosenberg appointed SA-Sturmbannführer Dr. Werner Koeppen (born 26.09.1910) as his aide. After the death of Trothas in February 1938, Koeppen took over the management of the office and retained it - with temporary interruptions due to military service - until 1945. In August 1941 he was appointed by Rosenberg as his personal adviser and worked for a time as a liaison officer in the Führer's headquarters. During his absence Amandus Langer, whom Rosenberg had appointed as his adjutant in 1941, represented him in the management of the office. Life data of Alfred Rosenberg born 12.01.1893 in Reval Study of architecture in Reval, then in Moscow since 1918 in Germany, 1923 as German naturalized 1919 NSDAP member 1921 with Dietrich Eckart Editor of the "Völkischer Beobachters" February 1923 Main editor of the "Völkischer Beobachters", since 1938 also editor 09.11.1923 Participation in the march to the Feldherrnhalle; during Hitler's captivity with the leadership of the "movement" commissioned 1929 Founder of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur 1930 Member of the Reichstag and representative of the NSDAP at the Auswärtigen Ausschuss des Reichstages since 1930 Publisher of the "NS-Monatshefte" 01.04.01.1933 Head of the NSDAP Foreign Policy Office, appointed Reichsleiter of the NSDAP 24.01.1934 Representative of the leader for the supervision of the entire intellectual and ideological training and education of the NSDAP 29.01.1940 commissioned with the preparation of the "High School" of the NSDAP 05.07./17.09.1940 Head of the task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg for the occupied Eastern territories 20.04.1941 Commissioner for the Central Processing of Issues in Eastern Europe 17.07.1941 Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories 16.10.1946 executed in Nuremberg (IMT ruling) Abbreviations APA Foreign Office of the NSDAP DAF German Labour Front DBFU The Führer's representative for the supervision of the entire intellectual and ideological training and education of the NSDAP ERR Operations Staff Reichsleiter Rosenberg HJ Hitlerjugend IMT International Military Tribunal KfdK Combat Alliance for German Culture NS National Socialist NSDAP National Socialist German Workers Party NSKG NS-Kulturgemeinde OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht PPK Party Official Examination Commission for the Protection of NS Writing RMbO Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories SA Storm Departments SD Security Service SPD Social Democratic Party of Germany VB Völkischer Beobachter Inventory Description: During the war, Rosenberg and almost all his offices remained in Berlin. Despite some losses during the heavy bombing raids in November 1943, most of the files of the Rosenberg office seem to have been preserved. The traditional Rosenberg documents (from the state and party areas) were brought to Nuremberg after the end of the war in order to be evaluated for the Allied trials against the war criminals. In the beginning, the documents that could be used as supporting documents were taken from the files, later they were left in them and were content with photocopies. The originals used are likely to be in Washington today, along with other trial documents. The documents collected in Nuremberg were evaluated by various foreign institutions for the creation of their own collections after the processes had been completed. The Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC) in Paris is particularly worthy of mention here. Today, the "Collection Rosenberg" contains a collection of approximately 1,100 documents (mostly from the provenance office of Rosenberg, but also from other Rosenberg offices). Receipts for the individual documents taken from the CDJC are still in the files that have been transferred to the Federal Archives. Further records of Rosenberg's departments can be found at the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdokumentatie (NIOD), Amsterdam, and at the Yivo-Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Books and journals from Rosenberg's departments are listed in the Hoover Institute and Library and in the Library of Congress. Documents from Rosenberg offices also reached archives of the former Soviet Union. An extensive collection (above all of the provenance ERR) is today kept in the Tsentral`nyi derzhavnyi arhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady ta upravlinnia Ukraïny (TsDAVO Ukraïny) in Kiev, further files (above all of the provenance foreign policy office) in the Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (RGVA) in Moscow. Most of the Rosenberg files collected in Nuremberg were brought to Alexandria/Va. and partly filmed there. In March 1963, this file complex, known as Record Group 1008/Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete, was transferred from the USA to the Federal Archives in the course of the file repatriation, where it was divided into provenances in autumn 1963. The files from this return of files to the provenance of "Kanzlei Rosenberg" form the main part of the present collection. Some volumes were added which had been transferred to the Nuremberg State Archives and to the Federal Archives in 1955, as well as several volumes from various American file returns. Further additions were made by one volume each from the Central State Archive of the GDR (62 Ka 2/1) and from the so-called "NS Archive of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR" (ZA VI 6322). Archival processing The majority of the documents had been deposited in the Federal Archives in their original registry context. Individual documents, processes detached from their context as well as volumes in disorder had to be rearranged. The order and distortion corresponded to the original registry context. A complete reorganisation of the stock from a factual point of view would have facilitated its use, but did not appear to be justified from the point of view of labour economics. Only double copies were collected in the manuscript series. The preliminary finding aid for the stock was produced by Mrs. Köhne in 1966. Quotation NS 8/.............................................................. Characterisation of the contents: The collection of manuscripts and newspaper clippings provides a fairly comprehensive picture of Rosenberg's personality from about 1930 to 1945. Due to the fact that the Chancellery was responsible for almost all of Rosenberg's departments, the collection also contains essential supplementary material on the activities of the departments subordinated to Rosenberg; only the department of the Reich Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Territories, whose affairs Rosenberg had dealt with primarily by its ministerial office, is to be excluded. The filing of the documents took place largely in chronological series, at most separately into the areas VB, KfdK and APA, later also according to correspondence partners. A clear separation of the series from each other in terms of content and time is not discernible. State of development: Findbuch (1966/2005), Online-Findbuch (2004). Citation style: BArch, NS 8/...

History of the Inventory Designer: Lieutenant General Gustav von Schubert Date of birth 28.09.1824 born in Leipzig 03.09.1907 died in Heidelberg Career 1837 Military Preparatory School 1839 Entrance to Saxon Cadet House 1843 Portepeejunker of the Riding Artillery Brigade; Lieutenant with the 4th Company of the Foot Artillery Regiment Oct. 1846 Member of "Literary Museum" May 1849 Head of ammunition supply from Königstein to Dresden Lieutenant Colonel and transfer to General Staff 1854 Dresden "Training School for Officers" March 1854 Adjutant in General Staff 1857 Rank of Captain 1861 Return as battery commander to the military service of the foot artillery regiment Dec. 1863 Concealed reconnaissance in Denmark 1865 Return to General Staff 1866 Army High Command, appointment as Major and Deputy Chief of General Staff 1869 Promotion to Lieutenant Colonel 1870 Chief of Staff of the 23rd Infantry Division Nov. 1870 Head of Staff of the XII. (Royal Saxon) Army Corps 1871 Command over the Fortress Artillery Regiment No. 12 1872 In the rank of Colonel Takeover of the Command over the Field Artillery Regiment No. 12 "Divisional Artillery" (since 1874 2nd Royal Saxon Military Artillery Regiment No. 12 "Divisional Artillery") 28) 1878 In hereditary nobility raised 1880 promotion to Major General, Command over Artillery Brigade No. 12 1885 retirement (right, rank of Generalleutnat) 1887-1907 Chairman of the Royal Saxon Invalidity Foundation awards Knight's Cross of the Military St. -Heinrichs-Ordens Komturkreuz des Königlich Sächsischen Verdienstordens 2nd class with war decoration 1870 Großkreuz des Albrechtsordens Dienstauszeichnungskreuz Eisernen Kreuz 1st class Orden anderer Staaten 1893 à la suite des 2. Feldartillerieregiment Nr. 28 Description of holdings: The estate contains documents on the popular uprising in Dresden in 1849, the German-Danish War of 1864, the German War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. Gustav von Schubert had made a name for himself as an artillerist beyond Saxony's borders and also reflected his time in his rich literary oeuvre. In addition, the estate gives a complex impression of the private life of an officer in the 19th century - from budget management to social obligations. The newly acquired documents include, above all, family correspondence by Gustav von Schubert and his wife, as well as letters from Hans von Schubert's parents and other persons and a curriculum vitae. Citation style: BArch, N 628/...

Description of the holdings: The personal papers of Ernst Schweninger were transferred to the Reichsarchiv in July 1926 by his widow, Mrs. Lena Schweninger. In September 1936, numerous letters from the Bismarck family to Ernst Schweninger, owned by Mrs. Ingeborg Schulze, Stuttgart, were added. A single volume (N 2281/184) was handed over to the Federal Archives in 2001. In the Second World War, the estate was relocated to the Soviet Union and then transferred to the GDR in two parts - 1950 and 1959 - and transferred to the Central State Archives in Potsdam. There he received the stock signature 90 Schw 4 and was indexed in 1980 by a finding index. In accordance with the agreement, the documents were blocked for any use until December 1956. In the course of German reunification in October 1990, the documents finally reached the Federal Archives and have since been kept under the inventory signature N 2281. In the year 1997 a finding aid book was provided to the existence, which represented a to a large extent unchanged copy of the finding aid file at that time. During the current processing, the archive units were transferred to the archive database BASYS-S. The archive units are now stored in the archive database BASYS-S. Classification, title recordings, terms were checked and partially corrected. Dr. Ernst Schweninger, the personal physician of Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, has conducted extensive correspondence with many well-known personalities of his time, such as Herbert von Bismarck, Bernhard von Bülow, Maximilian Harden, Alfred Krupp and others. The tradition therefore consists mainly of letters from friends, colleagues, patients and not least family members and covers the period 1866 - 1925. Reference: E. Espach: Beiträge zur Biografie Ernst Schweningers. Series of publications of the Munich Association for the History of Medicine, Munich 1979 Citation method: BArch, N 2281/...

Naval officer, Freikorpsführer and writer Bogislaw Selchow Life data July 4, 1877 born in Köslin died February 6, 1943 died in Berlin Military career April 7, 1897 Recruitment as cadet of the Kaiserl. Navy May 1897 Cadet on board of SMS stone 6.12.1897 Participation in the siege of the port of Port au Prince on Haiti with SMS stone 27.4.1898 Promotion to sea cadet Apr. 1898- Sep. 1900 In various functions on board of SMS Moltke, Hela, Mars and Blücher Jan.March 1900 Meningitis, Marinelazarett Kiel 3.9.1900 Ensign at sea 23.9.1900 Transportation to lieutenant at sea Nov. 1900- Nov. 1901 On board of SMS Sachsen, from Oct. 1901 as adjutant; on 4.9.1901 Collision with SMS Wacht near Rügen, which then sinks Nov. 1901- Sep. 1902 Adjutant aboard SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Große 15.3.1902 Promotion to lieutenant at sea Oct.-Dec. 1902 Wachoffizier aboard SM Torpedoboot G 109 Jan.-Apr. 1903 Company officer of the second company of the I. Torpedo Department, in April radio course on SMS Neptun Apr.-Sep. 1903 Watch officer aboard SM Torpedoboot G 109 Oct./Nov. 1903 Departure as passenger to East Asia aboard SS King Albert Nov. 1903- May 1905 Watch officer aboard SMS Hertha in the Asian region with return journey to Kiel via Africa and the Mediterranean Sea 11.9.1904 Award of the Kung-Pai Order of Merit (Chinese Silver Medal of Remembrance) on the occasion of an audience with the Empress's widow and the Emperor of China 11.2.1905 Award of the Royal Siamese Crown Order of the Fourth Class on the occasion of an audience with the King of Siam June-Sep. 1906 Commander of SM Torpedoboote S 29, S 25 and S 30 as well as services in the Mine Company and as First Officer of the Mine Search Reserve Division Oct. 1906 - June 1907 Naval Academy 6.3.1907 Promotion to Captain Lieutenant July 1907 Service on board of SMS Elector Friedrich Wilhelm Aug.Sep. 1907 Service on board SMS Yorck Oct. 1907- June 1908 Naval Academy July-Sep. 1908 Language leave in England 22.8.1908 Appointment as Honorary Knight of the Johanniter Order Oct. 1908 Departure as a passenger to West Africa on SS Lucie Woermann Nov. 1908- Nov. 1909 First officer on board SMS Sperber Nov./Dec. 1909 Return as a passenger to Germany on SS Lucie Woermann Dec. 1909- Jan. 1909- Jan. 1909 1911 Admiral Staff of the Navy Jan. 1911- March 1913 Adjutant of the North Sea Station 19.9.1912 Award of the Red Eagle Order 4th Class Apr. 1913- Nov. 1914 First Officer aboard SMS Victoria Louise 22.3.1914 Promotion to Corvette Captain 17.7.1914 Award of the Royal Crown to the Red Eagle Order 4th Class 10.11.1914- 30.6.1915 Commander of the 1st Btl. of the Sailor Artillery Regiment III (10.-25.11.1914); II. Part of Sailor's Artillery Regiment I (26.11.-31.12.1914); Part of Sailor's Artillery Regiment II (1.1.-4.2.1915); Part of Sailor's Regiment 4 (5.2.-10.5.1915); Part of Sailor's Regiment 5 (III.2.-10.5.1915); Part of Sailor's Regiment 5 (11.11.-31.12.1914).5.-30.6.1915); Field of application: Flanders 1.5.1915 Wound at Het Sas/Belgium by splinters of shell in head, right shoulder, right arm and right leg 7.2.1915 Iron cross II. class Aug.-Dec. 1915 First officer aboard SMS Freya Jan.-March 1916 Reservelazarett Liebenstein Apr. 1916- July 1917 First officer aboard SMS Hannover, in this function participation in the Battle of Skagerrak on 31.5./1.6.1916 30.6.1916 Award of the Iron Cross I. Class 22.8.1916 Award of the Oldenburg Friedrich-August-Kreuz I. and II. Class 14.9.1916 Neurasthenia recognised as war service damage by the Kdo. von SMS Hannover July 1917 - end of war Admiralstab der Marine 1918 Publication of the propaganda "World War and Fleet" 10.4.1918 Austrian Military Merit Cross 3rd class with war decoration 20.5.1918 Award of the Grand Ducal Hessian Medal of Valour 16.11.1918- 20.8.1919 Department head in the Reichsmarineamt 20.8.1919 Promotion to frigate captain Civil life After his departure from the navy, Bogislav von Selchow began studying history in Marburg and was at the same time commissioned by the Reichswehr Brigade Kassel to form a voluntary formation of Marburg students to protect the young republic. Von Selchow founded the Freikorps "Studentenkorps Marburg" (StuKoMa) and subsequently commanded it in the suppression of Spartacist and Council Democratic riots in Thuringia. On 20 March 1920, the so-called massacre of Mechterstädt took place, in which 15 workers suspected of being rebels, who had been arrested by a StuKoMa strike force, were shot - allegedly "on the run". The accused for these killings were acquitted in two sensational trials, the sentences received by the public as an act of class justice with disgust and protest. Von Selchow had stood before his men during the trial, and Marburg University also showed solidarity with its students and rehabilitated them completely. In addition, von Selchow organized himself in the right-wing extremist, later illegal so-called organization Escherich (Orgesch), which he temporarily led in West Germany. The paramilitary organization set up secret arsenals for an expected fight against Bolshevism and was responsible for murders of personalities of the opposing political camp. Disappointed by Escherich's hesitation to take an offensive course against the Republic, he turned away from Orgesch again in December 1922, resigned his command of the StuKoMa and withdrew from the political public until 1933. Bogislav von Selchow received his doctorate from the University of Marburg on 24.1.1923. Already in 1920 he had published his first volume of poems "Deutsche Gedanken", and soon he succeeded with his poems in the right spectrum. He was now active as a writer and philosopher of history and developed, as a child of his epoch, a so-called "Zeitwendemodell", which depicted the spiritual-historical and political development of mankind. Von Selchow defined the ages of the "all-time", the "we-time" and the "ego-time", which were shaped by various social forces. This system of thought became the basis for his works and, together with the topos of the heroic that he repeatedly took up, made him an ideological pioneer of National Socialism. His anti-Semitism and his view of current events after the fall of the old world had brought him close to the NSDAP by 1933 at the latest: although he was never a party member, he developed into a passionate National Socialist and was one of the 48 personalities who publicly called for Adolf Hitler to be elected in 1933. In 1936 the NS-Studentenkameradschaft, which had emerged from the former Marburger Burschenschaft Germania, named itself after von Selchow. On 9.6.1939 he was appointed honorary senator of the Philipps-Universität Marburg. Description of the holdings: The estate consists of two main areas: the so-called logbooks and a literary-philosophical collection of material, which is supplemented by manuscripts. The so-called logbooks are available until 1931 without gaps and reflect individual experiences and facts in partly epic breadth. 39 of the 51 "logbooks contain records of Selchow from his time as an active naval officer and as leader of the "student corps Marburg" in Freikorpseinsatz. In addition there are copies of the logbooks 61 to 68, which only contain illustrations and cover the period from 1935 to 1940. The "logbooks", however, are not diaries in the narrower sense, but rather through-composed memory books. Von Selchow transferred his diary entries recorded on loose-leaf collections - an example of which can be found in the collection folder of the planned "Logbuch" 65 (N 428/86) - into leather-bound folios and decorated his work with artistic watercolour and pen drawings, among other things. Empty places in the logbooks, on which notes on the pictures or drawings to be inserted are entered in pencil, to be traced in N 428/46, indicate this procedure. The basis of the logbooks, the diary pages, but also his correspondence and other documents, which were unfortunately destroyed privately in the 1950s, are lost except for fragments found in the present collection. Von Selchow created the "logbooks" by first collecting and compiling his notes and supplementary material in folders. Based on this, he transferred text and illustration onto sheets which he had incorporated into the high-quality leather covers bearing the coat of arms of the von Selchow family and embossed inscriptions. This procedure can be traced by means of the above-mentioned collection folder, other folders he used again for other material collections, among others, see N 428/75. The source value of the "logbooks" is increased by the more than 1,000 precisely identified pictures and photos that illustrate the text beyond the drawings. The illustrations show places, ships, everyday scenes from the soldier's but also private life in the homeland and in international waters, crews and persons for the time up to 1919. In addition there are various documents like nautical charts, invitations, etc. From the context of the tradition it can be concluded that the "logbooks" in the form presented here were probably written in the 1930s, since volumes 61 to 68 have inscribed illustrations and empty spaces for the text to be entered. Bogislav von Selchow belonged to the Uradel and had a large circle of relatives and acquaintances. The logbooks give an insight into the life of these circles from the imperial era to National Socialism and reflect the wealth of official and social contacts in the written memoirs and the correspondence, some of which is reproduced. Some spectacular insights into naval life are provided by Selchow's memoirs about his active service with the Imperial Navy. They show the diversity of experience and impressions as an officer of the Imperial Navy, which was deployed around the German colonies. For the first years of the Weimar Republic the so-called logbooks give valuable insights into the world of the Freikorps, above all the so-called student corps Marburg and the so-called organization Escherich; but also to the organization Consul von Selchow maintained contacts - to the latter two numerous statements can be found in the "logbooks". However, his notes not only bear witness to the early phase of the Weimar Republic, but also to the soldierly thinking of Selchow. Even after his withdrawal from public life in 1922, he remained a soldier in his basic attitude as a poet, writer and philosopher of history living in Berlin. The "logbooks" give direct and unique impressions of the life of a member of the Imperial Navy Corps of Officers - also a nobleman - and of his reactions to the collapse of the old order. In terms of the history of mentality, this part of the estate is revealing for the transition from the Empire to the Weimar Republic and probably the only one of its kind that provides information about the revolutionary events in Berlin. Its value might increase with the inclusion of Selchow's publications, especially his autobiography "One hundred days from my life" from 1936. The estate illustrates Selchow's relationship to the old and despised new system. The copies of the "logbooks" for the years 1935 to 1940 also document Selchow's proximity to and access to parts of the NSDAP leadership in their illustrations. In addition to the logbooks, the literary-philosophical estate of Selchow forms the second focal point of the collection. As a conservative-nationalist thinker, von Selchow attempted to establish a time model that divided world history into intellectual epochs, to which he assigned certain developmental steps of mankind in intellectual, but also scientific, political, and religious terms. He thus followed a research trend of his time. His legacy from this phase of his life as a humanities scholar includes collections of various, often loose materials, texts, smaller publications, newspaper articles and his own drafts, but also large diagrams which represent the basis or intermediate steps of his literary work: the note box of a conservative-nationalist writer of the 1920/30s, enriched with his own manuscripts, some published, some unpublished. The tradition of this material, which can be understood from the diagrams, is, however, incomplete; materials on individual subject areas are missing, but may simply not have been laid out. Notes on other stocks BArch MSg 100 (Bogislav Frhr. von Selchow: Deutsche Marineoffiziere) BArch N 253/262 (Estate of Alfred von Tirpitz, correspondence, letter S) BArch RM 5/920 (Critique of the corvette captain of Selchow on birthday congratulations of the members of the admiral's staff for Grand Admiral v. Holtzendorff, Jan. 1919) Vorarchivische Ordnung: The so-called logbooks are continuously available for the years 1897 to 1931. The Federal Archives acquired volumes 39 to 54 as early as 1957 together with the non-military estate of Selchow and in 1960 bought the remaining pieces from the Marine-Offizier-Hilfe, today: Marine-Offizier-Vereinigung. The first two volumes and volume 51 of the former 68 logbooks contained information on family history and were already missing when the estate was acquired; while volume 1 remains in family possession, volume 2 has been considered lost since 1945. The same applies to the main estate consisting of documents and letters, which was destroyed privately in 1957. These volumes are supplemented by copies of the "Logbooks" 61 to 68 for the period September 1935 to December 1940. The originals of these logbooks are still in family ownership. They differ from the "logbooks" available for the years up to 1931 in that they have remained without text. Only pictures and photos were pasted here and also only these sides were copied and taken over into the present estate. This addition to the collection was carried out in 1987 in cooperation with Selchow's nephew Wolfgang von Selchow, who owned the "logbooks" 61 to 68 at that time. Despite this addition, there is a gap in the stock which cannot be clarified on the basis of the available information: While information is available on the whereabouts of volumes 1, 2 and 51, the whereabouts and contents of volumes 55 to 60, covering the period January 1932 to August 1935, are unknown. The memory books are joined by the literary-historical-philosophical archives, which cover the intellectual work of Selchow from 1920 onwards. After the military archive moved to Freiburg in 1968, the so-called logbooks and the literary material initially remained at the main office in Koblenz due to the literary portions. Only in 1976 did the estate come to Freiburg, where in the Military History Collection under the signature MSg. 100 the so-called pennant boards as well as the so-called commemorative plaques were stored since 1957 or partly since 1964 - personnel sheets of the German naval officers from 1848 to 1909 or short biographies and pictures of all officers of the navy who died and died between 1914 and 1918 and in the post-war fights. Citation style: BArch, N 428/...

Description of the holdings: Manuscripts, elaborations, material collections, excerpts from files on his own historical research, in particular on Scharnhorst and Bismarck as well as individual questions of European history in the 19th century; general and academic correspondence, especially as professor in Freiburg (1929-1937), Gießen (1937-1938) and Tübingen (since 1938). (as of 1977) Citation method: BArch, N 1183/...

History of the inventor: Under the chairmanship of the factory owner and war-disabled reserve officer Franz Seldte, the Stahlhelm was founded in Magdeburg on 25 December 1918. In particular, former soldiers and officers of the Infantry Regiment 66 quartered in Magdeburg, to which Franz Seldte also belonged, were among the first members. The primary purpose was to "maintain peace and order," i.e., to protect oneself and the police against revolutionary unrest, to "foster comradeship founded in the field," to represent the interests of former front-line soldiers and their relatives (1), and to promote entry into the Free Corps. Almost a year after its foundation, on 21 September 1919, the Stahlhelm with its already existing local groups and other similar groups constituted itself as the Reichsbund der Frontsoldaten (Reich League of Front Soldiers). Magdeburg (2) initially became the administrative centre. The 1st Reichsfrontsoldatentag took place there on 14 March 1920, in the course of which Franz Seldte was elected the 1st Federal Leader of the steel helmet and replaced the previous chairman Dr. Gustav Bünger (3). Seldte maintained this position until the dissolution of the Confederation in 1935. In the following two years, the Federation succeeded in gradually expanding its organization beyond Central Germany, including in Berlin, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Pomerania, Silesia and Westphalia. If the steel helmet confessed itself to the new republican form of government when it was founded and as standing above the parties, this gradually changed. He approached the political right, including the German National People's Party (DNVP), and oriented himself "German-racial". The local group in Halle under its leader, the DNVP functionary Kurt Werner, played a major role in this (4). This development was temporarily halted by the prohibition of the steel helmet in Prussia on 2 July 1922, which was effective until 26 January 1923, following the assassination attempt on Reich Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. In the turbulent year 1923, which was characterized by domestic political conflicts, occupation of the Ruhr, inflation, famine, separatist and communist uprisings and the climax of which was the Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch, which took place in Munich on November 8-9, the anti-democratic orientation of the steel helmet took on more and more form. Again the radical part of the alliance, the Gau Halle, in particular its new leader Theodor Duesterberg, was leading the way (5). If a national dictatorship was now advocated for the stabilization of conditions, coup d'état - at least in its official announcements - was rejected (6). On 9 March 1924 Theodor Duesterberg was appointed the 2nd Federal Leader alongside Franz Seldte. In the official presentation as a milestone in the history of steel helmets, in reality the mutual relationship was marked by repeated differences. With the increasing establishment of parliamentary democracy in the German Reich, the top management of the Stahlhelm was now thinking about the future. The Front Fighters Association wanted to be more than just a pure veteran association. He wanted to "implant" the propagated "spirit of front comradeship" to the entire German people (7). Under the motto "Über die Organisation zur Macht" (8), since the spring of 1924 its activities were extended to include young people (Jungstahlhelm and Scharnhorst) and the generation of over 24-year-olds (Stahlhelm-Landsturm, later Ringstahlhelm) who had no longer been able to participate in the First World War. Here above all the pre-military training stood in the foreground, the steel helmet understood itself nevertheless also as reservoir of the Reichswehr. In 1929, the steel helmet student association "Langemarck" was founded, which brought together the student youth. The steady growth of the covenant exerted an attraction on other federations, which led to them joining the steel helmet (9). In addition to the organizational expansion, the steel helmet also attempted to influence the politics of the Weimar Republic in other ways, albeit with strict emphasis on its "non-partisanship". To achieve this goal, in addition to mass events, propaganda campaigns and appeals to the patriotic sense of duty, personalities with political influence close to the steel helmet also served. The Reich President of Hindenburg was appointed honorary member. The transformation from an original self-protection organization to a political defense organization took on concrete forms. In the mid-twenties, however, it soon became clear that the Frontkämpferbund was often at odds with its principle of "standing above the parties" and its claim to political leadership. One had to leave the extra-parliamentary level in order to gain weight in politics. "Into the state" was now the slogan (10). Although they avoided founding their own party, they formed alliances with others, such as the DVP and the German nationalists, to whom close personal ties had always existed. In the Reich and Prussian state elections of 1928, for example, Stahlhelm members were placed on DNVP lists (11). However, these remained fruitless attempts, which only led to conflicts, which finally prompted the federal leadership to conduct politics on its own initiative (12). First the Federation specified its antirepublican oriented program in the first and second "Steel Helmet Embassies" as well as the "Fürstenwalder Hassbotschaft" (13). According to its self-image, the Federation saw itself as the spearhead of a freedom movement whose goals were "the external and internal liberation of Germany" (14). At the Front Soldier Days in Berlin and Hamburg in 1927 and 1928, as well as at several other propaganda demonstrations, the steel helmet publicly displayed its aversion to the Republic. However, a series of unfortunate decisions, including the 1928 referendum to amend the constitution and the 1929 referendum against the Young Plan, combined with disagreements in federal leadership and political inexperience, showed that the activities of the Stahlhelm in this area were limited. Subsequently, disputes arose, especially with the growing National Socialists, over who should take the lead in the right-wing camp. During the Reichstag elections in September 1930, it became clear that the NSDAP played the leading role. Increasingly, members of the steel helmet, in part even entire local groups, joined this party and the organizations belonging to it (above all SA and SS). The meeting of the leading right-wing parties and associations held in Bad Harzburg in October 1931 and the merger to form the "Harzburger Front" were unable to bridge the existing gap. In the 1932 Reich presidential elections, the competition between the NSDAP and the steel helmet again came to light, with both of their own candidates entering the race: Adolf Hitler stood for the National Socialists, Theodor Duesterberg for the front soldiers (15). After the disastrous outcome of the Reich presidential elections for the Federation, disillusionment spread. The steel helmet put its political ambitions on ice and now turned its attention again increasingly to military sports activities and voluntary work, which was regarded as a substitute for compulsory military service (16). The assumption of political power by the NSDAP in January 1933 was welcomed despite all differences. Among other things, several steel helmets participated in the auxiliary police founded by Hermann Göring in February of the same year together with SA and SS in equalization measures (17). Franz Seldte received the post of Reich Labour Minister (18) in Adolf Hitler's cabinet. In June 1933 the gradual dissolution of the Frontsoldatenbund began. The Scharnhorst-Bund for youths up to the age of 18 was integrated into the Hitler Youth, while the over-18 to 35-year-olds were subordinated to the SA as "Wehrstahlhelm". As a result of the enormous increase in members, a reorganisation of the SA was ordered at the end of 1933. In the course of this now also the core steel helmet (members over 35 years) came as a SA reserve under their command (19). In March 1934 it came to the reestablishment into the National Socialist German Frontkämpferbund (steel helmet). On 7 November 1935 the Frontsoldatenbund was finally dissolved, after it had led only a shadowy existence since the beginning of the "Third Reich". In 1951 a new organization was founded in Cologne under the name of Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet, Federation of Front Soldiers). In 1952 the former Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was elected as its federal leader. Notes (1) See Graff, Siegmund: Foundation and Development of the Federal Government, in: Der Stahlhelm. Memories and Pictures, Vol. 1, p. 30-32. (2) See ibid., p. 38. (3) Due to the so-called "Kapp Putsch", which had begun one day earlier, it was, however, only a board meeting and not a mass event like the later Front Soldier Days, which took place annually until 1933, see Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 28. (4) See ibid.., (5) Duesterberg, former professional officer, had already been a member of the Halle Stahlhelm since the end of 1919 and at the same time managing director of the Halle-Merseburg constituency of the DNVP, see Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 24-25. On 21 April he became the leader of the Halle Stahlhelm-Gaus. (6) Cf. on this subject Berghahn: Stahlhelm, S. 39-53. (7) S. Graff: Gründung, S. 53 (8) S. Berghahn: Stahlhelm, S. 64. (9) So e.g. the Cherusker-und Westfalenbund in October 1924 and the Bund Reichsflagge in October 1927, s. Mahlke: Stahlhelm, S. 150, Sp. 2. (10) This term initially led to misunderstandings in the sense of a turn towards the Republic. In reality one wanted to penetrate the state from within and transform it according to one's own goals, see Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 103; Mahlke: Stahlhelm, p. 149, Sp. 1; Graff: Gründung, p. 62-63. (11) Cf. Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 109ff. (12) See ibid., p. 112. (13) S. Mahlke: Stahlhelm, p. 151, Sp. 2. (14) S. Graff: Gründung, p. 63. (15) Finally, Hindenburg won again with 53 votes, see Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 219. (16) See Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 232. (17) S. ibid., p. 252ff. (18) He held this office, albeit without much political influence, until the end of the Third Reich. (19) Cf. Mahlke: Stahlhelm, S. 155, Sp. 1-2. Inventory Description: History of the Inventory With the dissolution of the steel helmet in 1935, the files of the Federal Government reached the Reichsarchiv in Potsdam. The stock was removed around 1944/45 and thus escaped destruction - the Reichsarchiv was bombed on 14 April 1945. The files remained in Potsdam after the Second World War, now in the area of the Soviet occupation zone, and were taken over by the German Central Archive (DZA; later: Central State Archive of the GDR), which was founded there in 1946. They were archived there under the inventory signature 61 Sta 1. In the course of the reunification of the German states in 1990, the documents finally reached the Federal Archives through the integration of the Central State Archives of the GDR. To date, the Federal Archives themselves had preserved only minor remains of the steel helmet under the signature R 72, which had been acquired from private sources (see Gerhard Granier: Das Bundesarchiv und seine Bestände, 3. Aufl., Boppard 1977, p. 437). Archival evaluation and processing The first verifiable processing of the disordered holdings kept in the German Central Archives took place in the years 1957-1960. The work was made more difficult by the fact that the archives did not have any organisational documents or file directories of the steel helmet. In 1967, through the mediation of V.R. Berghahn (author of the book "Der Stahlhelm Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918-1935, Düsseldorf 1966"), the DZA was able to acquire a copy of a list of contributions from the Stahlhelm-Bundesamt from 1935. This list originally came from the possession of Dr. Heinz Brauweiler, last head of the political department of the Stahlhelm-Bundesamt, and was intended to list all files to be handed over to the Reichsarchiv. With the help of this directory, the indexing according to the principles of order and indexing for the state archives of the GDR was completed in 1970. A revision in 1967 of the files of the classification groups 1 (correspondence of the Federal Government), 2 (printed publications) and 4 (pictures) with the help of the above-mentioned list of duties produced the following picture: Classification groups 1: Available: 193 volumes Missing: 28 volumes = approx. 12 classification groups 2: Available: 117 volumes Missing: 55 volumes = approx. 47Classification groups 4: Available: 70 volumes Missing: 33 volumes = approx. 32The particularly high losses in groups 2 and 4 in particular can be explained by a presumably incomplete transfer to the Reich Archives as well as losses during the war-related relocation of the Reich Archives' holdings. In 2003 the steel helmet was re-signed from its former location in the Koblenz office of the Federal Archives and merged with the old Potsdam part under the stock signature R 72. Subsequently, the data from the finding aids were converted into electronic form and transferred to the Basys database. Since the indexing data from the finding aids did not comply with the modern indexing guidelines of the Federal Archives, a revision of the data was necessary, which was carried out in the years 2007-2011. The main focus was on the creation of volume and series sequences, streamlining of the contained notes by highlighting the essential content, review and adjustment, partial modification of the classification. From the collection "NS-Archive of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR" files of the provenance steel helmet were extracted and integrated into the stock R 72. Classification groups 1-3 were particularly affected by this work. Characterization of the contents: The collection provides a good insight into the organizational development of the steel helmet and its affiliated associations, especially at the level of the federal leadership and the regional associations or Gaue, as well as into its activities of various kinds, especially from the beginning of the twenties until its dissolution in 1935. The files of the classification groups 1 and 3 represent the largest part of the transmission of the steel helmet. While in classification group 1 the correspondence of the federal leadership with the regional steel helmet associations as well as other associations, organisations and private persons on the one hand, and on the other hand the files on the Front Soldier Days form the focus of content, in group 3 primarily domestic and foreign policy questions as well as events during the Weimar Republic or at the beginning of the Third Reich are documented. Personal documents are only available on a larger scale to the extent that they concern higher-ranking members of the steel helmet or persons from contemporary history or public life. Membership lists or local group passes are only part of the stock in extremely small quantities. State of development: Findbuch Nachträge in Datenbank Umfang, Explanation: 2336 AE Citation method: BArch, R 72/...

Federal Archives, BArch, N 2296

History of the Inventory Designer: Grand Admiral Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz Life data March 19, 1849 born in Küstrin/Oder as son of the Court of Appeal Rudolf Tirpitz March 6, 1930 died in Munich Career (1) April 24, 1865 Entry as a cadet in the Prussian Navy 15. May 1865 Corvette "Arkona" Mid June 1865 Sail training ship Frigate "Niobe" 24 June 1866 Nautical cadet July-September 1866 Frigate "Gazelle" October 1866 - April 1867 Sail training ship Brig "Musquito" Spring 1867 Main Division Baltic Sea July-August Frigate "Gefion" August 1867 - June 1868 Frigate "Thetis" 3 August 1868 -1 -1. July 1869 Naval school Kiel 22 September 1869 Lieutenant at sea Cannon ship "Barbarossa" October 1869 Regular Division Baltic Sea May 1870 - January 1871 Armour frigate "King Wilhelm" July 1871 - September 1872 First officer on cannon boat "Blitz" 25. May 1872 Lieutenant at sea October 1872 - April 1874 Officer on watch on the brig "Musquito" June - October 1874 Corvette "Nymph" October 1874 - May 1876 Naval academy and exercises as artillery officer 18. November 1875 Captain Lieutenant May - August 1876 Artillery officer on the "Kronprinz" armoured frigate September 1876 Artillery officer on the "Kaiser" armoured frigate December 18, 1877 Transfer to the Admiral Staff from January 1, 1877 Repeatedly commands to service the Admiralty/Decernate T/Torpedoangelegenheiten Commanded 17. September 1881 Corvette Captain 1884 - 1887 (summer months) Chief of the Torpedo Boat Flotilla (16 March) 1886 Inspector of Torpedo Navy 24 November 1888 Captain at sea 12 March 1889 Commander of the armoured ship "Prussia" 10. March 1890 commander of the armoured ship "Württemberg" 10 September 1890 with decommissioning of the "Württemberg" (30 November 1890) chief of the staff of the command of the naval station of the Baltic Sea 20 January 1892 chief of the staff of the supreme command of the navy 13 May 1895 Rear Admiral 31. March 1896 Head of the Kreuzerdivision 31 March 1897 Representative of the State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt on leave 15 June 1897 State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt 25 June 1897 Plenipotentiary to the Bundesrat 28 March 1898 State Minister and Member of the State Ministry 5. December 1899 Vice Admiral 14 November 1903 Admiral 5 April 1908 Appointment to the manor house of the Prussian Parliament for life 27 January 1911 Grand Admiral 15. March 1916 Resignation as State Secretary of the Reich Navy Office September 1917 First Chairman of the German Fatherland Party 1924 Member of the Reichstag of the German National People's Party 1928 Farewell from the Reichstag and withdrawal from political work ---------- (1) see also copy of the personal sheet in No. 10. The personal file has not been handed down. Orden und Ehrenzeichen 31. December 1871 War Memorial Coin for Combatants 2. December 1879 Royal Prussian Red Eagle Order 4. Class 26. April 1881 Cross 2. Class of the Royal Spanish Order for Merits at Sea 16. March 1886 Royal Prussian Crown Order 3. Class 9. June 1888 Service Award Cross 9. November 1889 Royal Prussian Red Eagle Order 3. Class with Ribbon 17 December 1889 Commander's Cross of the Royal Greek Order of Redeemer 2 July 1890 Commander's Cross 2 Class of the Royal Swedish Order of the Redeemer 3 September 1892 Royal Prussian Crown Order 2 Class 15 September 1893 Grand Officer's Cross of the Order of the Italian Crown 21 September 1894 Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern 3 July 1895 Grand Cross of the Royal Swedish Order of the Redeemer 3 July 1890 Austrian Franz Joseph Order 10 July 1895 Commander Cross of the French Legion of Honour 22 October 1895 Grand Commander Cross of the Royal Bavarian Order of Military Merit 1895 Cross of Honour 1st Class of the Princely Schaumburg-Lippe House Order 18. January 1897 Royal Prussian Red Eagle Order 2nd class with oak leaves 18 January 1898 Star to Royal Prussian Crown Order 2nd class 14 October 1898 Grand Cross of the Royal Württemberg Frederick's Order ca. 1898 Ksl. Commemorative steel coin for services to the expedition in China 11 January 1899 Grand Cross of the Royal Bavarian Military Order 27 January 1899 Star of the Royal Prussian Red Eagle Order 2nd Class with oak leaves 20 May 1899 Grand Cross of the Royal Spanish Military Order 9. June 1899 Grand Cross with oak leaves of the Grand Ducal Baden Order of the Zähringer Lion July 7, 1899 Grand Cross of the Royal Saxon Albrecht Order October 9, 1899 1st Class of the 2nd Class of the Chinese Order of the Double Dragon January 27, 1900 Royal Prussian Red Eagle Order 1st Class with oak leaves February 1900 Ksl. Russian White Eagle Order 18 April 1900 Grand Cross of the Grand Duke of Hesse Order of Merit of Philip the Magnanimous 23 May 1900 Grand Cross of Ksl. Austrian Order of Leopold August 1900 Grand Cross of Honour of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg House and Order of Merit of Duke Peter Ludwig Friedrich June 20, 1901 Golden Chain to the Grand Cross of the Grand Duke of Baden Order of the Zähringer Lion September 13, 1901 Commander's Cross and Star of the Royal King House Order of Hohenzollern 9 November 1901 Grand Cross of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerinischer Greifenordens 27 October 1902 Grand Cross of the Royal Spanish Order for Merits at Sea 20 December 1902 Grand Cross of the Duke of Brunswick Order of Henry the Lion December 1902 Ksl. Russian Alexander Nevsky Order 31 January 1903 Grand Cross of the Royal Italian Order of St Mauritius and Lazarus, Royal Order 1903 Grand Cross of the Royal Prussian Crown Order with Crown 1 July 1904 Grand Cross of the Royal British Victoria Order December 1905 Grand Cross of the Royal Greek Order of the Redeemer 27 Febrauar 1906 Commemorative Signs on the occasion of the Silver Wedding of Emperor Wilhelm II. September 1906 Memorial Medal on the occasion of the inauguration of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin November 13, 1906 Grand Cross of the Royal Spanish Order of Charles III December 15, 1906 Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav December 31, 1906 Grand Cross of the Royal Danish Order of Danubia January 27, 1907 Royal Prussian Black Eagle Order November 2, 1907 Ksl. Commemorative steel coin for services rendered on the occasion of the uprising in South West Africa 6 June 1908 Grand Cross of the Royal Swedish Wasa Order 1908 Ksl. Russian Alexander Nevsky Order with Brilliants April 16, 1909 Grand Cross of the Star of Romania November 21, 1909 Grand Cross of the Grand Ducal Saxon-Weimar House Order of Vigilance or of the White Falcon 1909 Ks. Japanese Paullownia Order 24 December 1910 Grand Cross of the Order of the Wüttembergische Krone 1910 Grand Cross of the Duke of Saxony-Ernestine House Order 30 August 1911 Grand Cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of St. Stephen 22 May 1912 Diamonds to the Royal Prussian Black Eagle Order 18 September 1912 Chilean Order of Merit 1st Class 1912 Grand Cross of the Royal Bulgarian Order of St. Alexander 1912 Ksl. Turkish Osmanié Order 1st Class 4th June 1913 Grand Ducal Baden House Order of Faithfulness 16th June 1913 Grand Commander Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern 16th June 1913 Honorary Doctorate of the Georg August University Göttingen 24th April 1915 Swords to the Grand Commander Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern 10th August 1915 Order pour le mérite 3. October 1915 Austro-Hungarian Military Service Cross 1st Class with War Decoration 19 October 1915 Hamburg Hanseatic Cross 2nd November 1915 Lübeck Hanseatic Cross 10th November 1915 Bremen Hanseatic Cross 15th December 1915 Grand Cross with Star in Gold and Silver Crown and Swords of the Royal King Saxon Albrecht Order 15 March 1916 Star of the Grand Commander with Swords of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern 15. January 1917 Honorary citizen of the city of Frankfurt/Oder Description of the holdings: The estate of the officer and politician Alfred von Tirpitz contains rich sources on seven decades of German history: from the entry of the sixteen-year-old into the Royal Prussian Navy in 1865 to his service in the Imperial Navy as founder of fleet building and as long-standing State Secretary of the Reichsmarinemat, from his political service in the World War II as Chairman of the German Fatherland Party to his work for the German National People's Party. Since Tirpitz's research concentrated for a long time on fleet construction and fleet policy in Wilhelmine Germany, the part of the estate on this topic that had been developed until 1991 was intensively evaluated. The hand files and correspondence from the period of service as State Secretary of the R e i c h s m a r i n e a m t , which form a focal point of the collection, were particularly used for this purpose. The value of these documents is only marginally diminished by the publication of Tirpitzen's "Political Documents", since the texts published here are sometimes incomplete. Even more than the hand files, some of which had been compiled from copies and multiple copies of the official records, the letters from those years supplement the tradition of the R e i c h s m a r i n e a m t . Contrary to the papers of the politician Tirpitz, the openly and impartially written letters of the young Tirpitz to his parents from the decade around the foundation of the Reich - from 1865 to 1878 -, filling several volumes, convey a vivid picture of everyday life in the Prussian, then the North German, and finally the Imperial Navy. They also give an impression of the young Tirpitz's view of history and of the national ideas of the time when the Reich was founded. In addition, the estate documents the career of an officer in the Imperial Navy, but also the private ties within the officer corps. In the history of naval affairs, the sources on the development of the torpedo system deserve special mention; in foreign policy, the letters and documents on the representation of German interests in East Asia deserve special mention, as do the sources on the development of German-English relations against the background of German fleet building. After all, the collection is also rich in cultural history, as it reflects something of the lifestyle of a state secretary in Wilhelmine Germany. Tirpitz's activities after his resignation as State Secretary were focused both on the past and on the current political problems. Both have been reflected in the estate. The justification of fleet policy is documented, among other things, in the fragmentarily preserved drafts of the "Memories" and "Political Documents" as well as in the correspondence on these publications. The rich materials on the submarine war refer both to the policy of State Secretary Tirpitz and to his evaluation of the submarine war after his resignation; they form a bracket between the work in the civil service and the work afterwards. A not inconsiderable part of the collection comes from the party political commitment after 1916, first for the German Vaterlandspartei, of which he was first chairman, then for the Deutschnationale Volkspartei, whose Reichstag fraction he belonged to from 1924 until his age-related withdrawal from politics in 1928. The extensive correspondence from the work of the party politician Tirpitz, his speeches, essays and notes on his work as a member of the Reichstag, equally informative sources on the foreign and domestic policy of the Weimar Republic, only attracted the interest of research in recent years. Reference is made to Hagenlücke's monograph on the German Fatherland Party published in 1997 and Scheck's work on Tirpitz as a politician of the right wing 1914-1930 published in 1993 (see bibliography). For research into the activities of the Imperial Navy, the tradition from the period of service, including the related materials from the last phase of life, forms a comprehensive and far from exhausted fund. The rich private correspondence opens the way to further sources: since part of the correspondence is a recipient tradition and the drafts or copies of Tirpitz letters are only partially available and rather from his last decade of life, the determination of his letters in the estates of the correspondence partners is still a worthwhile object of research. References to other stocks 1. Bundesarchiv Abteilung B N 1275 Nachlass Oskar Messter N 1549 Nachlass Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg Siegfried Graf von Eulenburg-Wicken Walter von Keudell Abteilung R, Berlin R 43 Reichskanzlei R 301 Bundesrat/Reichsrat R 8048 Alldeutscher Verband Abteilung Militärarchiv, Freiburg RM 3 Reichsmarineamt RM 5 Admiralstab der Marine RM 27 III Inspection of Torpedoes RM 31 Marinestation der Ostsee RM 43 Dienst- und Kommandostellen der Kaiserlichen Marine im Heimtbereich N 170 Eduard von Capelle N 156 Wilhelm Souchon N 568 Johann-Bernhard Mann 2. Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage (GStA), Berlin I. HA, Rep. 169 A Mansion of the Prussian Parliament I. HA, Rep. 90 Ministry of State HA VI Family of Bissing Citation method: BArch, N 253/...

History of the Inventory Designer: Vice Admiral Wolfgang Wegener born 5.8.1875 in Stettin, permitted 29.10.1956 in Berlin 1894 entry into the Imperial Navy, 1897-1899, last as lieutenant, officer on the Großer Kreuzer SMS Großdeutschland (including travel to East Asia), 1909-1910 1st artillery officer on the Großer Kreuzer SMS Blücher, 1912-1917, last as frigate captain, 1st German Army Officer on the Großer Kreuzer SMS Blücher, 1912-1917, last as frigate captain, 1st German Army Officer on the Großer Kreuzer SMS Blücher, 1912-1917, last as frigate captain, 1st German Army Officer on the Großer Kreuzer SMS Blücher, 1912-1917, last as frigate captain, 1917, 1917, 1917, 1917, 1917, 1917, 1917, 1917, 1917, 1917, 1917, 19. Admiral Staff Officer of the First Squadron, 1917-1918 Commander of the Small Cruisers SMS Regensburg and SMS Nuremberg, Jan. 1920 Captain at sea, 1923 Rear Admiral 1920-1926 Inspector of Naval Artillery in Wilhelmshaven, 1926 Farewell with award of the character of Vice Admiral. Author of numerous memorandums and articles on tactical and operational topics and, from 1907, on strategic topics (including "The Naval Strategy of the World War"). Inventory description: Memorandums, statements and correspondence, "Gedanken über unsere maritime Lage", 1915, "Chef der Seekriegsleitung im Großen Hauptquartier", Admiral von Holtzendorff, 1917, "Zum Kriegsspiel der Nordsestation im Winter 1923/24", 1923, "Seestrategie des Weltkrieges", 1930, "Der Zweite Deutsch-Englische Krieg", 1941; elaborations and reports not with regard to maritime strategy; Eduard Wegener: "Wolfgang Wegener's spiritual heritage," o. Dat. Quotation style: BArch, N 607/...