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Contains among other things: Task for the further activities of the Association; National Correspondence Fleet Question Colonial Policy Foreign Germans Central European Economic Association Hasse, Colonial Political Claims (draft of 31 Jan. 1904) Letter from Viktor Noerr, Lieutenant of the Reserve, Windhoek, of 20 Febr. 1904 to his mother among other things about the Bondel and Herero uprising Letter of Hasse to Class of March 1, 1904 about Hugenberg's proposals for the further activities of AV Hasse, the Fleet Question (draft of March 5, 1904) The Southwest African Confusions and the German Reichstag, in: Staatsbürger-Zeitung, 40th Vol. No. 56 of 6 March 1904 Report on the meeting of the travelling instructors of the German protection associations of Austria on 30/31 March 1904 in Vienna Report on the Gautag des Gaues "Rhein-Sieg" on 24 April 1904 in Cologne Reports of the managing director on advertising trips in Silesia and southern Germany Main financial statement of the AV for 1904

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/...

Contains among other things: Report about the victory celebration of the Japanese on the occasion of the taking of Tsingtau Copies from newspapers about the fight for Tsingtau Lists of the members of the Reich who had travelled from Tsingtau to Beijing and other places Report about consequences and accompanying phenomena of the war for the private, public and economic life of the Germans in China Letters from China to relatives about processes and events there

Contains among other things: Letters from prisoner-of-war camps to relatives Memorandum concerning expulsions of Germans from Japan Transfer agreement from Tsingtau to Japan Report on the German prisoners of war from Tsingtau, the siege of Tsingtau, English prisoner-of-war camps, siege and transfer of Tsingtaus

Contains among other things: Named list of medical personnel and officials deployed during the siege of Tsingtau Reports on perceptions and experiences during the military operations in the Kiautschou Protectorate Letters from prisoner-of-war camps on conditions there Communications on prisoner-of-war camps

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/...

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/...

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/...

Contains among other things: Letters from the field 1914/1915 (issue 1), edited by the Zentralstelle zur Sammlung von Feldpostbriefen Wandervogel. Monatsschrift für deutsches Jugendwandern (2. Kriegsheft) Nov. - Dec. 1914 War reports of the Student Reform Association Adelphia, 1914, 1915 The German cultural pioneer. News from the German Colonial School (14th year) 1914