History of the Inventor: Since 1881, the function of deputy Reich Chancellor has always been transferred to the State Secretary of the Interior; in November 1917, under Reich Chancellors Georg von Hertling and Max von Baden, the deputy function was assumed for the first time by a member of the government without departmental responsibility, the first deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the Progressive People's Party Friedrich von Payer; resignation on 10 Nov. 1918. On 30 January 1933, this office was reestablished as an independent office and occupied by Franz von Papen. Inventory description: Inventory history The inventory was transferred to the German Central Archives in Potsdam at the beginning of the 1950s and to the Federal Archives in 1990 together with other holdings of the Reichsarchiv that had been relocated to Saxony-Anhalt. Archive processing The processing took place in the Reichsarchiv. The file titles were transferred to the database without significant editorial revision, while retaining the old classification. The content of the notes that were too extensive had to be shortened. Content: Foreign Affairs; Federal Council - Federal States; Finance; Trade; Court Matters; Internal Administration of the Reich; War; Agriculture; Parties; Press; Prussia; Administration of Justice; Reich; Reich Chancellor; Reichstag; Transport. State of indexing: Findbuch 1958, Online-Findbuch 2005 Parts of the estate of Friedrich von Payer can be found in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz and the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart: BArch, R 703/...
On April 21, 1933, Hitler appointed his personal secretary Rudolf Hess, the former head of the "Political Central Commission" of the NSDAP, as "deputy of the Führer" and authorized him to decide in his name on all matters concerning the leadership of the party. The main task of the deputy leader and his staff, formed at the headquarters of the NSDAP in Munich, was to "align the Gauleitungen, divisions and affiliated associations of the NSDAP uniformly and to give them political guidelines"(1) This function of a central authority of the internal party leadership had to be fought for and defended first and foremost against the resistance of the Reichsorganisationsleiter Robert Ley, who regarded himself as the main heir of Gregor Strasser and his concentration of power within the party. (2) The "NSDAP liaison staff" set up on 24 March 1933 in the former building of the Prussian State Ministry in Berlin was subordinated to Hess and subsequently served as the Berlin office of the Führer's deputy, without achieving or even exceeding the importance of the Munich staff, also with regard to the later coordination functions vis-à-vis the Reich government. As was already the case when Hess was commissioned to head the Central Political Commission, which had been created at the end of 1932 after Gregor Strasser's dissolution of the Reichsorganisationsleitung, which had developed into a central party-internal power apparatus, as a supervisory organ for its previous main departments III and IV,(3) Hitler's appointment of his private secretary as deputy to the leader was by no means intended to strengthen the position of the party or its Reichsleitung within the National Socialist power structure. While the comparatively generous endowment of the deputy leader's central authority of the party leadership should undoubtedly also serve to curb the power ambitions of other, personally stronger party leaders, the personality of Hess, who had always been a devoted follower of his leader without any independent power within the party leadership, offered a guarantee that a center of power alongside Hitler, as it threatened to develop in the short term in 1932 with Gregor Strasser's rise to "a kind of general secretary of the party with comprehensive powers of attorney" (4), could no longer emerge in the future. Hess could not speak of a supremacy over other "law firms" (law firm of the leader of the NSDAP, Reich Chancellery and - after Hindenburg's death - Presidential Chancellery). Even the later use of the central competences of the office of the deputy of the Führer under the energetic and ruthless leadership of Martin Bormann to develop his known personal position of power could only succeed, since Bormann consciously built up his position, but never only that of Hitler. Rudolf Hess, who was personally rather weak, was, however, granted comprehensive powers in state affairs by the Law of 1 December 1933 on Securing the Unity of Party and State. Like Röhm, the head of the SA staff, Hess was appointed Reich Minister without a portfolio in order to "ensure the closest cooperation between the Party and the State".(5) The position of the deputy leader was decisively strengthened by Hitler's unpublished circular of 27 March, which was issued by the Reichsminister in Berlin. On July 7, 1934, "the deputy of the Führer, Reich Minister Rudolf Hess", was given the position of a "participating" Reich Minister in the legislation without exception.(6) This gave Hess the opportunity to comment on all drafts of laws and ordinances and to assert the party's position. By the "Erlass über die Beteiligung des Stellvertreter des Führers bei der Ernennung von Beamten" (Decree on the Participation of the Deputy Fuehrer in the Appointment of Civil Servants) of 24 September 1935 (7), Hitler also ordered Hess to participate in the appointment of Reich and Land officials in such a way that he received a copy of the proposal for promotion or appointment with more detailed information about the civil servant and was granted a reasonable period of time to comment. As a rule, this deadline was used to obtain the opinion of the local party organisation, particularly on the political position of the candidate. After this decisive expansion of competence, the office of the deputy leader, whose staff comprised "two, three men" when Martin Bormann took over the leadership of the staff in July 1933, (8) took on firmer contours. In 1937, the deputy of the Führer or his staff leader, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, was headed by Rudolf Mackensen, the staff manager, and a number of clerks, representatives, special representatives, heads of offices, and other officials, only some of whom served exclusively on the staff of the Führer's deputy, while the vast majority headed party institutions that only formally served Hess or (9) The latter included (1937): Main Archive of the NSDAP: Head of Headquarters Dr. Uetrecht The Head of the Foreign Organization of the NSDAP: Gauleiter Bohle The Commissioner for Foreign Policy Issues: Ambassador von Ribbentrop The Commissioner for all Issues of Technology and its Organization: Head of Headquarters Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. G. Bohle The Commissioner for Foreign Policy Issues: Ambassador of Ribbentrop The Commissioner for all Issues of Technology and its Organization: Head of Headquarters Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. G. Bohle The Commissioner for Foreign Policy Issues: Ambassador of Ribbentrop The Commissioner for all Issues of Technology and its Organization: Head of Headquarters Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. G. Todt Der Sachbearbeiter für alle Fragen der Volksgesundheit: Hauptdienstleiter Dr. Wagner Commission for Higher Education Policy: Haupttellenleiter Prof. Dr. Wirz The representative for the new building of the Reich: Gauleiter Adolf Wagner The official for questions of job creation, for financial and tax policy: Hauptdienstleiter State Secretary Reinhardt The official for art and culture: Amtsleiter Schulte-Strathaus The official for music: Head of main office Adam The clerk for school questions: Head of main office Wächtler The clerk for practical-technical questions: Head of office Croneiß Party official examination commission for the protection of Nazi literature: Reichsleiter Bouhler The representative for building industry: General Building Inspector Head of Office Speer In 1938, the following were added: Central Office for the Economic Policy Organisations of the NSDAP: Head of Main Office Keppler Commission for Economic Policy: Head of Office Köhler. In addition to the already mentioned office of the deputy of the Führer in Berlin (liaison staff under head of the main office Stenger), there were also: Special representative of the deputy of the Führer: head of the main office Oexle Representatives for special use (e.g. V.): head of the main office Brockhausen and head of the main office Seidel (Nazi camp for civil servants in Tutzing and Reich camp for civil servants in Bad Tölz). De facto, the Munich office of the deputy leader's deputy consisted essentially of two parts, in addition to the leadership of the staff and the adjutants: Internal party affairs and constitutional issues. According to the published organisational overviews, they were headed by 'clerks', referred to as 'Division II or Division III' in the secret business distribution plans (10 ). During the preparation of this finding aid book, a business distribution plan (1938) of Division II, headed from March 1934 until the end of the war by Helmuth Friedrichs, former Gaug Managing Director of the NSDAP in the Gau Hessen-Kassel region, was determined for the first time for the office of the deputy leader's deputy. There the organisational level below the department level was also called "department" instead of "group" or "main office" as was later the case. Division II - Internal Party Matters - Field: Political Issues of the Party and the State Staff: Head of Main Office Helmuth Friedrichs Division II A Establishment and Expansion of the Party, its Structures and Associated Associations. Observation of economic, social and agricultural policy issues. Head: Head of Office Albert Hoffmann Representative: Head of Head Office Erich Eftger II A a Head of Head Office Pannenborg Organisational questions of the whole party, orders and orders of the deputy of the leader, as far as they concern organisational questions. Observation of the organizational relations of the affiliated associations and the divisions to the party and among each other. liaison with organisations outside the Party dealing with human leadership, as far as the organisation's issues are concerned. II A b Head of Headquarters Franz Schmidt II Social, economic and agricultural policy issues, labour front and questions of the Reich's nutritional status. Connection to the NSBO main office and the Reichsamt für Agrarpolitik. II A d Head of main office Long connection to the main offices and affiliated associations and their fields of activity; in particular local politics, civil servants, educators, war victims, NSDStB, women's affairs, people's welfare with the exception of the National Socialist Association of Lecturers, the National Socialist Association of Physicians, the German Labour Front, the Office for Agricultural Policy, the Office for Technology. Division II B Observation of domestic political developments and their impact on the party and the state. Head: Head of Office Gerland Representative: Witt II B a Head of Witt Reporting (in cooperation with all departments of the staff); orders of the deputy of the leader, as far as they concern ideological questions. II B b Head of Gerland Propaganda and Press Liaison Office (film, radio, post and celebration). II B c Head of office Schütt Liaison office training (training questions of the party in connection with the Reichsschulungsamt). II B d Head of the Lindhorst office Connection guide to the RAD Schnurbein connection office SA, SS, NSKK, Arbeitsdienst, HJ. II B e Head of department Gerland Liaison office KdF. II B f Head of Office Gerland Lutze Liaison Office Wehrmacht. II B g Office for Guests of Honour R e i c h s p r t a g e s . Department II C Head of Office Opdenhoff Führungsamt und Personalamt des Stellvertreters des Führers. Recording and supervision of junior leaders of the NSDAP. Processing the personal files of the political leaders to be confirmed by the deputy leader and the leader. Supervision of the Gauamts- and Kreisleiter detached to the staff. Membership system. Division II D Head of Office Opdenhoff Handling of complaints concerning party departments. Head of the Thurner headquarters Supervision of the junior staff members who have been seconded to the staff for one year. For the Department for Questions of Constitutional Law (Division III) set up in the summer of 1934 after the transfer of the authority to participate in the preparation of state legislation, there is no business distribution plan for the office of the deputy of the Führer. In the 1938 and 1939 National Socialist Yearbooks, in addition to the "official in charge of questions of state law", Hauptamtsleiter Sommer, the heads of the departments Dr. Johann Müller, Heim and von Helms are only listed as heads of department (11) This department, which was responsible for "supervising" the legislation and personnel policy of the Reich government, was subdivided, analogous to the individual ministries, into respective organisational units (groups or main offices, offices, main offices) for domestic, legal and economic policy. Since it could itself be regarded as a part of the state administration in terms of civil servant and budgetary law and had almost exclusively to do with draft laws and civil servant issues, it was obvious for Hess to entrust the work of this department to experienced administrative officials with legal knowledge. At the request of the deputy of the Führer, the officials were transferred from the respective Reich or Land departments to the staff of the deputy of the Führer. Until 1941, Head of Division III was the administrative lawyer Walther Sommer in the rank of Ministerial Councillor; his successor became State Secretary Dr. Gerhard Klopfer in 1941. Due to the composition and origin of the staff, Division III was hardly in a position to bring about the originally intended implementation of a radical party position in state legislation and civil servant policy. Rather, we can speak of a mediating function between party offices and ministries. Within this framework, the public authorities expected "their" officials transferred to the staff of the deputy leader to have a supportive influence on the responsible NSDAP department, which was usually actually exercised (12). Nonetheless, it is beyond doubt that the party's right to participate in the appointment and promotion of civil servants, from which only the Wehrmacht was able to keep itself free, had a considerable influence on the civil service and, among other things, had to impair its traditional view of service. Immediately after the England flight of his deputy Rudolf Hess, Hitler made the order on 12 May 1941 that the previous office of the Führer's deputy should bear the name "Party Chancellery" and be subordinated to him personally. The leader was "as before Reichsleiter Martin Bormann" (13). In his decree of 29 May 1941 "On the Position of the Head of the Party Chancellery" Hitler specified "in order to ensure the closest cooperation of the Party Chancellery with the Supreme Reich Authorities: The Head of the Party Chancellery, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, has the powers of a Reich Minister, he is a member of the Reich Government and of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich". Hitler then affirmed that the previous head of staff of the office of the deputy leader's deputy did not receive the title of his former superior, but rather all of his powers: "Where in laws, ordinances, decrees, orders and other orders the deputy leader's deputy is named, he shall be replaced by the head of the Party Chancellery" (14). According to the NSDAP's self-image, the Party Chancellery was Hitler's office in his capacity as leader of the party. Their Hitler leader, who was directly responsible for Hitler, had "to process all fundamental plans and suggestions from the area of the party centrally" for Hitler. The instructions issued by Hitler himself or prepared on his behalf for the entire party were sent exclusively via Bormann to the departments responsible for implementation. Not only the political leadership of the party, but also all work arising from the party's supremacy towards the state was to be done in the party chancellery. During the war, these tasks included, as a matter of course, the "versatile deployment of the party organs in total internal warfare" and the work of the party in the integrated and occupied territories. In addition to the party and the Wehrmacht, the focus of the jurisdiction of the party chancellery was on "securing the unity of party and state" (15). In the Ordinance of 29 May 1941 on the Implementation of the Decree of the Führer on the Position of the Head of the Party Chancellery, the Reich Minister and Head of the Reich Chancellery Lammers and the Head of the Party Chancellery ordered the following on 16 January 1942: (16) The Party's participation in the legislation was to be effected exclusively through the head of the Party Chancellery, unless Hitler determined otherwise in individual cases. Proposals and suggestions from the area of the Party, its divisions and affiliated associations could only be forwarded via Bormann, the responsible ministries and other supreme Reich authorities, as far as the legislation was concerned. This practically amounted to a concentration of power on the person of Bormann. The party also played a central role in processing the personal data of the civil servants. In any case, the head of the Party Chancellery had the position of a b e t e i l t e Reich Minister in the preparation of state legislation in legislative work. This also applied to the laws and ordinances of the provinces and governors of the empire. In addition to these formal competences, it was stipulated that, in matters other than legislative matters, the communication between the supreme Reich and Land authorities, insofar as these were responsible regionally for several districts of the NSDAP, on the one hand, and the services of the Party, its divisions and affiliated associations, on the other hand, took place solely via Bormann if these were "fundamental and political questions". Direct traffic was expressly declared inadmissible. Thus an instrument of power equipped with far-reaching competences came under the exclusive leadership of an energetic party functionary who was just as servile upwards as he was after him under brutally ruthless party officials, who of course used it as far as possible to expand his own position of power, which of course was not exclusively based on his position as head of the party office. Bormann's rise from organizer of illegal Freikorpsgruppen and Feme desk murderers to head of the relief fund of the NSDAP and finally to chief of staff of the Führer's deputy, his constant approach to the person of Hitler - from the administration of Hitler personally from various sources funds available, the conversion of the House of Wachenfeld to the "Berghof" and "Berghof" respectively. the expansion of the entire Obersalzberg complex into Hitler's summer residence, up to Hitler's constant company in the Führer's headquarters or "special Führer train" during the war - cannot be traced here in detail (17). The coupling of these two functions - the leadership of the political coordination centre of the party (staff of the deputy leader or party chancellery) and Hitler's constant support and advice, also in personal matters - formed the basis of Bormann's special position of power, which could not easily be equated with the strengthening of the party leadership as such. Structurally, even an energetic head of staff or head of the party office was unable to change the desolate weakness of the NSDAP's Reich leadership. Even under Bormann, the party chancellery did not develop into an all-powerful, bureaucratic command center comparable to communist politburo. Bormann's special position was based on the personal, independent power of attorney as Hitler's personal clerk, which was institutionalized on April 12, 1943 with Bormann's official appointment as "Secretary of the Führer" (18). From Bormann's dominant position in the Führer's headquarters - not actually from his function as head of the Party Chancellery - the path led to the Super and Control Minister of the Reich Government, when the Bormann was not only seen by dissatisfied party and contemporaries in the final years of the war, but is also portrayed in historical studies on the Nazi regime in general (19). The two-pronged organisational structure of the office of the leader's deputy, which was essentially based on the two departments for internal party affairs and for questions of constitutional law, remained basically unchanged, even under the name of the party chancellery. In Division II, the following groups or main offices were added in accordance with the expansion of the tasks: II M (Reich Defence, Planning of Operations for the War Tasks of the Party), II W (Fundamental Questions of the Wehrmacht, Liaison Office to the OKW), II E (Foreign and People's Growth Work of the Party, including Occupied Territories), II F (Nazi Leadership in the Wehrmacht and Nazi Lead Officers) and II V (Staff Leadership Volkssturm). The offices II C and IID, on the other hand, which dealt with the party's junior leaders and personnel issues, were merged to form the II P office. The organisational overview of Division II given below is essentially taken from a note in Division III of 11 April 1945. The offices II A 2, 3 and 5 as well as II B 6 and II W 1 - 4 no longer listed there were supplemented from earlier business distribution plans from 1942 and 1944. Apart from a few exceptions, the names given as heads of organizational units originate from a plan for the introduction of dictation marks dated 26 March 1942 (20) and a telephone directory of 20 Jan 1945 (21), divided into departments and official groups/main offices. Head of Department: Friedrichs Hauptamt II A Management duties and organisation of the party, its divisions, affiliated associations and organisations Neuburg (1945: Keitel) II A 1: Organisational matters and fundamental questions of party structure, fundamental membership issues, staffing plan in cooperation with II P. Examination of content, coordination and publication of orders, circulars and announcements of the party office. Monitoring and evaluation of the announcements of all other Reich management offices. steering of the party's alignment sheets. Design of the arrangement. Collection of guide words, laws and decrees for evaluation for party work. Welsch (as representative) II A 2: The Party's commitment to economic, agricultural, financial and transport policy affairs Stengel (as representative) II A 3: Social policy affairs Elberding II A 5: Volkstumspolitik Seekamp (as representative) II A 6: General complaints and petitions Gerber Hauptamt II B: Ritterbusch (1945: Wall) II B 1: Propaganda and press, events and lectures Buhler (as representative) II B 2: Training and education in the party, adult education, leader training Schenke (as representative) II B 3: Culture and celebration design, written material Dr. Hammerbacher II B 4: Reporting and information system, events and lectures of the Brandes II B 5: Structure Detering (in representation) II B 6: e.g. V. Haar (in representation) Hauptamt II E II E 1: Party political leadership and organisational questions of the working areas of the National Group Norway and Belgium, the Adriatic Coastal Region, the Alpine Foothills and the Party Liaison Office Prague, as well as their coordination within the party to the national political and Germanic control centre. Refugee issues from evacuation areas outside the empire. Evaluation of the reporting material produced by the party sector. II E 2: Party political leadership issues of the AO National Group, the NSDAP and the Gauinspektionen See-Schifffahrt. Intergovernmental work of the party abroad by coordinating within the party and cooperating with the AA. (Domestic I and II) Align the Party's foreign work with the policy of the people and evaluate the foreign policy material generated in the Party sector. II E 3: Treatment of folklore issues within the Reich through the political orientation of German folk growth, consolidation of the endangered German folk growth and treatment of foreign peoples in the territory of the Reich. German folklore groups abroad, folk-political questions in the Generalgouvernement, Protectorate and in the occupied territories. Racial Issues in People's Growth Work. Corresponding work with: Main Office for Folklore Issues, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, Reichskommissar für die consolidation deutscher Volkstums, VDA, Kärntner Volksbund, Steirischer Heimatbund, Volkstumsreferenten der Gliederungen und angeschlossenen Verbände. Hauptamt II F NS leading officers as leadership in the Wehrmacht. Rudder (1944/45) Hauptamt II M II M 1: Air war measures and operational planning. Beier (1945) II M 2: Securing personnel and material needs. (UK positions, fuel management, home flak, etc.) Zander Hauptamt II P Personalamt Hesseldieck (1945: Walkenhorst) II P 1: General personnel policy, seniority and service issues, pay and pensions. Young drivers and driver selection. II P 2: Disciplinary and appeal matters, judgments of war courts II P 3 Orders and decorations. care for surviving dependants and general care measures. Personal care for the soldiers of the service. Elections and conscripts to the Reichstag II P 4: Kommandiertenheim Rauchstraße. Hauptamt II V Staff management "Volkssturm" Bofinger (1945) Hauptamt II W Wehrmachtsfragen, at the same time liaison office to OKW Passe II W 1: Fundamental Wehrmachtsfragen. Rodegerts II W 2: Leadership office for Wehrmacht issues in parties, divisions, affiliated associations and supervised organisations. Rodegerts (in representation) II W 3: Special tasks of Rodegerts (in representation) II W 4: Questions of welfare and support for party comrades and people comrades vis-à-vis the Wehrmacht Rodegerts (in representation) The organisational structure and distribution of tasks of Division III are best derived from an undated "Provisional Business Distribution Plan of Division III - Party Law, Economy, Church", which was drawn up before 1944 at any rate: (22) Head: State Secretary Head of Command Dr. Klopfer Representative: Ministerialdirektor Dienstleiter Klemm, (at the same time Head of Group III C) Personal advisor: Oberregierungsrat Mainchnittsleiter Dr. Lincke Personalstelle III PSt.: Regierungsamtmann Klein, Regierungsinspektor Hausrath Special tasks: III V: Government Councillor Section Head Dr Beyer Government Councillor Dr Beyer Lang SS-Hauptsturmführer Will SS-Hauptsturmführer Klauß Affairs of the Security Police and the SD, procurement and evaluation of intelligence material, general questions of competence, political science investigations and research tasks, assessment of the political science literature - cooperation with the Party Official Examination Commission -, magazine and press editorial office of the department, affairs of the Black Corps, archive and map office of department III S: Regierungsrat Bereichsleiter Knöpfel Studienrat Dr. Scheele Lehrer Funk Frau Thomas Special orders of the Reichsleiter, Sonderbücherei, Archiv, Reichsschule Feldafing Gruppe III A: (Internal Administration, Folklore) Leiter: Oberregierungsrat Dienstleiter Ancker Vertreter: Oberregierungsrat Oberbereichsleiter Kap III A 1: Ministerialrat Dr. Dr. Hillebrecht Amtsrat Blankenburg Amtsrat Erler Amtsrat Verwaltungs- und Verwaltungsreformfragen; Administrative simplification; New areas; Reichskanzlei III S 2: Oberregierungsrat Oberbereichsleiter Kap Gemeinschaftsleiter Wöll Volkstumsfragen; Nationality matters; Eastern issues; Sammlungssagen III A 3: Currently unoccupied, distributed among III A 2, 4, 7 Public health (incl. (civil status, special sovereign matters); presidential chancellery (especially decorations); Federal Foreign Office; colonial matters Group III B: (economy, labour, nutrition, transport) Head: Ministerialrat Dienstleiter Dr. Bärmann 1st representative: Oberregierungsrat Oberbereichsleiter Fröhling 2nd representative: Oberregierungsrat Bereichsleiter Dr. Geißler III B 1: Head: Gauhauptstellenleiter Mittag Organisation der gewerblichen Wirtschaft Gauwirtschaftsberater - Ausschüsse III B 1 a: Regierungsrat Section head Dr. Densow Energie; Ostwirtschaft; Preise; Handel; Handwerk; Entjudungen; Allgemeine Wirtschaftsfragen III B 1 b: Regierungsrat Section head Kopp Produktion der gewerblichen Wirtschaft (außer Kohle, Bergbau, Energie); Rohstoff- und Warenbewirtschaftung; Personalien in der gewerblichen Wirtschaft III B 1 c: Reichsbankrat Vellmer Kohle-Bergbau; money and capital markets; banking and credit; insurance; foreign trade; tourism III B 2: Head: Oberregierungsrat Bereichsleiter Dr. Geißler Basic questions of social policy III B 2 a: Regierungsrat Section head Schwingenstein Amtsrat Gemeinschaftsleiter Fiedler Arbeitseinsatz; Sozialversicherung; Versorgungswerk III B 2 b: Regierungsrat Beimes Lohnpolitik; Gewerbeaufsicht; Berufserziehung III B 2 c: Section Head Gölz Construction Industry; Housing and Settlement; Transport; Post III B 3: Senior Government Council Section Head Kok Government Officer Eisermann Food Industry; Agriculture; Forestry; Hunting; Price Policy in Food, Agriculture and Forestry; Reich Office for the People of the Reich; Reich Nutrition Office; Armament of the German Village; Regional Planning; Battle of Production III B 4: Attorney at Law Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. (German Federal Law Gazette) On top of that, support of the Gauwirtschaftsberater; conferences; reporting; newsletter "Der Gauwirtschaftsberater"; editing; economic policy training and propaganda; special assignments III B 5: main editor, section leader Vollmann Wirtschaftswissenschaft; archive; business press and magazines; magazine "Nationalsozialistische Wirtschaftspolitik" Group III C: (Justice, law of the NSDAP) Head: Ministerialdirektor Dienstleiter Klemm Representative: Oberregierungsrat Oberreichsleiter Dr. Enke III C 1: Ministerialdirektor Dienstleiter Klemm Reserved special areas: NSRB; Academy for German Law; Participation in personnel matters of the judiciary III C 2: Oberregierungsrat Oberreichsleiter Dr. Enke Justizinspektor Gemeinschaftsleiter Ungethüm Party Law; Civil Law; Commercial Law; Labour Law; Procedural Law; Voluntary Jurisdiction; Bar Law; Civil Cases; Individual Cases III C 3: Oberlandesgerichtsrat Müller Justizinspektor Gemeinschaftsleiter Ungethüm Criminal Law; Wehrmacht Criminal Law; Juvenile Criminal Law; Grace Cases; Compensation Act; Criminal Cases, Individual Cases III C 4: Prosecutor von Kaldenberg Secondary criminal laws; traffic law; criminal proceedings for racial defilement; criminal procedural law; costs and fees; testimony approvals (interrogation law) III C 5: District Court Council Section leader Klemm-Werner participation in III C 2; industrial property law; copyright and publishing law; shipping law; treatment of hostile property III C 6: Higher Regional Court Council Dr. Hopf Strafsachen, Einzelfälle; Heimtückesachen; study and training reform; prison group III D: (Church, school, university, youth leader of the German Reich, Ministry of Propaganda, organization of celebrations, provision for war survivors) Head: Ministerialrat Dienstleiter Krüger Representative: Oberregierungsrat Reichsleiter Dr. Schmidt-Römer III D 1: Oberregierungsrat Abschnittleiter Dr. Fruhwirth Central steering of political and denominational affairs in the new areas, insofar as they are not dealt with in Divisions III D 2 to III D 4. Confessional contributions; right to leave and enter the church; cemetery law; public holiday law; acquisition of the right of the dead hand; confessional activities in hospitals; church statistics; general legal issues; insofar as they concern political-confessional matters III D 2: Oberlandesgerichtsrat Dr. Birk Steuerinspektor Wischer Allgemeine Kirchenfragen; Special Questions of the Protestant Church; Special Questions of the Catholic Church; Church and Wehrmacht; Other Churches and Sects; God-believers III D 3: Oberregierungsrat Bereichsleiter Dr. Schmidt-Römer Tax Inspector Wischer Finance and Property Affairs of the Churches, including Church Matters of the Reich Ministry of Finance; Church and Economy III D 4: Government Councillor Dr. Schlapper Tax Inspector Wischer Transfer of clergy and church officials to other professions; Personnel and Salary Matters of Political and Denominational Significance III D 5: Head of Office Dr. Wischer Landwehr Reichspropagandaministerium Restriction of confessional propaganda work and deconfessionalization of political and cultural means of leadership (literature, press, music, film, visual arts); celebration design; Reich Aviation Ministry; Confidential Information III D 6: Head of Studies, Section Head Dr. Anton Allgemeine Erziehungsfragen; personal details of teacher training institutions; HJ participation in educational matters at schools; German education abroad and in the areas incorporated into the Reich III D 7: Regierungsrat Section leader Kristandt Allgemeine Verwaltungs- und Rechtsangelegenheiten der Schule; Schule und Kirche; Landjahr; Heimschule; Kinderlandverschickung; Minderheitenschulwesen; Lehrerbesoldung; Jugendführer des Deutschen Reiches III D 8: z. Philipp Government Inspector Gerst University Affairs, including Personal Data; Technical and Vocational Schools; High Command of the Wehrmacht, in particular Wehrmacht Welfare III D 9: Kreisleiter Dr. Kurt Schmidt Displacement of denominational influences, especially denominational influence on youth outside school and on adult education; denominational interventions in hero worship; denominational superstition (miracles, prophecies, chain letters, pilgrimages, processions, etc.).); denominational influence on foreign peoples in the Reich; the abusive use of National Socialist terms, symbols and institutions as well as German customs by the churches; Churches and Party Group III E: (Finances) Head: Ministerialrat Oberbereichsleiter Dr. Gündel Representative: Oberregierungsrat Gemeinschaftsleiter Dr. Brack Financial policy; property and transport taxes; family burden equalisation; customs and excise taxes; monopolies; budget matters, financial equalisation; financial relations with the incorporated territories and with non-German territories and states; Reich assets and Reich debts; compensation issues Group III P: (civil servant matters and participation in state personnel policy) Head: Ministerialrat Dienstleiter Dr. Kernert Representative: Oberregierungsrat Oberbereichsleiter Döll III P 1: Ministerialrat Dienstleiter Dr. Kernert Reserved special areas: III P 2: Landrat Dr. Grazer General and internal administration; questions of junior staff and training III P 3: Landrat Dr. Hoffmann Auswärtiges Amt; Ministry of Labour; Unterrichtsverwaltung III P 4: Oberregierungsrat Oberbereichsleiter Döll Reichsjustizministerium; individual cases according to §§ 42 and 71 DBG III P 5: Oberregierungsrat Abschnittleiter Dr. Grazer Bode Amtsrat Gemeinschaftsleiter Sommer Beamtenrecht; Remuneration Law; Reich Finance Administration; Court of Audit; Prussian Finance Ministry; East Ministry; Colonial Policy Office III P 6: Reich Bank Council Section Head Grimm Reich Economics Ministry; Four-Year Plan; Reichsbank; Freemason Issues III P 7: Oberregierungsrat Section Head Kirn Reich Transport Ministry; Division Reich Minister Speer; Reich Post Ministry III P 8: Head of the section Brändle Beurlaubungen for purposes of the NSDAP; service penal cases - individual cases; civil servants of the simple, middle and upper service of all business areas; OKW; Reich Aviation Minister; Reich Forester III P 9: Regierungsrat Section leader Tent Jewish and mixed-race issues; police, medical, veterinary, and surveying administration; Reich Labor Service; Reich Ministry of Food; Reich Nutrition A business distribution plan for Division I, which was exclusively concerned with the administration of the Reich's agencies and whose leader in the years 1941 - 1943/44 was to be proven to be Hauptdienstleiter Winkler, from 1944 Dienstleiter Zeller (23), could not be determined. Externally, the three departments of the Party Chancellery continued to appear as "managing directors, internal party affairs officers and constitutional affairs officers". In addition to these three departments, which de facto constituted the "Party Chancellery" office, the published organisational overviews also continued to include other institutions de iure as parts of the Party Chancellery, which in practice developed as relatively independent independent entities or whose heads did not appear in their Party Chancellery function or appeared only marginally. Listed are (1942/1944): (24) Special representative at the party chancellery: Oberdienstleiter Oexle Main archive of the NSDAP: Reichsamtsleiter Dr. Uetrecht, from 1944: Bereichsleiter Dr. Uetrecht, from 1944: Head of the Department Dr. Uetrecht, from 1944 on: Head of the Department Dr. Uetrecht, from 1944 on: Head of the Department Dr. Uetrecht, from 1944 on: Head of the Department Dr. Uetrecht, from 1944 on: Head of the Department Dr. Uetrecht, from 1944 on: Head of the Department Dr. Uetrecht. Brügmann The Head of the Foreign Organization: Gauleiter Bohle The Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Popular Growth (from 1944: The Commissioner of the NSDAP for all Popular Issues): Reichsleiter Himmler The Commissioner for the New Construction of the Reich: Gauleiter Adolf Wagner The Commissioner for all Issues of Technology and its Organization: Commander-in-Chief Dr. Todt, Oberbefehlsleiter Speer The official in charge of all public health issues: (Chief) Befehlsleiter Dr. Conti The head of the NSDAP's Race Policy Office: Ober- bzw. Hauptdienstleiter Dr. Groß The head of the Office of Genealogy: Reichsamtsleiter bzw. Hauptbereichsleiter Dr. Mayer Der Beauftragte für Fragen der Finanz- und Steuerpolitik: Fritz Reinhardt, Reichslager of the NSDAP, Bad Tölz: Seidel, Reichsschule of the NSDAP, Feldafing am Starnberger See: Reichsamtsleiter or Oberdienstleiter Görlitz Remarks: (1) Thus the contemporary terminology of the task description in the organization and yearbooks of the NSDAP; here: Organisationsbuch der NSDAP, edited by the Reichsorganisationsleiter der NSDAP, 2.-4. Aufl., Munich 1937, p. 152 (BArch NSD 9/17). (2) On the overall complex of the relationship between party and state during Nazi rule, cf. in particular Martin Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers. Foundation and development of his internal constitution, Munich 8th edition 1979; Peter Diehl-Thiele, Party and State in the Third Reich. Studies on the relationship between the NSDAP and general internal state administration 1933-1945, Munich 1969. (3) Broszat, Staat Hitlers, p. 80, on the structure of the Reichsorganisationsleitung der NSDAP under Gregor Strasser see p. 73 ff. (4) Broszat, Staat Hitlers, p. 80, on the structure of the Reichsorganisationsleitung der NSDAP under Gregor Strasser cf. p. 79. (5) RGBl. I p. 1016. (6) BArch R 43 II/694. (7) RGBl. I. S 1203. (8) Information from the unprinted essay by Kurt Borsdorff: "Mit Reichsleiter Martin Bormann auf dem Obersalzberg" in BArch NS 6/789; cf. Diehl-Thiele, Partei und Staat, p. 218, note 46 (9) See above all the NSDAP Organization Books available until 1941 (BArch NSD 9/16-19) and the National Socialist Yearbooks published until 1938 "with the cooperation of the Reichsleitung der NSDAP" by Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, from 1939 by Reichsorganisationsleiter Robert Ley (BArch NSD 9/22-26). (10) Organisational overviews and business distribution plans of the department of the deputy leader or of the party chancellery are summarised in NS 6/451. (11) NSD 9/25-26. (12) Cf. Broszat, State of Hitler, pp. 311 ff. (13) Printed, inter alia, in the Organisation Book of the NSDAP, 1943, p. 151 (NSD 9/20). (14) RGBl. I p. 295. (15) Cf. the detailed task description of the Party Chancellery in the National Socialist Yearbook 1944, p. 181 f. (NSD 9/28). (16) RGBl. I p. 35. (17) See above all Josef Wulf, Martin Bormann - Hitlers Schatten, Gütersloh 1962, Lew Besymenski, the last notes by Martin Bormann. A document and its author, Stuttgart 1974, and Jochen von Lang, The Secretary. Martin Bormann: The man who ruled Hitler, Stuttgart 1977. The various depictions of Rudolf Hess concentrate above all or even exclusively on his flight to England, the conviction in Nuremberg and in particular the prison time in Spandau, so that a comprehensive, scientific representation of the "deputy of the Führer" and his activities 1933 - 1941 is basically still outstanding. (18) NS 6/159. (19) Cf. in detail Broszat, State of Hitler, pp. 392 ff. (20) All plans and overviews in NS 6/451. (21) NS 6/138; below the group leader level it was not possible to assign the names listed there to certain organizational units. (22) NS 6/451; there also the less detailed organizational overview printed by Diehl-Thiele, Partei und Staat, pp. 222 ff. For the staff at the beginning of 1945, see also the telephone directory of 20 Jan. 1945 in NS 6/138. (23) In addition to the organizational overviews in NS 6/451, see NS Yearbooks 1942 and 1944 (NSD 9/27-28). (24) NS Yearbooks 1942 and 1944 (NSD 9/27-28). Inventory description: Inventory history of written records management in the party office Although file plans and other registry aids have only been handed down in fragments for certain periods of time, even then, a clear picture of the written records management of the Hess and Bormann offices can be drawn. A file plan from the year 1937 is divided into two main areas (10 party, 20 state) and then divided into four levels according to the subject system. Files that could have been listed according to this plan, which was valid until about 1940, are only preserved in the form of single sheets or small processes, so that this file plan was of no particular importance for the indexing of the holdings. On the other hand, an excerpt from the file plan for matters of Reich defence (1) dating from 1939 proved to be a useful aid. It provides for up to 80 small subject series, of which 3 to 18 each are grouped into five groups (operational planning, subject areas, defence, preparation of mobilisation and general affairs); finally, collective folders for routine processes could be created as required. The systematic weaknesses that are typical of small subject series became clearly apparent in the distortion. The division of the records into "destination files", "auxiliary files" and "files for correspondence" is not convincing and could be neglected in the listing of the files of the competent Division M and Group II M respectively. File plans for the mass of the surviving records, i.e. from the time of the Party Chancellery (1941 - 1945), have not been preserved. After all, Rotulus sheets preserved for a sub-area with titles to essentially completed processes show the systematics of the underlying file plan (2). Rotulus leaves for the file numbers 1010/0 to 3230/4 have been preserved, whereby a further stage in the numerical classification was partly formed. The classification was based on the department principle. The file plan was used until the end of the war, as the comparatively closed tradition from Department III shows, and was observed in principle. The reference number consisted of the name of the respective organizational unit and the file number. The fate of the holdings since the conquest of Germany by the Allies corresponds to the history of German contemporary historical sources in the war and post-war period in general. Perhaps there is a specific feature typical of the existence of a political party in that self-destruction by party functionaries accounts for a larger proportion than destruction by enemy action. Of course, the acts of annihilation cannot be proven in detail. Since 1955, the Federal Archives have received splinter-like remnants and a few closed groups of records, essentially from offices of the victorious powers USA and Great Britain, to a lesser extent from authorities and universities in the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as about two dozen individual donations from private holdings, whereby takeovers from other holdings of the Federal Archives are added. In 1955, the Federal Archives took over copies of letters from the Chief of the Security Police and the SD to Bormann, of judgments handed over to Bormann by the Reich Minister of Justice, and of other documents from the Provenance Party Chancellery, all relating to events in connection with the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, all of which - supplemented by a small amount of material from private collections - were combined in the NS 6 "Party Chancellery of the NSDAP" as a special "Collection July 20, 1944" due to their common provenance. The originals of these documents, which had already been transferred to the main archive of the NSDAP before the end of the war, were received by the Bundesarchiv in 1962 in the course of the repatriation of German files from the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia (USA). These historically highly significant materials were already made accessible in detail by Jürgen Huck in November 1955. His title recordings have been completely incorporated into this finding aid book (p. 94 ff.). The other contributions come from the University Library of Heidelberg, the American Document Center in Berlin, the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia, and the National Archives of the United States in Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress there, and the British file depot in Whaddon Hall. In addition, there were a large number of smaller statements from German authorities and private owners. The holdings received a larger increase in the course of many years of organizing work from other holdings of the Federal Archives, above all from the NS 26 holdings (main archive of the NSDAP) and the "Schumacher Collection", which is to be dissolved altogether. In total, no more than 5 documents of the Party Chancellery should be preserved in the Federal Archives. This rough estimate may disregard the registries of the State Secretary Reinhardt in his capacity as "representative of the deputy of the leader or of the Party Chancellery for matters of job creation, financial and tax policy" and his personal adviser Dr. Hans Gündel, who was head of Group III E Public Finances in the Party Chancellery, remaining in inventory R 2 (Reich Ministry of Finance). Comments: (1) Both file plans in NS 6/69. (2) NS 6/803 - 804. Archival processing While the "Collection 20. July 1944" and which became known according to their core as "Kaltenbrunner Reports", were subjected to a detailed indexing, which already led in 1955 to a finding aid book with a detailed introduction and comprehensive index, the remaining parts of the inventory, fed by a multitude of duties and takeovers, were first recorded in the order of access, provided with provisional signatures, and in some cases marked summarily in terms of content - whereby, if available, the delivery directories of the delivering agency, for example the "Kaltenbrunner Reports", were usually followed. B. of the US Document Center -, Z. T. however, also downright according to archivfachlichen points of view registered. The final organizing and indexing work now carried out on this stock could therefore only partly be concerned with recording a number of accesses that had not been indexed at all up to now. The main task was rather the consolidation, standardisation and, in particular, the overall classification of the archival records - also from other holdings of the Federal Archives - which had been divided into numerous accesses and indexed to varying degrees of intensity up to that point, and which naturally necessitated an examination, but mostly also a reformulation, of the provisional titles found. This applied in particular when, on the one hand, the dissolution of predefined archive units, which had previously only been described in summary form and which had mostly been formed formally in Allied custody, into individual processes was offered, and, on the other hand, the combination of scattered parts of processes into processes or also of scattered individual processes into uniform series, some of which were provided for by the file plan, became possible. The intensive recording to Bormann of the reports of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD on the events in connection with the assassination attempt on 20 July 1944, made almost thirty years ago, was taken over in the finding aid book. Since, of course, it was not necessary to index the remaining components at this extraordinary depth, this complex of archival records described in Section C 8.1 continues to occupy a special position within the holdings, which is also clearly discernible according to formal criteria. This can be justified both on the basis of the exceptional importance of the documented object, proven by the very high user frequency, and on the remarkable quality of the sources. The "originals" of the above-mentioned documents, which arrived in the Federal Archives considerably later (1962) - the indexing in 1955 had been done on the basis of copies taken over from the Federal Archives at the time and made in American custody - had been formed according to American principles of order and were provided with their own provisional archive signatures in the Federal Archives. They have now been adapted to the order and distortion as they were created in 1955 for the distortion of the corresponding copies. This adaptation also extends to the signatures, so that the found distortion of the copies can also be applied without any restriction to the corresponding volume of originals - which now bears the same signature. In principle, attempts were made to adopt predefined registry units, to retain grown processes as archive units, and to use existing titles as a basis for title formation during indexing wherever possible. This attempt, however, could essentially only succeed with the organically grown written material from the years after 1940/41 handed down from Division III in the areas of "Foreign Trade" (C 12), "Money and Capital Markets" (C 14), "Construction Industry" (C 18) and "Housing Construction, Housing Management, Settlements" (C 19) - i.e. from the offices III B 1 and III B 2 - with limitations also in the surviving records of the main offices and the main offices with restrictions. Groups II M (mobilization of the party and distribution of the Reich) and II F (Nazi leadership and education of the Wehrmacht). As a rule, only scattered and incoherent remnants from the other organisational units, i.e. also from the registries of the deputy leader, his staff leader or the head of the party chancellery, the department heads, from the groups II A and II B concerned with the actual party leadership in the narrower sense, as well as from the years 1933 to 1936 in general, reached the holdings. Here, therefore, there was only the choice of registering individual pieces as such - if the historical value made it appear justified - or of combining documents that belonged together thematically or according to formal criteria to form artificial processes in which either the documented object or the formal criterion (e.g. Führer's discussions with Bormann, templates for Reichsleiter Bormann, lectures by Friedrich's head of department to the Führer's deputy) were decisive for the process formation. The relatively complete and complete series of orders, decrees and circulars of the deputy of the leader or of the party chancellery is of central importance not only with regard to the overall wrecked tradition of the entire collection, but also because of its outstanding independent source value. The information contained in these documents (cf. Section C 1) on all areas of the Party Chancellery's leadership and administrative activities was primarily intended for higher Nazi functionaries and constitutes a high-quality collection of sources, both in terms of quality and quantity, for research into the ruling apparatus of both the NSDAP and the Nazi regime in Germany, which could be used not only for special studies on Hess and Bormann's offices, but also for a variety of questions in the research of the Nazi era. It therefore seemed advisable not to leave it - under the influence of the party announcements printed in the Reichsverfügungsblatt - with a conventional recording of titles by volume, which was limited to chronological information, but to make the content of both the subject matter and the text of the decrees, orders and circulars as accessible as possible using the possibilities of automatic data processing. The result of this indexing will be presented in the second part of this finding aid book, while in the first part the series of party announcements will be recorded and listed in purely chronological order within the overall systematics of the stock (Section C 1). As far as possible, the classification of the records is based on the remaining business distribution plans of Divisions II and III. The "regulatory registration principle" was applied insofar as, for practical reasons, it proved necessary to provide for several development sections (Sections C 18 and C 19) at a relatively low organisational level (e.g. head office III B 2 c) in the case of relatively dense parts of the transmission from offices III B 1 and III B 2. In organisational areas with a ruinous tradition, on the other hand, written records of several groups were sometimes combined, e.g. groups II F and II W in section C 5. It goes without saying that in cases in which a classification was not formally possible due to a lack of business signs or due to the dissolution of the registry discipline at the end of the war, a decision was made on the basis of factual aspects. This applies in particular to the documents in connection with 20 July, which went directly to Bormann at the Führer's headquarters without any noteworthy processing by the Party Chancellery and from there went directly to the main archive of the NSDAP. In the classification scheme of the index they now appear under the generic term "Combating political opponents by security police and SD", although an assignment to Bormann's reference files in Chapter B would also have been conceivable. This applies mutatis mutandis to the documents relating to general party management matters, which are combined under "Management, Adjutant's Office" and in Sections C 2 and C 3 and for which there was no recognisable regulatory approach - not even in the form of a reference number - to registration. As it were, those documents were appended to the inventory under the designation "Special Tasks" which did not arise from Bormann's activity as head of the Party Chancellery, but were related to Bormann's activity as an administrator of Hitler's private assets. These are remnants of the traditions of the equipment of the planned "Führer Museum" in Linz and the recovery of the art treasures already "acquired" for this purpose, as well as a few files from the management of the "Führerstiftung Wohnungsbau Linz" and the administration of the "Führerbauten" on the Obersalzberg. A total of three concordances not only ensure that certain signatures of the holdings can be easily identified in the finding aid book (Concordance I), but also guarantee that archival documents cited after Allied signatures (Concordance II), after the provisional numbers of the Federal Archives or after earlier signatures from other holdings of the Federal Archives (Concordance III) remain easily accessible. In principle, an inventory of the Federal Archives is to be used according to the Federal Archives' specially prepared finding aids, since the Allied signatures indicated, for example, in the American "Guides to German Records microfilmed at Alexandria" or other finding aids for confiscated German files, mostly represent an outdated state of order of the files and can only be used for ordering American microfilms. For practical reasons, it should still be possible in individual cases to move from the Allied signature possibly cited in publications to the signature of the original in the Federal Archives. The present finding aid book was created as part of a retro-digitisation project of the Federal Archives and contains the digitised indexing results of the present conventional finding aid. In connection with the planned online launch, the portfolio was revised in 2008. The entire collection was supplemented above all by files and dossiers from the collection "NS Archive of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR". Citation method BArch NS 6/ .... Characterization of the content: The fact that a user of the inventory is repeatedly reminded of the fact that these are only highly unequally distributed debris or even scattered fragments of a formerly quantitatively and qualitatively important registry body, roughly comparable with the inventory of the Reich Chancellery (R 43), is certainly the main reason why considerations of the historical value of the existing traditions must have an ambivalent result. Due to the closed series of the "Verfügungen, Anordnungen und Rundschreiben" and the - admittedly for the most part for a long time published -(1) Überlieferung zum 20. Juli 1944 (1) the holdings certainly belong to the qualitatively most significant from the time of the Nazi rule. However, even against the background of the most recent outstanding importance and competence of the party law firm and in particular of its head, the tradition still received cannot make up for the loss of important parts of the registry. Thus Bormann's much-described closeness and position of trust in relation to Hitler is documented at best in some splintery notes on "Führerbesprechungungen". The party's relationship to the state, Bormann's role in the Nazi power structure, in particular also considerations of the actual power of Hitler's directly assigned offices and the forms of rule exercised by them cannot be conclusively assessed on the basis of Bormann's preserved sources and the party chancellery, in which some important conclusions could rightly have been expected for the aforementioned reason. The fact that, instead, the Nazi regime's efforts to build social housing during the war are very closely documented and can largely make up for the loss of the Reich Housing Commissioner's tradition is a pleasing finding for the detailed researcher in this context, but it is undoubtedly of subordinate importance overall. The question remains as to whether the decisive files - such as the personal registry - will be filed by the applicant.
History of the Inventory Designer: With effect from 9. November 1936 Transformation of the Chief Adjutant's Office of the Reichsführer SS into the organizational unit "The Reichsführer SS Personal Staff"; function of the Persönli‧chen Staff Reichsführer SS - one of the main offices of the Reichsführung SS - as sachbear‧beitende Office of the Reichsführer SS for tasks that did not fall within the competence of SS departments; division of the Personal Staff Reichsführer SS into offices in the years 1942-1944: Amt Wewelsburg, Amt Ahnenerbe, Amt Lebensborn, Amt/Abteilung Presse, Amt München (artistic and architectural tasks in connection with the SS-Wirt‧schafts-Verwaltungshauptamt), Amt Rohstoffe/Rohstoffamt, Amt für Volkstumsfragen, Zen‧tralinstitut for optimal human recording (statistical and practical evaluation of the "human recording" at the SS and police), Amt Staffführung (internal affairs of the staff and the offices) Long text: As Heinrich Himmler at the age of 28 years by order of Hitler from 20. When the SS was appointed Reichsführer-SS on January 1, 1929, only about 280 men belonged to the SS, at that time still a special formation of the SA. The supreme leadership organ of the "Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP", set up in the spring of 1925 for Hitler's personal protection and protection of the assembly, whose abbreviation "SS" was probably to become the best-known cipher symbolizing the reign of terror of the National Socialist regime in Germany and Europe, was the "Oberleitung der Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP", which functioned organizationally as part of the Supreme SA leadership in Munich. At the height of the Second World War, on 30 June 1944, the SS then comprised almost 800,000 members, of whom almost 600,000 were in the Waffen SS alone [1]. During these 15 years, the bureaucratic apparatus of the SS had grown enormously through the establishment of new offices, main offices and other central institutions at the highest level of management and through the formation of numerous subordinate offices and institutions. At the same time - also as a consequence of Himmler's leadership principle of the division of competences on the one hand and the linking of institutionally divided competences by personal union on the other - the organisational network at the top of the SS [2], which had become an if not the decisive instrument of power, had turned out to be almost unmanageable. The formal separation of the SS from the SA took place in two steps. Himmler's communication to the SS of December 1, 1930, according to which "the complete separation of SA and SS had been completed" [3], was followed by an order issued by Hitler as the Supreme SA Leader on January 14, 1931, that the Reichsführer-SS, as leader of the entire SS, be subordinated to the Chief of Staff, and the SS, as an independent association with its own official channels, be subordinated to the Reichsführer-SS [4]. With the "elevation" of the SS "to an independent organization within the framework of the NSDAP" ordered by Hitler on July 20, 1934, the binding of the SS to the SA was finally concluded. This was justified by the great merits, "especially in connection with the events of 30 June 1934" [5], i.e. the so-called "Röhm Putsch". At the same time the Reichsführer-SS, like the chief of staff of the SA, was directly subordinated to Hitler. In 1929, the Reichsführung-SS, which at first still knew a "managing director of the overhead management", had a very modest cut within the framework of the then equally underdeveloped Obersten SA leadership. The institutional expansion of the SS leadership pursued by Himmler ran clearly parallel to the development of the Supreme SA leadership, after Ernst Röhm had taken it over as Chief of Staff in January 1931. As with the latter, several departments and departments were created in the Reichsführung-SS until May 1931 in the following structure [6]: Ia Structure, Training, Security Ib Motorisation, Transport Ic Intelligence, Press Id Clothing, Catering, Accommodation Iia Personnel Department, Staffing Iib Proof of Strength III Matters of Honour, Legal Matters Iva Money Management Ivb Medical Care of the SS (Reichsarzt-SS) V Propaganda The SS Office developed from these organisational units in 1932. The department Ic became the SD Office, a race office, later race and settlement office, at the beginning of 1932 newly created. With Himmler's appointment as inspector of the Prussian Police on April 20, 1934 and Reinhard Heydrich's function as head of both the Secret State Police Office and the SD Main Office, the SD Office, later known as the SD Main Office, underwent a development that was separate from the narrower Reichsführung-SS. In 1939, this led to the merger of the SD Main Office and the SD Main Office Security Police to form the Reichssicherheitshauptamt [7]. Although the Reich Security Main Office, the Ordnungspolizei Main Office, the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German People's Growth, and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle were all part of the SS leadership, according to the understanding of the SS and the NSDAP; these authorities, however, apart from the joint leadership by Himmler as Reichsführer-SS and head of the German Police, and as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German People's Growth and the linking of state and party-official tasks, essentially performed state functions [8]. The SS Office of 1932, which from 1935 was known as the SS Main Office [9], changed its tasks and became the nucleus of new main offices into the war years. They arose as the Reichsführung-SS continued to expand through increasing leadership and administrative tasks: Development of the armed units, development and leadership of the Waffen-SS during the war, administration of the concentration camps (KL) and the economic enterprises of the SS, activities in the ideological-political field. The order issued by the Reichsführer-SS on January 14, 1935, to reorganize the Reichsführung-SS with effect from January 20, 1935, named the "Staff Reichsführer-SS" in addition to the SS Main Office, the SD Main Office, and the Race and SS Main Offices, the SD Main Office, and the Race and Settlement Main Office. It was divided into a chief adjutant's office, a personnel office, a SS court, an audit department and a staff treasury [10]. The Chief Adjutant's Office was later to become the Main Office of Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS. The staff of the Reichsführer-SS and the SS-Hauptamt were closely linked in terms of personnel by the fact that the chiefs of individual offices of the Hauptamt simultaneously performed functions in the staff. So corresponded in the SS-Hauptamt: Staff Reichsführer-SS: Personalamt (II) Personalkanzlei (II) Gerichtsamt (III) SS-Gericht (III) Verwaltungsamt (IV) Verwaltungschef-SS und Reichskassenverwalter (IV) Sanitätsamt (V) Reichsarzt-SS (V) In addition, the Führungsamt (I) and the Ergänzungsamt (VI) as well as the inspector of the KL and the SS-Wachverbände - directly subordinated to the head of the SS-Hauptamt - were added to the SS-Hauptamt, from 1936 the SS-Totenkopfverbände, and, from autumn 1935, the inspector of the disposal troop. One after the other, the corresponding organizational units in the SS Main Office or the SS Main Office were subsequently transformed into in the staff Reichsführer-SS 1939: - the SS-Personalhauptamt für die Personalangelegenheiten der SS-Führer [11], - the Hauptamt SS-Gericht [12], - the Hauptamt Verwaltung und Wirtschaft [13], which from 1942 was united with the Hauptamt Haushalt und Bauten des Reichsführers-SS and Chefs der Deutschen Polizei und dem SS-Verwaltungsamt to form the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt [14], 1940: - the SS Main Office "for the military leadership of the Waffen SS and pre- and post-military training of the General SS" [15], - the "Dienststelle SS-Obergruppenführer Heißmeyer", which supervised national political educational institutions and home schools within the portfolio of the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and Popular Education, as it were the preliminary stage of a planned Main Office for national political education [16]. The SS-Hauptamt under its leader SS-Gruppenführer Gottlob Berger essentially retained the registration and supplementary services as well as matters of training, especially for SS members recruited in the "Germanic Lands". In addition to these main offices and offices, Himmler had early established his own office to direct the apparatus and to supervise institutions directly subordinated to him and tasks in his adjutant's office that remained outside the offices. On June 15, 1933, the SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Wolff [17], who was the same age as Himmler, had joined them as full-time adjutant. Wolff very soon became Himmler's closest confidante, accompanied him on his travels and took part in his leadership tasks. In 1935 he became chief adjutant. Himmler took the upgrading of the Chief Adjutant's Office as an institution that had outgrown its original function into account when he transformed it into the Personal Staff by order of November 9, 1936 [18]: "1.) With effect from 9 November 1936, the previous Chief Adjutant of the Reichsführer-SS was given the designation 'The Reichsführer-SS Personal Staff' in view of its size and its greatly expanded service area over the years. 2.) I appoint SS-Brigadeführer Wolff as Chief of the Personal Staff. 3.) The new Adjutant of the Reichsführer-SS to be established forms a department of the Personal Staff." The simultaneous elevation of the Personal Staff to a main office was not only not pronounced, but probably also not intended. The increasing tasks of the Personal Staff on the one hand and the consideration of Wolff's position in relation to the newly established Heads of Main Office in 1939 may have persuaded Himmler to subsequently interpret another order of November 9, 1936, later, in 1939, to the effect that he had already at that time elevated the Personal Staff to a Main Office. In this order of November 9, 1936 [19] on the "Reorganization of the Command Relations in the All SS", he had announced the "Structure of the Office of the Reichsführer SS" as follows: SS Main Office, SD Main Office, Race and Settlement Main Office, Reichsführer SS Personal Staff; in addition, the Chief of the Ordnungspolizei, SS Obergruppenführer Daluege, had the rank of Head of Main Office. In the order of June 1, 1939, with which he formed the SS Personnel Main Office and the SS Court Main Office, he took up this order again and formulated that he had "established" them as the Main Offices. Still in the order of April 20, 1939, to found the Hauptamtes Verwaltung und Wirtschaft, however, he had declared that it was "a Hauptamt like the other Hauptämter of the Reichsführung-SS (SS-Hauptamt, SD-Hauptamt, Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei, and Hauptamt Sicherheitspolizei). So there was still no talk of a main office Personal Staff here. Wolff was only appointed head of the main office retroactively on 8 June 1939 [20]. The function and task of the Personal Staff are described as follows in a directive of 3 April 1937 on command management and administration in the area of responsibility of the Reichsführer-SS [21]: "The Personal Staff of the Reichsführer-SS is the administrative office of the Reichsführer-SS for those matters which do not belong to the areas of activity of the heads of the SS-Hauptamt, the SD-Hauptamt, the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt or the administrative central offices. For reasons of competence, the Chief of the Personal Staff must finally hand over to the SS Headquarters, the SD Headquarters, the Race and Settlement Headquarters, or the Central Offices in charge all matters which fall within the competence of the Heads of the SS Headquarters, the SD Headquarters, or the Central Offices in charge. The Chief of the Personal Staff simultaneously supervises a) the Adjutant's Office of the Reichsführer-SS, b) the entrance office of the Reichsführer-SS, c) the "Chancellery of the Reichsführer-SS". Two characteristics of the Personal Staff are thus shown: It should not perform any tasks in competition with the SS specialist departments, but should be Himmler's administrative office for tasks outside these departments, i.e. at least partially exercise the specialist supervision over Himmler's directly subordinate institutions. The function of the Personal Staff as a "central command post of the Reichsführung-SS" [22], which has brought about the quality of its records and thus of the archive records to be described here, is not addressed here. In addition, a number of chief positions were assigned to the Personal Staff, whose holders functioned in personal union as heads of the corresponding offices in the SS Main Office or in the SS Main Office, but which in turn did not develop into their own SS Main Offices: The chief defender of the Reich was at the same time chief of the Office for Security Tasks in the SS-Hauptamt, later in the SS-Führungshauptamt. The Inspector for Physical Education was head of the Office for Physical Education in the SS Main Office. The Inspector for Communications, who was also Chief of the Office for Communications in the SS-Hauptamt and later in the SS-Führungshauptamt, was renamed Chief of Telecommunications and, towards the end of the war, traded as Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, Chief of Telecommunications. From 1942, for example, he was ordered by Himmler to set up and train a female SS intelligence corps [23]. The head of the SS-Fürsorge- und Versorgungsamt, which was established in 1938, dissolved in 1944, and initially placed under Himmler's personal control, also held a chief position in the Personal Staff. Among the institutions that Himmler directly controlled through the Personal Staff were the economic enterprises of the SS [24] (Nordland-Verlag GmbH, Porzellanmanufaktur Allach, Photogesellschaft F.F. Bauer GmbH, Anton Loibl GmbH, Gemeinnützige Wohnungs- und Heimstätten-GmbH and the Spargemeinschaft-SS, later SS-Spargemeinschaft e.V.), the Gesellschaft zur Förderung und Pflege Deutscher Kulturdenkmäler e.V. [Society for the Promotion and Maintenance of German Cultural Monuments], which were established in the mid-30s, and the SS [24], which was the first German society to establish a "Society for the Promotion and Maintenance of German Cultural Monuments", the Externsteine-Stiftung and the König-Heinrich I.-Gedächtnis-Stiftung. All these institutions served financial as well as cultural, ideological or social purposes at the same time. For example, the licence fees from the exploitation of the patent for a pedal reflector for bicycles - the inventor Loibl was a motorist of Hitler - by Anton Loibl GmbH benefited "Ahnenerbe" e.V. and the association "Lebensborn". In addition to tableware, Porzellanmanufaktur Allach produced gift articles which were not sold but were distributed by Himmler alone to SS members and their families as well as to other recipients on certain occasions via the Personal Staff or the SS Adjutant's Office [25]. Among the articles that were produced for Himmler's "gift chamber" were life candlesticks and children's Frisians, Jul candlesticks and Jul plates, sculptures such as SS flag bearers, SS horsemen, lansquenets with lance, Garde du Corps, jugglers, dachshunds, mountain deer, traditional costume groups, and much more. In the Personal Staff, these businesses were assigned to a "cultural department", with the exception of the Savings Community SS, for which the "Economic Aid Department" was responsible. The old cultural department became obsolete in 1938, when all economic enterprises were economically and organizationally subordinated to the SS-Verwaltungsamt in the SS-Hauptamt. One exception was the porcelain manufactory Allach, which was institutionalized in the Personal Staff as the "Amt München". Among the institutions economically subordinated to the SS-Verwaltungsamt in 1938 were also the Externsteine-Stiftung with the purpose of preserving the alleged Germanic cult site near Detmold [26], the König Heinrich I.Gedächtnis-Stiftung, which was responsible for the care and preservation of the Quedlinburg Cathedral, and the Gesellschaft zur Förderung und Pflege Deutscher Kulturdenkmäler e.V. (Society for the Promotion and Care of German Cultural Monuments), which looked after a number of objects, the best-known of which were the Wewelsburg near Paderborn, the Sachsenhain near Verden/Aller and the Haithabu excavation site near Schleswig. Thus also the "Department for Cultural Research", which until then had been in the Personal Staff - together with a Department for "Excavations" - for these institutions and other Himmler ambitions in culturally-historically oriented areas, lost its idealistic competence and finally also its organizational basis. The beneficiary was the "Lehr- und Forschungsgemeinschaft Das Ahnenerbe", founded in 1935, which had been affiliated to the Personal Staff since the end of 1936 and belonged to the Personal Staff from April 1, 1942 in the organizational form of an office [27]. Economically, however, the "Ahnenerbe" was also subject to the SS-Verwaltungsamt since 1938. The "Ahnenerbe" - with Himmler as president at the helm - had the statutory task of "researching the space, spirit, deed and heritage of North-Rassian Indo-Europeanism, bringing the research results to life and communicating them to the people". Objectives to make the "Ahnenerbe" the "reservoir for all cultural efforts of the Reichsführer-SS" were questioned by Himmler's leadership style, however, "that he did not necessarily want to unite everything in the "Ahnenerbe" in order not to concentrate too many important and essential things in one place" [28]. In the course of its complicated history, which succinctly documented the mental aberration and confusion of Himmler's ideology and scientific ideas, the "Ahnenerbe" attempted to go beyond its early conception and become a bizarre research site for various areas of the "cultural sciences" and natural sciences that could serve both the Nazi ideas of domination and the very concrete ones. During the war it expanded its activities further, e.g. in the form of the so-called "Germanic Science Mission" in the occupied "Germanic" countries. For its journalistic activities, it had an Ahnenerbe-Stiftungs-Verlag publishing house. The "Ancestral Heritage" finally fell into direct entanglement with the inhuman and criminal practices of the Nazi regime through the affiliated "Institute for Military Research", whose establishment Himmler had personally ordered. Under the guise of research allegedly important to the war, cruel experiments were carried out on concentration camp prisoners, which were linked to the names of doctors involved, such as Dr. Siegmund Rascher. Prof. Dr. August Hirt conducted perverted "research" at the Reich University of Strasbourg with his anthropological investigations of skulls and skeletons of "Jewish-Bolshevik Commissioners" who had previously been killed in Auschwitz [29]. A "cultural object" that remained outside the jurisdiction of the "Ancestor's Heritage" was the Wewelsburg castle in East Westphalia, with which Himmler intended to create a permanent place of worship for the SS order's idea [30]. Himmler remained personally concerned about their development, up to the planting of the castle slope with walnut trees. Organizationally, it was also anchored in an office at the Personal Staff. Another office in the Personal Staff, which represented an association, was the office Lebensborn. The association "Lebensborn" had been founded in 1936 and - contrary to what was published after the end of the war - had the statutory purpose of supporting families with many children and assisting single mothers [31], in keeping with the Nazi racial ideology and population policy "racially and hereditarily biologically valuable". Special homes were set up to accommodate them. The "Lebensborn" became directly culpable during the war as a caring organization for "racially valuable" children whose parents had been persecuted, transferred to concentration camps or killed; among them, for example, were the children of the inhabitants of Lidice and Lezáky, who had been shot dead or sent to concentration camps in the course of retaliatory measures for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, and children whose parents had been executed as members of the Czech resistance movement [32]. The observation of the press was an early concern of Himmler. The later office press in the personal staff had the task of keeping Himmler informed about press news. In addition, he was responsible for cooperation with party and state press control agencies, certain censorship tasks and the development of word and image documentation. Among other things, the Office also prepared an "Organization Book of the SS," since, according to its leader, "very few SS leaders have a complete overview of the organization of the Reichsführer-SS's area of work in detail" [33]. In order to carry out Himmler's tasks within the framework of the 2nd Four-Year Plan, an "Office Four-Year Plan" was created in the Personal Staff. It was involved in labour recruitment, construction and raw materials management, energy problems and research. In 1942 it was "tacitly" dissolved and incorporated into the "Rohstoffamt" [34], which had emerged from the staff office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Popular Growth [35]. A very early office that Himmler permanently linked to the Personal Staff was the office "Reichsarzt SS und Polizei", headed by Dr. Ernst Robert Grawitz until the end of the war. Grawitz has become less well known than Dr. Karl Gebhardt, the chief physician of the SS hospital Hohenlychen, in whose treatment Himmler very often went and who traded as "Supreme Clinician of the Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police" [36]. Finally the "SS-Mannschaftshäuser" are to be mentioned; since the mid-30s they served to bring together the SS members at the universities "for the training of the scientific offspring required by the SS", as Himmler put it in 1939 [37], when he withdrew this institution from the Race and Settlement Main Office and turned it into an "SS office in the Personal Staff". According to staffing plans and job descriptions [38], the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS in 1942/44 was structured and staffed as follows: Chief of the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Karl Wolff Offices Wewelsburg: SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Siegfried Taubert, Burghauptmann der SS-Schule "Haus Wewelsburg" Amt Ahnenerbe: SS-Oberführer Professor Dr. Walter Wüst, curator and head of office; SS-Standartenführer Wolfram Sievers, Reichsgeschäftsführer and deputy head of office Amt Lebensborn: SS-Standartenführer Max Sollmann, board member and head of office Amt/Abt. Presse: SS-Obersturmbannführer Gerhard Radke, later SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Behrendt Amt München: SS-Standartenführer Professor Karl Diebitsch (processing of all artistic and architectural questions in connection with the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt) Amt Rohstoffe/Rohstoffamt: SS-Standartenführer Albert Kloth Amt für Volkstumsfragen: SS-Brigadeführer Erich Cassel, head of office and liaison officer to the Reichsleitung der NSDAP and the offices of the Reichsführer-SS Zentralinstitut für optimale Menschenerfassung: SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Albert Bartels (Statistical and practical evaluation of the entire "human recording" in the SS and police) Office staff management: Staff leader SS-Oberführer Otto Ullmann, from February 1943 SS-Standartenführer Paul Baumert (responsible for all internal affairs of the staff and the offices) with the directly subordinate main departments: SS-Adjutantur: SS-Obersturmbannführer Werner Grothmann Police-Adjutantur: Lieutenant Colonel of the Schutzpolizei Willy Suchanek and SS-Hauptsturmführer Martin Fälschlein Personal Department Reichsführer-SS: SS-Standartenführer Dr. Rudolf Brandt, Ministerialrat, Personal Officer of the Reichsführer-SS and Reichsminister des Innern Sachbearbeiter Chef Persönlicher Stab (S.B.Ch.P.): SS-Obersturmführer Heinrich Heckenstaller Orden und Gäste: SS-Standartenführer Hans von Uslar, later SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Helmut Fitzner Administration: SS-Hauptsturmführer Oskar Winzer, later SS-Obersturmbannführer Christian Mohr (administration of the staff and the subordinated offices) Economic Aid: SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Helmut Fitzner (debt relief and loan matters for the SS) Staff: SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Breitfeldt SS-judicial liaison officer: SS-Standartenführer Horst Bender The representative for service dogs at the Reichsführer-SS: SS-Oberführer Franz Mueller (Darß) (service dogs questions of the Waffen-SS and police at the Reichsführer-SS) and departments: - Awards and orders (subordinate to the SS-Adjutantur; processing of high awards in Waffen-SS and police) - records management and office (records registration and custody) - intelligence office (monitoring of all intelligence means of the Berlin office of the Reichsführer-SS) - driving service - commander of the staff department of the Waffen-SS (leadership and supervision of all Waffen-SS members transferred to the Personal Staff). This overview also mentions a number of other institutions that Himmler personally subordinated, were "worked on" in the Personal Staff and are documented there. These included, for example, the Reichsführer-SS Personal Staff, Department F, SS camp Dachau - Haus 13, Ernährungswissenschaftliches Versuchsgut. The director was Dr. Karl Fahrenkamp; his main task was the development of preparations for the promotion of plant growth. Around 1940 the Statistical Inspectorate was set up. From January 1944 it was called the Statistical-Scientific Institute of the Reichsführer-SS, was headed by Dr. Richard Korherr and was commissioned with the preparation of statistical work for Himmler. To be mentioned in this context are still ad hoc special institutions such as the representative of the Reichsführer-SS in the staff of the Special Representative for the Investigation of the Appropriate Use of War, General von Unruh, SS-Standartenführer Harro With, and the Reichsführer-SS Sonderstab Oberst Streck, who had to follow letters about grievances in offices and troops. Another of Himmler's countless areas of interest, the development of raw materials during the war, is probably to be attributed to the fact that he was not only very personally concerned, for example, with the breeding of caraculae and perennial rye or with the extraction of oil shale, but that he had Göring officially appoint him special envoy for all questions of plant rubber [39]. In the occupied Polish and Soviet territories, cultivation trials with Kok-Sagys, a plant found in European Russia, were undertaken at great expense in order to obtain usable quantities of natural rubber for the German war economy. The business of the Personal Staff in the narrower sense was conducted by the Office Staff Management with the subordinate main departments and departments. The other offices - the Amt für Volkstumsfragen and the Zentralinstitut für optimale Menschenerfassung (Central Institute for Optimal Human Recording) (with tasks of statistical labour force recording using the Hollerith method), which were established only towards the end of the war and apparently remained without significance and precipitation, were listed only for the sake of completeness - belonged to the Personal Staff, but had separate offices and their own registries. The most important organizational units in the Office of Staff Management were the main departments Personal Department Reichsführer-SS and S.B.Ch.P. (Head of Personal Staff) and the adjutant offices. The Dog Service Officer worked outside the Personal Staff Unit. Although the SS-richterliche Verbindungsführer was always located in the vicinity of Himmler, he conducted his official business separately from that of the staff; his registration was not included in the records of the Personal Staff [40]. Wolff's main task as Chief of the Personal Staff was to support Himmler as the closest employee and confidant in his leadership tasks. His function changed when he was appointed liaison leader of the Reichsführer-SS at Hitler on 26 August 1939. He now stayed in the immediate vicinity of Hitler, i.e. also in his field quarters. Without having any technical competence, he should keep Himmler up to date on developments at the Führer's headquarters and be available to answer questions from the Führer's headquarters. The position directly assisting the Chief of Personal Staff was the S.B.Ch.P. Main Department. (clerk chief of personal staff). The incumbent or one of his employees had to work for Wolff at the Führer's headquarters [41]. When Wolff fell seriously ill in February 1943, Himmler took over the leadership of the Main Office Personal Staff "until further notice" himself. Wolff did not return to this position; after his recovery in the summer of 1943 he prepared for his function in Italy [42]. Himmler did not appoint a new chief of the Personal Staff, but continued to perform this function himself. He dissolved the S.B.Ch.P. department. Himmler's closest collaborator after Wolff, especially since Wolff's appointment as Liaison Leader at Hitler and finally as Supreme SS and Police Leader in Italy, was his personal advisor Dr. Rudolf Brandt. Himmler's already large area of responsibility was expanded by Himmler's appointment as Reich Minister of the Interior to include the processing of tasks from the area of this ministry. Brandt always worked in the immediate vicinity of Himmler. His powers extended far beyond those of a personal speaker who accompanied Himmler on his travels and, for example, as a trained stenographer, recorded Himmler's speeches. He decided which post was presented to Himmler or not, gave a daily lecture on the problems involved, independently implemented instructions from the Reichsführer-SS, and fended off requests if they did not appear to be presentable as Himmlers in terms of content or time. Even without personally obtaining Himmler's decisions, in individual cases he could take his decision or opinion for granted and act accordingly. The police adjutants essentially had "speaking" or "transmitting" functions. The Police Adjutant's Office was the office of the two liaison officers of the Reich Security Main Office and the Main Office of the Ordnungspolizei. Suchanek was always in Himmler's field command post during the war, while Fälschlein was on duty in Berlin. In contrast to the Police Adjutant's Office, the SS Adjutant's Office, in addition to the adjutants' task of "accompanying" the Reichsführer SS, also carried out administrative tasks such as setting appointments, preparing trips, processing invitations, congratulating and giving gifts. It also dealt with factual and personnel matters of the Waffen SS, maintained contact with the SS Main Office and SS Head Office as well as with the front units of the Waffen SS. In Munich, Karlstraße 10, the SS-Adjutantur maintained a branch office occupied by SS-Hauptsturmführer Schnitzler. The headquarters of the Personal Staff was the building Prinz Albrecht-Straße 8 in Berlin, which was also Himmler's headquarters as Reichsführer-SS and chief of the German police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior as well as the chief of the security police and the SD (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) [43]. During the war Himmler often worked in various "field command posts". One of the most constant places of residence was the field command post "Hochwald" in a forest near Großgarten in East Prussia, about 40 km away from the Führer's headquarters "Wolfsschanze" [44]. Commander of the Feldkommandostelle Reichsführer-SS and responsible for its security was the SS-Obersturmbannführer Josef Tiefenbacher. He was in charge of the SS and police escort units as well as the special train "Steiermark", Himmler's rolling field command post, which brought him to the desired destinations or also let him follow Hitler's special train. This happened, for example, after the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, when Himmler's special train was parked near Hitler in Bruck/Murr. His motorcade was called "Sonderzug Heinrich". Near Hitler's Führer Headquarters "Wehrwolf" near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, Himmler had established his field command post "Hegewald" in a German ethnic settlement area south of Shitomir. The increasing air raids on Berlin made it necessary to look for alternative quarters outside the city. These apparently accommodated larger areas of the service and had facilities that could do justice to Himmler's safety and that of his closer staff even if they were present for a longer period of time. The largest and most systematically developed object was apparently the alternative site "Birkenwald" near Prenzlau (Uckermark). On an area of approx. 290,000 m2 with some permanent buildings, which had been given over by the city administration, extensions were carried out until the last months of the war; the laying of a connecting track for the special train "Steiermark" was still in the planning stage in November 1944. The alternative place also had accommodations for Himmler, his personal adviser and the adjutants. For the year 1944 the existence of the alternative sites "Bergwald" and "Tannenwald" is proven in the files of the Personal Staff, as well as for March 1945 the alternative camp "Frankenwald" in Bad Frankenhausen (Krs. Sondershausen/Thüringen) [45]. _ [1] Cf. the data of the Statistical-Scientific Institute of the Reichsführer-SS in NS 19/1471. [2] Cf. Hans Buchheim, Die SS - Das Herrschaftsinstrument. Command and Obedience (Anatomie des SS-Staates, vol. 1), Olten and Freiburg i. Br 1965 [3] SS Command No. 20 of 1. 12. 1930 (NS 19/1934). 4] SA command no. 1 (simultaneously for SS) dated 16. 1. 1931 (NS 19/1934). 5] Hitler's Order of July 20, 1934 by Gerd Rühle, Das Dritte Reich, 1934, p. 237 [6] Staff Order of May 12, 1931 (NS 19/1934). 7] See Shlomo Aronson, Reinhard Heydrich and the Early History of the Gestapo and SD, Stuttgart 1971, and Buchheim (note 3 above). 8] The Federal Archive and its holdings, edited by Gerhard Granier, Josef Henke, Klaus Oldenhage, 3rd ed., Boppard 1977, p. 41 ff., 51 and 53 [9] Federal Archive holdings NS 31 [10] SS-Hauptamt, Staff Order No. 6 (NS 31/70). In an order to reshape the Reichsführung-SS dated February 9, 1934, Himmler had issued a new order for his staff with the Departments I. Adjutantur, II. Personalabteilung, III. Gerichtsabteilung, IV. Revisionsabteilung and V. Pressabteilung only the official title "Der Reichsführer-SS" (NS 17/135, copy in NS 19/4041). 11] Order of 1.6.1939 (NS 19/3901); residual files of the SS Personnel Main Office in the Federal Archives NS 34. [12] Also order of 1.6.1939 (ibid.); Federal Archives NS 7. [13] Order of 20.4.1939 (NS 19/1166). 14] Command of 19.1.1942 (NS 19/3904); Federal Archives holdings NS 3. 15] Commands of 15.8.1940 and 5.9.1940 (NS 19/3903); preserved files of the SS-Führungshauptamt in the Federal Archives holdings NS 33. 16] See Himmler's order of 12.1.1941 (NS 19/3903), also letter of 7.11.1941 from the Reich Minister of Science, Education and People's Education to the Reich Minister of Finance (R 2/12745). 17] Documents on Wolff's personal and private service affairs can be found in NS 19/3456 as well as in the other archive units described below in Section B. 2; in addition also the dossier concerning Wolff (copies) in the documents of the Freundeskreis Reichsführer-SS in NS 48/81. 18] NS 19/3901. Himmler announced the wording of the order in a speech at the SS-Gruppenführertagung on 8.11.1936 in Dachau (NS 19/4003; see also note 72), which had long been regarded as incomplete. 19] NS 19/3902 [20] See the documents of the Friends of Himmler concerning Wolff (copies) in NS 48/81 [21] NS 19/2881 [22] Gunther d'Alquen, Die SS. History, task and organization of the Schutzstaffeln of the NSDAP, Berlin 1939, p. 24 [23] The preserved files of the SS-Helferinnenschule Oberehnheim are in the Bundesarchiv stock NS 32 II. 24] See note 23. 25] See, for example, the archives described in section B.1.6 below. 26] Cf. Klaus Gruna, Die Externsteine kann sich nicht fhren, in: Menschen, Landschaft und Geschichte, edited by Walter Först, Cologne and Berlin 1965, pp. 239-249 [27] Tradition of the "ancestral heritage" in the Federal Archives NS 21 - Cf. Michael H. Kater, Das "Ahnenerbe" der SS 1935-1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich, Stuttgart 1974. [28] File note of the Reich Secretary of the "Ahnenerbes", Wolfram Sievers, from 4.11.1937 about a visit of Pohl to the "Ahnenerbe" on 2.11.1937 (NS 21/779). 29] See, among others, Reinhard Henkys, Die Nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen, Stuttgart und Berlin 1964, p. 66, 69 f., 247. Sievers was sentenced to death and executed for the criminal activities of the Institute in the Nuremberg medical trial. Shepherd's been missing since the end of the war. Rascher was executed on Himmler's orders for child undermining. 30] Cf. Heiner Lichtenstein, Wo Himmler wollte residieren, in: Menschen, Landschaft und Geschichte (above Note 29), pp. 115-128 and Karl Hüser, Wewelsburg 1933 to 1945. Cult and Terror Site of the SS. Eine Dokumentation, Paderborn 2nd edition 1987 [31] Cf. Georg Lilienthal, Der "Lebensborn e.V." Ein Instrument Nationalsozialistischer Rassenpolitik, Stuttgart, New York 1984 [32] Cf. the correspondence on the accommodation of Czech children 1943-1944 (NS 19/375) as well as Marc Hillel and Clarissa Henry, Lebensborn e.V. In the name of the race, Vienna, Hamburg 1975 [33] Accountability report of the head of office from 1.11.1942 (NS 19/2985). 34] Letter from SS-Standartenführer Kloth to SS-Obergruppenführer Wolff of 3. 8. 1942 (NS 19/349). 35] File note of SS-Standartenführer Kloth of 4.10.1943 to. Establishment of the office m.W. of 15.1.1942 and letter of the Rohstoffamt to the administration of the Personal Staff of 22.9.1943 (NS 19/1786). 36] See Henkys (note 36 above) and Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Vols. 1-2, Washington, D. C. 1950, and Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke (ed.), Medicine without Humanity. Documents of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, Heidelberg 1949 [37] SS Order of 12.2.1939 (NS 19/3901). 38] NS 19/2881. 39] Letter of appointment dated 9.7.1943 (NS 19/1802). 40] Remains of tradition in the Federal Archives NS 7 [41] Indictment of the Public Prosecutor's Office at the District Court Munich II in the criminal proceedings against Karl Wolff; see also Note 22 [42] On the takeover of the Personal Staff by Himmler himself see NS 48/81; on Wolff's later use in Italy see also NS 19/3456 [43] Cf. Topography of Terror. Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on the "Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände". Eine Dokumentation, ed. by Reinhard Rürup, Berlin 8th ed. 1991 [44] Cf. Peter Hoffmann, Die Sicherheit des Diktators, Munich 1976, p. 219 [45] The construction of alternative sites essentially documents the archives described in section A.1 below as well as other documents scattered throughout the indices. For Birkenwald see above all NS 19/2888, 3273, 2211 and 1518. Inventory description: Inventory history The file tradition developed at the offices of the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS essentially shares the general fate of German contemporary historical sources described elsewhere in the war and post-war period [1]. Losses of files as a result of air raids in November 1943 are documented several times in the files of the Personal Staff. The office building at Prinz-Albrecht-Str. 8 was destroyed by bombs in February 1945 [2]; members of the Soviet and U.S. occupying forces are said to have recovered files from the ruins of the building after the end of the war [3]. There is no information about the fate of the files of the Personal Staff at the end of the war, nor about where the traditions of U.S. troops now kept in the Federal Archives were captured. The first message is conveyed by a file directory of the "7771 Document Center OMGUS", the subsequent U.S. Document Center in Berlin-Zehlendorf which existed until 1994 and which, as of July 1948, records an inventory of 2.5 tons of Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS "transferred to another location". It had been made available to the prosecution authorities of the Nuremberg War Beaker Trials [4]. When preparing the files for trial purposes, numerous and extensive "personnel processes" were taken from the files of the Personal Staff in Nuremberg and the Führer personnel files of the SS Personnel Main Office were added. While these later returned to the Document Center in Berlin and - reduced by withdrawals, e.g. for the "Schumacher Collection", which was formed in the Document Center against all archival provenance principles on the basis of factual aspects and which was transferred to the Federal Archives in 1962 - remained in the custody of the Document Center until it was taken over by the Federal Archives in the summer of 1994 [5], the Personal Staff, which had also been reduced by further withdrawals for trial purposes, was transferred to the USA during the Berlin blockade in 1948/49. In the course of the general repatriation of confiscated German archival records from British and American custody in 1962, it was handed over by the National Archives in Washington to the Federal Archives in Koblenz in a mixture with other records from the command area of the Reichsführer-SS [6]. After the restoration of the state unity of Germany on 3 October 1990 and the unification of the former central state archives of the GDR with the Federal Archives, the archives of the Personal Staff together with the other state and party official holdings of the Federal Archives from the period before 1945 came under the responsibility of the newly established "German Reich" Department of the Federal Archives, which was initially located in Potsdam and has been part of the Federal Archives Office in Berlin-Lichterfelde since 1996. The tradition of the Personal Staff in the Federal Archives was supplemented by a "Himmler Collection" formed in the Document Center and also handed over to the Federal Archives in 1962 [7]. It contained Himmler's personal papers, which were kept in the Federal Archives, supplemented by a microfilm of diary entries from the years 1914-1924 [8] kept in the Hoover Institution, and which constitute Himmler's estate [9]. However, the majority of the collection consisted of documents from the Personal Staff and the SS-Adjutantur, which were added to the files of the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS. These include notes and recordings of Himmler's appointments and telephone conversations. 10] Finally, the Federal Archives were able to reunite the files of the Personal Staff that had previously been placed in the "Schumacher Collection" in the Document Center with the main holdings in NS 19. This also applies to those parts of a comprehensive collection of copies of Personal Staff documents that were created in the Document Center before the transfer of the holdings to the USA and whose "original" originals can no longer be verified in the holdings or could not yet be verified. The identification of the copies with the corresponding originals proved to be very time-consuming above all because the internal structure of the collection of copies, consisting mostly of compiled individual pieces, differed fundamentally from the order found or newly created for the files. The remaining copies, i.e. copies that could not be identified on the basis of "originals", were finally assigned to the holdings as such, and their form of transmission as copies were recorded as comments. For the majority of these remaining copies, including the few larger connected processes [11], it can be assumed that the corresponding "originals" were lost before the repatriation from the USA, or were excluded from the repatriation for reasons which can no longer be understood today, or simply, like many other German contemporary historical sources, must be regarded as lost. In individual cases, on the other hand, a double tradition cannot be ruled out; the "originals" of the documents recorded as copies may still be in an unexpected place in the inventory, but to want to find them under any circumstances would have required an unjustifiable effort. In the course of the revision and increase of the total holdings in August 2007 by orders, orders and decrees of the individual departments in the Personal Staff of the Reichsführer-SS as well as of the command authorities of the Waffen-SS and individual units of the SS upper sections concerning documents, the existing collection could be further expanded in its range of holdings. Furthermore, activity reports and partly personal documentations of the higher SS and police leaders as well as announcements, decrees and orders concerning cultural and ideological matters of folklore and resettlement policy were included. _ [1] Cf. the general aspect Josef Henke, Das Schicksal deutscher zeitgeschichtlicher Quellen in Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit (The Fate of German Contemporary History Sources in the War and Post-War Period). Confiscation - repatriation - whereabouts, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 30 (1982), pp. 557-617 [2] Cf. Topography of Terror (Note 51), pp. 178 ff. and Gerald Reitlinger, Die SS, Munich 1957, p. 55 [3] Findings of members of the then main archive (former Prussian Secret State Archive) in Berlin-Dahlem. 4] On the use of confiscated German files for the Nuremberg Trials see Henke (Note 54), pp. 570-577. 5] See Dieter Krüger, Das ehemalige "Berlin Document Center" im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Wissenschaft und öffentlichen Meinung, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 45 (1997), pp. 49-74. 6] Guides to German Records Microfilmed at Alexandria/Va.., Vol. 32, 33, see also Heinz Boberach, Die schriftliche Überlieferung der Behörden des Deutschen Reiches 1871-1945. Securing, repatriation, substitute documentation, in: Aus der Arbeit des Bundesarchivs (oben Anm. 1), p. 50-61, here: p. 57 [7] See NSDAP Main Archive, Guide to the Hoover Institution Microfilm Collection, compiled by Grete Heinz and Agnes F. Peterson, Hoover Institution Bibliographical Series XVII, Stanford 1964, p. 144-149 [8] See Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith, Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years, in: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, 1959, p. 206-224 [9] Federal Archives holdings N 1126 [10] See the below in Sections B.1..3 and B.3 archival records. 11] [(NS 19/539) and in Ukraine 1942-1945 (NS 19/544). Registrar's Relationships The "Administration of records" department of the Personal Staff was responsible for the administration of records. A "document management order" regulated "file creation and storage" [1]. The filing plan provided for the written material to be divided into four categories: Personnel filing cabinet (red), Subject filing cabinet (blue), Special filing cabinet (green), Command filing cabinet (yellow). The identification of the processes took place within a stamp imprint: personal staff Reichsführer-SS, records administration, file. No. ..., by handwritten colour inscriptions of the name (personal file) or the file number. The assignment to the individual categories, in particular the distinction between "Personnel folder" and "Subject subject folder", was often inconsistent, that is, things were also stored according to the names of correspondence partners. Subject-matter filing could take place both to a narrower subject in the sense of a "process", but also to subject series up to the number of 25 numbered individual processes increase. In addition to open files, secret files with their own characteristics and structures were also kept. The war situation and in particular the decentralised keeping of records in the field command posts led to different forms of filing after a combination of Roman-Arabic numerals without any recognisable factual connection between the individual "events", partly also - originally not foreseen - correspondence files. Filing aids and storage aids that have not been preserved may have secured access to the not particularly sophisticated document storage system to some extent. NS 19/2881: Archive evaluation and processing of confiscations at the end of the war, file transports to file collection points, file withdrawals and file rearrangements for various purposes (e.g. for the Nuremberg Trials and for the biographical collections of the Document Center in Berlin), mixtures of provenances and new formations of files have not left the already weak classification system unimpaired. In addition, files that were confiscated, as it were, on the desks of the departments and authorities, and this includes a large part of the documents captured from SS departments, were mostly in a loose state and were particularly susceptible to disorder. The SS tradition that arrived in the USA was essentially classified into three categories: Files of command authorities and troops of the Waffen-SS on the one hand and files of SS upper sections with subordinate units and facilities on the other hand were put together in separate complexes with different signatures. In a third category, in provenance overlapping to the two mentioned categories and in a colorful mixture of provenance and pertinence (e.g., files of state authorities with SS matters), all the files were brought together that seemed suitable to present the SS as an organization with its manifold ramifications. In the Federal Records Center, a file depot in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., these files - like numerous other traditions of civilian provenance - were arranged according to a scheme developed on the basis of a captured "Unified File Plan for the OKW and the OKH. The SS files were assigned to the EAP (= Einheitsaktenplan)-collection groups 160-164 (160 = Development of the SS, 161 = Top Division of the SS, 162 = Territorial Division of the SS, 163 = Advertising, Service, Special Affairs of the General SS, 164 = Concentration Camps and Death's Head Units), within which they were divided into a subject group with one or two subgroups. This order was converted into an alpha numerical signature (e.g. EAP 161-c-28-10); the counting of the file units followed a horizontal line in the numbering 1-N (e.g. EAP 161-c-28-10/1). This complex of files, formed in this way, largely filmed by the Americans and finally transferred to the Federal Archives, was divided here according to provenance. Considerable parts of the archives today consist of the holdings NS 31 (SS-Hauptamt), NS 33 (SS-Führungshauptamt) and NS 34 (SS-Personalhauptamt). The holdings NS 7 (SS- and police jurisdiction), NS 3 (SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt), NS 4 (concentration camps), NS 21 (Ahnenerbe), NS 17 (Leibstandarte SS "Adolf Hitler"), NS 32 (SS-Helferinnenschule Oberehnheim) also received considerable growth from this restitution, NS 2 (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt-SS) and NS 48 (Sonstige zentrale Einrichtungen der SS, including a few remaining documents from the Institute of Statistical Science and the SS School "Haus Wewelsburg") as well as - to varying degrees - numerous other archival holdings of both party and state provenances. Documents of regional SS offices and institutions, in particular of SS upper sections and SS sections, but also of SS standards, storm bans and storms reached the responsible state archives of the Länder. The found files of Waffen-SS units were handed over to the Military Archives Department of the Federal Archives in Freiburg i. Br. for the RS inventory group there. The orders, orders, decrees and communications of all central SS services, originally combined in the "Befehlsablage", later in the Federal Archives in an "SS-Befehlssammlung", were restructured in chronological series according to exhibitor provenance (Reichsführer-SS, SS-Hauptämter or other subordinate organisational units) and assigned to the corresponding provenance holdings. The consequence of this was that the NS 19 holdings only contain the special category of the so-called "SS orders" and those issued by the Reichsführer-SS without any additions, as well as the orders, decrees, and orders issued by the departments of the Personal Staff themselves. The remaining records of the Personal Staff, at that time also called the NS 19 holdings "new", proved, as a glance at the Microfilm-Guides can confirm, to be a tradition that consisted largely of formed records management files, but could not be left in the traditional order or file description. However, in a very time-consuming working procedure, which was fully justified by the quality of the holdings, which could not be overestimated with regard to the authentic documentation of the history of the SS and the National Socialist state, a rearrangement and re-drawing according to events or subject series - as far as these had been formed in a meaningful appendix - was carried out, as a rule without regard to the original file units. The primary goal was to create clearly defined and described procedures from larger complexes of written documents with little or no factual connection. The fact that this often led to archival archival units, whose size is very small, often only minimal, had to be accepted, as well as the resulting disappointment of the user to find only a few sheets of archival material behind an important title. As a rule, more comprehensive archive units appear with detailed "Contained" and "Herein" notes, so that their exhaustive description of content is also guaranteed. The indexing begun by Elisabeth Kinder at the end of the 1960s was based on the "Guidelines for the Title Recording of Modern Files" (Instruction for Archival Activity No. 29), which were valid at the time in the Federal Archives and entered into force on 15 January 1963. The recorded running times of the archive units, most of which were newly created in the archives, consistently follow the date that can be determined first and last in the records. Deviations are usually indicated. Only where it seemed important and above all expedient, especially in the case of individual documents, are monthly and daily data given. Terms of annexes falling within the time frame of the actual transaction, also of other documents which are obviously "outliers" in terms of time, are listed in brackets, time data indexed in square brackets. Cassations were handled with the utmost caution in the cataloguing of this collection of archival records of the Nazi regime - apart from duplicates and the collection of copies from the "Schumacher Collection". Even in those cases where the reasons for cassation in the archives did suggest a cassation, it was decided in principle to preserve the archival records. In this context, the problem of the destruction of files of important authorities and departments of the Nazi state, which sometimes touched on political dimensions as well, especially when these were directly linked to the ideology and extermination machinery of the Nazi state, such as those of the SS and especially of the Reichsführer-SS, should be remembered. 1] The classification of the holdings carried out after the completion of the title records could not, as for example in the case of a large number of ministerial file holdings, be based on prescribed file plans or other highly developed registration aids. Therefore, it was necessary to find an objective structure independent of the registry, which was primarily based on the above-described competence structure of the Personal Staff and, in a broader sense, also on the overall organizational responsibilities of the Reich leadership of the SS, as defined by the various main offices and other central offices. From the registry order outlined above, only the above-mentioned "command file" (in Section C.1) and the "personnel file" (Sections C.2 and C.7.6) can be identified in general terms. The fact that this rather factual-technical classification is accentuated by Himmler's special, sometimes peculiarly quirky personal fields of interest in a conspicuous way, sometimes even superimposed, so in the areas of health care, race and population policy, science, nutrition, plant breeding and inventions, gives the stock of his Personal Staff a special, from the traditions of the other SS-main offices deviating, just "personal" coloring. It is true that the individual areas of classification are to be understood primarily as related to the SS. So education and training means first of all education and training of the SS. Science stands above all for the "science" pursued by the SS and misunderstood, even perverted, in its ideological sense. And economy refers primarily to the SS economic enterprises. It is not difficult to recognize, however, that a mixture with "SS-free" dimensions of the concepts and areas could not always be avoided. The chapter on finances documents not only the financing of the SS but also some aspects of state financial policy. In addition to the administration and the completely ideologized health policy ideas of the SS, some files also concern state administration, as well as state health policy. Section C.19 (Reichsverteidigung...) also concerns the warfare of the Wehrmacht in addition to the widely documented establishment, organization and deployment of Himmler's Waffen SS. Ultimately, however, this mixture appears to be a reflection of the mixture of state and party official competences that was consistently practised in Himmler's power apparatus, i.e. here mostly "SS-like" competences, apart from the fact that a convincing archival separation would mostly have been possible only at the "sheet level" and thus too costly. Cross-references were applied relatively sparingly. On the other hand, titles that apply to several subject areas appear several times in case of doubt, i.e. in each of the appropriate sections. Since its return to the Federal Archives, the holdings have been usable from the outset and at all times due to the declaration of disclosure [2] requested by the Allies from the Federal Government before the return of German files. And it is undoubtedly one of the most frequently used archives of the Federal Archives since then. In the more than three decades it was used unchanged strongly for all purposes of use, essentially of course for historical research, but also for the numerous domestic and foreign lawsuits for Nazi violent crimes and Nazi war crimes up to the late seventies. This led not only to the unusually long duration of his indexing - the processing of the holdings could not be a reason for temporarily excluding the archives from use for reasons of both archival expertise and politics - but also to different citation methods in the numerous publications he was called upon to produce, corresponding to the respective state of indexing. In addition to the American EAP signatures used almost exclusively, especially in very early publications, the "old" NS-19 signatures assigned immediately after the repatriation, but still before the indexing, were also frequently used, and from the late 1960s these were increasingly combined with the "old" NS-19 signatures assigned in the L
History of the Inventory Designer: 1. On the history of the Deutsche Reichspost Prehistory up to 1867 In Germany, a uniform postal system had not been able to develop due to the territorial fragmentation of the Reich. Still in the first half of the 19th century, 17 independent state postal regions existed alongside the "Reichs-Post" of the Princes of Thurn and Taxis, which had already been commissioned by the Emperor in the 16th century to carry out the postal shelf and which had since then operated primarily in the smaller and smallest German territories. The conclusion of agreements between individual Länder of the German Confederation, including the establishment of the German-Austrian Postal Association in 1850, did indeed lead to unity in postal traffic; however, in 1866 there were still 9 postal regions in Germany. The post office in the Kingdom of Prussia had developed into the most important national post office at the national level. From the North German Confederation to the Foundation of the Reich (1867-1871) The constitution of the North German Confederation of 24 June 1867 declared the postal and telegraph system to be a federal matter. In the structure of the North German postal administration, the upper postal directorates existing in Prussia since 1849 were taken over as central authorities. The Prussian postal system was thus transferred to the Federation and the North German postal administrations were merged into it, so that the Norddeutsche Bundespost (1868-1871) under the leadership of Prussia was the first unified state postal service on German soil. The Federal Chancellery was in charge of its upper management, and the former Prussian General Post Office was integrated into it as Department I. In addition, the Directorate-General for Telegraphs was renamed Division II. The Post Office in the German Reich from 1871 to 1919 The foundation stone of the Deutsche Reichspost is the Reich Constitution of 16 April 1871. The only area of transport in which the Reich was able to directly promote its state and transport policy purposes was the postal and telegraph system. The Reichspost, which was set up as a direct Reich administration, extended its effectiveness to the entire territory of the Reich with the exception of the states of Bavaria and Württemberg, which had the so-called Postreservat granted to them for their internal postal relations. The postal service and the telegraph system, which were still independent at that time, were therefore a matter for the Reich. On 1 January 1876, both administrations merged organizationally with the creation of the "Reichspost- und Telegraphenverwaltung" (Reich Post and Telegraph Administration) as the highest authority, which consisted of the General Post Office and the General Directorate of Telegraphs. Both were subject to the postmaster general and formed first the I. and II. Department of the Reich Chancellery. The connection between post and telegraph created in this way was no longer solved afterwards. In addition, the postmaster general was removed from the Reich Chancellery and made independent. The Imperial Decree of 23 February 1880 also consolidated the General Post Office and the General Telegraph Office organisationally. The now established Reichspostamt was thus on an equal footing with the other supreme Reich authorities. He was directed by the Prussian Postmaster General Heinrich von Stephan (1831-1897), who had already become the head of the General Post Office in 1870. The new design of the imperial postal system undoubtedly meant progress for traffic development. Economic advancement, the increasing importance of German foreign trade, the acquisition of colonies and the opening up of the oceans, and thus the global political and economic importance of Germany, posed special challenges for the postal service and telegraphy. Under Heinrich von Stephan's leadership, the Universal Postal Union was created in 1874. Foreign and colonial post offices took up their work. During the 1st World War the field post, which had existed in Prussia since the 18th century during the war, was reactivated. It was subordinate to the Field Chief Postmaster in the Great Headquarters and was subdivided into Army Post Offices, Field Post Inspections, Offices and Stations. In the occupied territories, the Deutsche Reichspost eliminated the state postal administrations there and created its own postal facilities in Belgium, Poland and Romania. The German Post and Telegraph Administration operating in the Baltic States in the postal area of the Commander-in-Chief East (November 1915 to December 1918; since August 1918: Military Post Office of the Commander-in-Chief East) was a military office and attached to the Oberost staff. Weimar Republic (1919-1933) The Reich Constitution of 1919 brought significant progress by unifying the postal and telecommunications systems in the hands of the Reich. In connection with the creation of Reich Ministers with parliamentary responsibility by the Law on the Provisional Imperial Authority of 10 February 1919, the decree of the Reich President of 21 March 1919 laid down the new names of the supreme Reich authorities. The Reichspostamt was also renamed the Reichspostministerium. A further consequence of the state revolution of 1918/19 were the state treaties of 29 and 31 March 1920, which also transferred the postal administrations of Württemberg and Bavaria to the Reich. However, they still retained a certain special position. The Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart was responsible for all internal affairs of the traffic area assigned to it, the Land of Württemberg, insofar as they were not generally reserved for the Reich Ministry of Posts, and for Bavaria even a separate Department VII (since 1924 Department VI) was created with its seat in Munich, a State Secretary at the head and the same extensive competence as in the Oberpostdirektion in Stuttgart. The character of the Reichspost was decisively influenced by the Reichspostfinanzgesetz, which came into force on 1 April 1924. The most important point was the separation of the post office from the rest of the Reich's budget. This made the Deutsche Reichspost economically independent as a special fund of the Reich. The Reichspostfinanzgesetz created the administrative board of the Deutsche Reichspost under the chairmanship of the Reichspost Minister. The Board of Directors had to decide on all significant business, financial and personnel matters. The implementation of the decisions of the Board of Administration was the responsibility of the Minister or the responsible structural parts of the Reich Ministry of Posts. National Socialism (1933-1945) From the outset, the authority left no doubt as to its attitude to National Socialism: "For the Deutsche Reichspost it was a matter of course to put National Socialist ideas into practice with all its might wherever it was possible, and to serve the Führer with all its being and doing". The formal repeal of the Reichspostfinanzgesetz by the Gesetz zur Vereinfachung und Verbilligung der Verwaltung of 27 February 1934 did not change anything about the special asset status of the Deutsche Reichspost, but it brought some fundamental changes. For example, the Administrative Board was dissolved and replaced by an Advisory Board, which had no decisive powers but only an advisory function. The law eliminated both Division VI in Munich and the special position of the Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart, after Hitler had rejected as premature an attempt by the Reichspost and Reich Traffic Minister, Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach, to repeal it, which he had already made in May 1933. From 1 April 1934, the last special agreements of the Reichspost with the states of Bavaria and Württemberg expired, so that it was only from this point on that the "complete uniformity of the postal and telecommunications system in law and administration for the entire territory of the Reich" was established. On 1 October 1934, the Oberpostdirektionen received the designation "Reichspostdirektionen". The offices and offices were subordinated to them. By "Führererlass" of 2 February 1937, the personal union between the Reich Transport Minister and the Reich Post Minister, which had existed since 1932, was abolished and Wilhelm Ohnesorge (1872 to 1962) was again appointed Reich Post Minister. The occasion was the subordination of the Reichsbahn to Reich sovereignty. The unconditional capitulation of Germany at the end of the Second World War also meant the end of the German Reichspost. His written fixation of this fact was found in Articles 5 and 9 of a declaration of the Allied Control Council of June 5, 1945, according to which "all facilities and objects of the ... intelligence ... to hold at the disposal of the Allies' representatives" and "until the establishment of supervision over all means of communication" any broadcasting operation was prohibited. The postal and telecommunications services and the operation of their facilities were finally restarted at different times and separately by the respective Commanders-in-Chief according to the four occupation zones of Germany. 2 The tasks of the Deutsche Reichspost (German Imperial Postal Service) in the fields of social and technical progress as well as the effects of important inventions inevitably necessitated both the quantitative expansion of communication relations and their continuous improvement up to the introduction and application of new services in the postal and telegraph sectors. One of the main tasks of the Deutsche Reichspost, the carriage of news items, did not initially extend to all postal items. In the beginning, only closed letters and political newspapers that did not remain in the sender's town were affected by the so-called post compulsion. All open items (especially postcards and printed matter) for a place other than the place of dispatch and letters, parcels etc. for recipients in the place of dispatch could also be collected, transported and distributed by so-called private transport companies. Such "private posts" settled above all in large cities and increasingly opposed the German Reichspost as fierce competitors, for example through lower fee rates. The Reichspost had to get rid of this competition, especially since it was obliged to maintain expensive and sometimes even unprofitable delivery facilities even in the remotest areas of the Reich. The Postal Act Amendment of 20 Dec. 1899 therefore prohibited all commercially operated private post offices in the German Reich from 1 April 1900 and extended the postal obligation to sealed letters within the place of dispatch. The carriage of passengers From time immemorial, Swiss Post also dealt with the carriage of passengers. Before the advent of the railways, passenger transport by stagecoach was the most important means of public transport and, as such, was also part of the postal monopoly in many countries. The expansion of the railway network initially limited this traffic activity of the post office, but after the invention and further perfection of the automobile it gained importance again. Thus, since 1906/07, bus routes have been established ("Postkraftwagen-Überlandverkehr", often also called "Kraftposten" for short). They were expanded mainly in the years 1924 to 1929, so that on 1 April 1929 the Deutsche Reichspost operated almost 2000 Kraftpost lines with an operating length of more than 37,000 km and by that time had already carried 68 million passengers. The enormous economic and technical upswing in Germany after the foundation of the German Empire also meant that the Imperial Post and Telegraph Administration had to make use of its cash register facilities for the ever more flowing payment transactions. In addition to the banks, Swiss Post took over the regulation of cashless payment transactions: on 1 January 1909, the postal transfer and postal cheque service was opened in Germany (13 Postscheckkämter). Both the number of accounts and the amount of assets increased steadily in the following decades, with the exception of the two world wars. The banking activities of the Deutsche Reichspost, 'which serve to fulfil state activities and not to compete with the private sector', were divided into five main branches: postal order service, cash on delivery service, postal order service, postal transfer service, cheque service and postal savings bank service. The latter was introduced only after the annexation of Austria (a post office savings bank had existed here since 1883) on 1 January 1939. Telegraphs and radio telegraphy Although telegraphs were administered by an independent authority equivalent to the general post office before the Reichspost was founded, they had been closely related to the post office since 1854. In that year, the telegraph service in small communities in Prussia was transferred to the respective post office. Own telegraph stations usually existed only in cities and larger municipalities, where the operation was profitable. In 1871 there were a total of 3,535 telegraph stations in the German Reich (including Bavaria and Württemberg) with 107,485 km of telegraph lines and an annual output of over 10 million telegrams. By the beginning of the First World War, this figure had been six times higher. In contrast to the USA, where the population quickly made use of telephone traffic, the German public apparently did not initially want to make friends with the new telephone system. As early as 1877, General Postmaster Stephan had the first telephone line set up between the General Post Office in Leipzig and the General Telegraph Office in Französische Straße, and soon thereafter arranged for attempts to be made at longer distances. As late as 1880, however, Stephans' call for participation in a city telephone system in Berlin met with little approval, so that the first local traffic exchange began operations here in January 1881 with only 8 subscribers. However, the advantages of telephone traffic were soon recognised and the spread of the telephone increased rapidly. The 24-hour telephone service was first introduced in Munich in 1884, and Berlin opened its 10,000th telephone station in May 1889. As early as 1896 there were 130,000 "telephone stations" in Germany; in 1920 there were about 1.8 million, in 1930 over 3 million and in 1940 almost 5 million connections. Since the practical testing of Hertzian electromagnetic waves, i.e. since 1895, Swiss Post has paid great attention to the development and expansion of wireless telegraphy. From the very beginning, there was no doubt that the Reichspost was responsible for radio communications (as a type of communication). After the first radio telegraphy devices had been produced in Germany by Siemens and AEG and the first public radio stations had been put into operation in 1890, a regulated radio service began in the German Reich. In the following decades, the Reichspost retained the exclusive right to install and operate radio equipment. However, it was not in a position to carry out all the associated services itself and therefore delegated some of this right to other companies. Thus there were finally 3 groups of radio services: - the radio service operated by the Reichspost with its own radio stations (maritime radio, aeronautical radio), - the radio service operated by companies. The "Transradio AG für drahtlose Überseeverkehr" carried out the entire overseas radio traffic in the years 1921-1932 on behalf of the Deutsche Reichspost. Deep sea radio, train radio and police radio have been granted rights in their fields in a similar manner, - the radio services of public transport carriers such as Reichsbahn, Reichsautobahnen and waterways. Radio and television The exclusive competence for radio broadcasting also extended to radio broadcasting, which was established after the First World War. Legal and organisational issues had to be resolved for this new area of activity of Swiss Post more than for other areas. There are two phases to the relationship between the postal service and broadcasting: a) From 1923 to 1933, the Deutsche Reichspost was responsible for all legislative matters, the issuing of user regulations, the granting of licenses, the fixing and collection of fees, the setting up of transmitters, the technical operation and monitoring of economic management. The Reich Ministry of the Interior, together with the Länder governments, was responsible for the fundamental regulation of the political and cultural issues arising in the course of programme planning. The Reichspost left the broadcasting operations themselves to companies to which it granted a licence. The Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft, founded in 1923, acted as the umbrella organization, in which the Deutsche Reichspost held a major share through a majority of capital and votes and was headed by the Broadcasting Commissioner of the Deutsche Reichspost. b) In 1933, the newly created Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda assumed responsibility for all organizational and managerial issues relating to broadcasting; the Deutsche Reichspost remained only responsible for the cable network and transmitters, for licenses, fee collection and accounting. As a result of the Reichskulturkammergesetz of 22 September 1933, the Reichsrundfunkkammer was at the forefront of broadcasting, in which the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft and several other associations were represented. This marked the beginning of the absolute subordination of broadcasting to the National Socialist dictatorship. The first attempts at television were made in the 1920s, also under the direction of the Deutsche Reichspost. Swiss Post continued to play a major role in the scientific and technical development of television in the following years. After an improved Braun tube had been shown at the Funkausstellung Berlin in 1932, the 1933 annual report of the Deutsche Reichspost described trial television broadcasts in a large urban area as practically feasible. In March 1935, the Deutsche Reichspost set up the world's first public television station at the Reichspostmuseum in Berlin, where the public could follow the reception of the programmes free of charge. The Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda and the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG) shared the programming. The Reichspost Ministry subsidiary "Reichspost-Fernseh-GmbH" (since 1939) and the Reichsministerium für Luftfahrt (Reich Ministry of Aviation) were responsible for the transmitters "in view of their special significance for air traffic control and national air protection". 3. the organization and structure of the Deutsche Reichspost Of all the branches of the Reich administration, Die Post possessed the most extensive and clearly structured official substructure. It was taken over by the Prussian postal service in 1871 and was divided into the following 3 stages until the destruction of the German Reich in 1945: Since 1880, the new supreme Reich authority had been divided into three departments: Post (I), Telegraph (and soon Telephone) (II) and Personnel, Budget, Accounting and Construction (III). A short time later Stephan was appointed Secretary of State and was thus placed on an equal footing with the heads of the other Imperial Offices established in the meantime. Division III was divided in 1896. General administrative matters were assigned to the new Division III, while Division IV was now responsible for personnel, cash management and accounting. Later, cash and accounting were transferred back to Division III and Division IV retained only personnel matters. From 1919, now as the Reich Post Ministry, a fifth department for radio communications and a sixth for social affairs expanded the organizational structure. Section VI, however, fell away again after inflation in 1924, and at the same time sections III and V exchanged their designations, so that in this section the household, cash register and building trade, in that the telegraph and radio trade were dealt with, while section II was responsible for the telephone trade, initially still united with the telegraph building trade. On 1 June 1926 another department for economic and organisational questions was added, which was formed from the previous economic department. Since 1926 there have been eight departments: Abt. I Postwesen Abt. II Telegraphen- und Fernsprechtechnik und Fernsprachbetrieb Abt. III Telegraphenbetrieb und Funkwesen Abt. IV Personalwesen Abt. V Haushalts-, Kassen, Postscheck- und Bauwesen Abt. VI in Munich, for Bavaria, dissolved in 1934 Abt. VII for Württemberg, dissolved in 1934 Abt. VIII Wirtschaftsabteilung. From 1934 Abt. VI, later referred to as Abt. für Kraftfahrwesen, Maschinentechnik und Beschaffungswesen. From 30.11. 1942 Abt. VII: Independence of all radio and television affairs from Abt. III (since 1940 already under the direct control of State Secretary Flanze [at the same time President of the Reichspostzentralamt] as the "Special Department Fl") Under National Socialist rule in 1938, the Ministry was expanded by a Central Department (Min-Z) for political tasks and questions of personnel management. During the war, a foreign policy department, a colonial department and an eastern department were added. A special division F 1 for broadcasting affairs was also set up temporarily. During the Second World War, the organization of the postal system in the annexed and occupied territories was determined by the nature and intensity of its integration into the National Socialist sphere of power. In the annexed areas, the postal administration was completely taken over by the Deutsche Reichspost. In most occupied territories, on the other hand, the postal services of the respective countries remained unchanged. Next to them, the field post continued to work. A German service post was created in various administrative areas to supply the German occupation authorities, such as the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" (1939-1945), the Netherlands (1940-1945), Norway (1942-1945), the Adriatic and Alpine regions (both 1943-1945), the East and the Ukraine (both 1941-1944). The German service posts "Ostland" and "Ukraine", each under a general postal commissioner, simultaneously provided the business of the "Deutsche Post Ostland" and "Deutsche Post Ukraine", which were fictitious as Landespost. The attempts made by the Reich Ministry of Posts to establish a central management of the intelligence system of all annexed and invaded territories failed because of the principle of the unity of the administration in the respective territory. The Reich Ministry of Posts had a number of specialist offices for the handling of special subjects, such as the field post office, the motor vehicle office, the building administration office and the cheque office. The following departments were directly affiliated or subordinated to the Reich Ministry of Posts: - the General Post Office as the body responsible for the entire administration of the post office and telegraph system - the Postal Money Order Office. From 1 April 1912 it was placed under the control of the Postal Newspaper Office, from 1 January 1918 also under the control of the Berlin Postal Directorate; - the Postal Insurance Commission for Accident and Other Matters, which was transferred to the newly founded Versorgungsanstalt der Deutschen Reichspost on 1 August 1926. With this public corporation, the previously differently regulated supplementary provision for postal staff was standardised: two thirds of the contributions were paid by the Deutsche Reichspost and one third by the insured themselves. - the Reichsamt Telegraph Technical Office, founded in 1920. In 1928, it took over other tasks from the Reich Post Ministry area, such as railway postal issues, postal statistics, training and educational matters, cash and accounting and procurement, and was renamed the Reich Post Central Office - the Reich Post Museum, created in 1872; - the Reich Post Building Inspectorate, formed in 1937 to realize the postal service needs in the structural redesign of Berlin. - the Postal Savings Bank Office in Vienna, which was taken over after the annexation of Austria in March 1938. In direct subordination to the Reich Ministry of Posts, it was responsible for the central account management of the Postal Savings Bank Service after it had been extended to the Old Empire. The "Postschutz", a paramilitary association under the umbrella of the Postal Ministry, had a special position. In June 1935, the Reich leadership of the SS and the Supreme SA leadership agreed on binding regulations regarding the affiliation of postal workers to the SA or SS. The postal service and thus also the postal security service were given priority over 'any use by the SA and SS. The claim for purposes of the SA and SS outside the postal service must not be to the detriment of the proper operation of the postal service', it said. Postal security was uniformed and uniformly armed. The research institute of the Deutsche Reichspost, founded on 1 January 1937, investigated special problems in television technology. The Reichspostforschungsanstalt was responsible for the coordination of all television armaments projects and orders to industry. It dealt with the further development of the research areas for military purposes. The scope of tasks is outlined in a document signed by Ohnesorge: "1. television; 2. general physics, in particular atomic physics, optics, acoustics, electronics; 3. chemistry; 4. special tasks for the four-year plan". The Reichsdruckerei was not integrated into the structure of the Reichspost, but was associated with its top management in personal union. On 1 Apr. 1879 it was placed under the control of the Reichspost- und Telegraphenverwaltung as an independent imperial enterprise. Through its products it maintained very close relations with the Reichspost, since, for example, postage stamps, postal cheques, the Reichskursbuch, etc. were produced for the account of the post office cashier. The Oberpostdirektionen/Reichspostdirektionen The Oberpostdirektionen (OPD) as intermediate authorities between the Berlin headquarters and the post offices were established as early as 1850 in Prussia. After their transfer to the Reichspost, they were among the higher Reich authorities. The Ministry of Postal Affairs has delegated more and more responsibilities to the OPDen, so that their freedom of action grew steadily and they gradually became the focus of the postal administration. 1928 saw the establishment of Managing Directorates of Higher Postal Services, which together assumed responsibility for certain tasks for a district group (= several OPD districts) (e.g. training and education, procurement and utilities). 1934-1945 as Reichspostdirektionen (RPD), they were subject to many changes in their area and in their number. In 1943 there were 51 RPD. The post office cheque offices (established in 1909), the telegraph building offices and the telegraph tool offices (established in 1920) were responsible for several OPD/RPDs and thus also to be regarded as intermediate authorities. The Post Offices The Post Offices, referred to in the area of the Deutsche Reichspost as Verkehrsämter and Amtsstellen, formed the local offices of the lowest level; they were subordinate to the OPD/RPD closest to each other. The local offices included not only the post offices, which were divided into three classes until 1924 (only since 1924 did they have a uniform designation as post offices), but also the post agencies, postal assistance offices, railway post offices, telegraph and telephone offices as well as public pay telephones in the municipalities which were subordinate to them. In 1942 there were about 70,000 such offices and offices in the German Reich. Inventory description: Introduction The history of the Deutsche Reichspost Prehistory up to 1867 Due to the territorial fragmentation of the Reich, a uniform postal system had not been able to develop in Germany. Still in the first half of the 19th century, 17 independent state postal regions existed alongside the "Reichs-Post" of the Princes of Thurn and Taxis, which had already been commissioned by the Emperor in the 16th century to carry out the postal shelf and which had since then operated primarily in the smaller and smallest German territories. The conclusion of treaties between individual Länder of the German Confederation, including the establishment of the German-Austrian Postal Association in 1850, did indeed lead to the unification of postal traffic; however, in 1866 there were still 9 land despatch areas in Germany. The post office in the Kingdom of Prussia had developed into the most important national post office at the national level. The Prussian postal area included the duchy of Anhalt, the principalities of Waldeck-Pyrmont and Oldenburg-Birkenfeld, parts of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Sondershausen, parts of Saxony-Weimar, as well as post offices in Hamburg and Bremen. From 1866 the Duchy of Lauenburg and the Province of Hanover, from 1867 Schleswig-Holstein and the Oldenburg Principality of Lübeck as well as former Bavarian areas in the Rhön, Spessart, the exclave Caulsdorf and from 1 July 1867 the states in Thuringia and Southern Germany which had previously been united in the Thurn und Taxischer Postverein were added. From the North German Confederation to the Foundation of the Reich (1867-1871) The constitution of the North German Confederation of 24 June 1867 declared the postal and telegraph system to be a federal matter. In the structure of the North German postal administration, the upper postal directorates existing in Prussia since 1849 were taken over as central authorities. The Prussian postal system was thus transferred to the Federation and the North German postal administrations were merged into it, so that the Norddeutsche Bundespost (1868-1871) under the leadership of Prussia was the first unified state postal service on German soil. The Federal Chancellery was in charge of its upper management, and the former Prussian General Post Office was integrated into it as Department I. In addition, the Directorate-General for Telegraphs was renamed Division II. The Post Office in the German Reich from 1871 to 1919 The cornerstone of the Deutsche Reichspost was the Reich Constitution of 16 April 1871. The only area of transport in which the Reich was able to directly promote its state and transport policy purposes was the postal and telegraph system. The Reichspost, which was set up as a direct Reich administration, extended its effectiveness to the entire territory of the Reich with the exception of the states of Bavaria and Württemberg, which had the so-called Postreservat granted to them for their internal postal relations. The postal system and the telegraph system, which were still independent at that time, were therefore a matter for the Reich. On 1 January 1876, both administrations merged organizationally with the creation of the "Reichspost- und Telegrafenverwaltung" as the highest authority, consisting of the Generalpostamt and the Generaldirektion der Telegrafen. Both were subject to the postmaster general and formed first the I. and II. Department of the Reich Chancellery. The connection between the postal and telegraph systems created in this way was no longer resolved afterwards. In addition, the postmaster general was removed from the Reich Chancellery and made independent. The Imperial Decree of 23 February 1880 also combined the General Post Office and the General Telegraph Office organisationally. The now established Reichspostamt was thus on an equal footing with the other supreme Reich authorities. He was directed by the Prussian Postmaster General Heinrich von Stephan (1831-1897), who had already become the head of the General Post Office in 1870. The new design of the imperial postal system undoubtedly meant progress for traffic development. Economic advancement, the increasing importance of German foreign trade, the acquisition of colonies and the opening up of the oceans, and thus the global political and economic importance of Germany, posed special challenges for the postal service and telegraphy. Under Heinrich von Stephan's leadership, the Universal Postal Union was created in 1874; foreign and colonial post offices began their work. During the 1st World War the field post, which had existed in Prussia since the 18th century during the war, was reactivated. It was subordinate to the Field Chief Postmaster in the Great Headquarters and was subdivided into Army Post Offices, Field Post Inspections, Offices and Stations. In the occupied territories, the Deutsche Reichspost eliminated the state postal administrations there and created its own postal facilities in Belgium, Poland and Romania. The German Post and Telegraph Administration operating in the Baltic States in the postal area of the Supreme Commander East (November 1915 to December 1918; since August 1918: Military Post Office of the Supreme Commander East) was a military office and attached to the Oberost Staff. Weimar Republic (1919-1933) The Reich Constitution of 1919 brought significant progress by unifying the postal and telecommunications systems in the hands of the Reich. In connection with the creation of Reich Ministers with parliamentary responsibility by the law on the provisional power of the Reich of 10 February 1919, the decree of the Reich President of 21 March 1919 laid down the new names of the supreme Reich authorities. The Reichspostamt was also renamed the Reichspostministerium. A further consequence of the state revolution of 1918/19 were the state treaties of 29 and 31 March 1920, which also transferred the postal administrations of Württemberg and Bavaria to the Reich. However, they still retained a certain special position. The Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart was responsible for all internal affairs of the traffic area assigned to it, the State of Württemberg, insofar as they were not generally reserved for the Reich Ministry of Posts, and for Bavaria even a separate Department VII (since 1924 Department VI) was created with its seat in Munich, a State Secretary at the head and the same extensive competence as in the Oberpostdirektion in Stuttgart. The character of the Reichspost was decisively influenced by the Reichs-postfinanzgesetz, which came into force on 1 April 1924. The most important point was the separation of the post office from the rest of the Reich's budget. This made the Deutsche Reichspost economically independent as a special fund of the Reich. The Reichspostfinanzgesetz created the administrative board of the Deutsche Reichspost under the chairmanship of the Reichspost Minister. The Board of Directors had to decide on all significant business, financial and personnel matters. The implementation of the decisions of the Board of Administration was the responsibility of the Minister or the responsible structural parts of the Reich Ministry of Posts. National Socialism (1933-1945) From the outset, the authority left no doubt as to its attitude to National Socialism: "For the Deutsche Reichspost it was a matter of course to put National Socialist ideas into practice with all its might wherever it was possible, and to serve the Führer with all its being and doing". The formal repeal of the Reichspostfinanzgesetz by the Gesetz zur Vereinfachung und Verbilligung der Verwaltung of 27 February 1934 did not change anything about the special asset status of the Deutsche Reichspost, but it brought some fundamental changes. For example, the Administrative Board was dissolved and replaced by an Advisory Board, which had no decisive powers but only an advisory function. The law eliminated both Division VI in Munich and the special position of the Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart, after Hitler had rejected as premature an attempt by the Reichspost and Reich Traffic Minister, Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach, to repeal it, which he had already made in May 1933. From 1 April 1934, the last special agreements of the Reichspost with the states of Bavaria and Württemberg expired, so that it was only from this point on that the "complete uniformity of the postal and telecommunications system in law and administration for the entire territory of the Reich" was established. On 1 October 1934, the Oberpostdirektionen received the designation "Reichspostdirektionen". The offices and offices were subordinated to them. By "Führererlass" of 2 February 1937, the personal union between the Reich Transport Minister and the Reich Post Minister, which had existed since 1932, was abolished and Wilhelm Ohnesorge (1872 to 1962) was again appointed Reich Post Minister. The occasion was the subordination of the Reichsbahn to Reich sovereignty. The unconditional capitulation of Germany at the end of the Second World War also meant the end of the German Reichspost. His written fixation of this fact was found in Articles 5 and 9 of a declaration of the Allied Control Council of June 5, 1945, according to which "all facilities and objects of the ... intelligence ... to hold at the disposal of the Allies' representatives" and "until the establishment of supervision over all means of communication" any broadcasting operation was prohibited. The postal and telecommunications services and the operation of their facilities were finally restarted at different times and separately by the respective Commanders-in-Chief according to the four occupation zones of Germany. The tasks of the Deutsche Reichspost (German Imperial Postal Service) were social and technical progress, as well as the effects of important inventions, which inevitably led to both the quantitative expansion of communication relations and their continuous improvement, right up to the introduction and application of new services in the postal, telegraph and radio sectors. One of the main tasks of the Deutsche Reichspost, the carriage of news items, did not initially extend to all postal items. In the beginning, only closed letters and political newspapers that did not remain in the sender's town were affected by the so-called post compulsion. All open items (especially postcards and printed matter) for a place other than the place of dispatch and letters, parcels etc. for recipients in the place of dispatch could also be collected, transported and distributed by so-called private transport companies. Such "private posts" settled above all in large cities and increasingly opposed the German Reichspost as fierce competitors, for example through lower fee rates. The Reichspost had to get rid of this competition, especially since it was obliged to maintain expensive and sometimes even unprofitable delivery facilities even in the remotest areas of the Reich. The Postal Act Amendment of 20 Dec. 1899 therefore prohibited all commercially operated private post offices in the German Reich from 1 April 1900 and extended the postal obligation to sealed letters within the place of dispatch. The carriage of passengers From time immemorial, Swiss Post also dealt with the carriage of passengers. Before the advent of the railways, passenger transport by stagecoach was the most important means of public transport and, as such, was also part of the postal monopoly in many countries. The expansion of the railway network initially limited this traffic activity of the post office, but after the invention and further perfection of the automobile it gained importance again. Thus, since 1906/07, bus routes have been established ("Postkraftwagen-Überlandverkehr", often also called "Kraftposten" for short). They were expanded mainly in the years 1924 to 1929, so that on 1 April 1929 the Deutsche Reichspost operated almost 2000 Kraftpost lines with an operating length of more than 37,000 km and by that time had already carried 68 million passengers. The enormous economic and technical upswing in Germany after the foundation of the German Empire also meant that the Imperial Post Office and Telegraph Administration had to make use of their cash register facilities for the ever-increasing flow of payment transactions. In addition to the banks, Swiss Post took over the regulation of cashless payment transactions: on 1 January 1909, the postal transfer and postal cheque service was opened in Germany (13 Postscheckkämter). Both the number of accounts and the amount of assets increased steadily in the following decades, with the exception of the two world wars. The banking activity of the Deutsche Reichspost, 'which serves the fulfilment of state activities, not competition with the private sector', was divided into five main branches: postal order service, postal COD service, postal order service, postal transfer and cheque service, postal savings bank service. The latter was introduced only after the annexation of Austria (a post office savings bank had existed here since 1883) on 1 January 1939. Telegraphy and radio telegraphy Although telegraphy was administered by an independent authority equivalent to the general post office before the Reichspost was founded, it had been closely related to the post office since 1854. In that year, in Prussia, the telegraph service in small communities was transferred to the respective postal service. Own telegraph stations usually existed only in cities and larger municipalities, where the operation was profitable. In 1871 there were a total of 3,535 telegraph stations in the German Reich (including Bavaria and Württemberg) with 107,485 km of telegraph lines and an annual output of over 10 million telegrams. By the beginning of the First World War, this figure had been six times higher. In contrast to the USA, where the population quickly made use of telephone traffic, the German public apparently did not initially want to make friends with the new telephone system. As early as 1877, General Postmaster Stephan had the first telephone line set up between the General Post Office in Leipzig and the General Telegraph Office in Französische Straße, and soon thereafter arranged for attempts to be made at longer distances. As late as 1880, however, Stephans' call for participation in a city telephone system in Berlin met with little approval, so that the first local traffic exchange began operations here in January 1881 with only 8 subscribers. However, the advantages of telephone traffic were soon recognised and the spread of the telephone increased rapidly. The 24-hour telephone service was first introduced in Munich in 1884, and Berlin opened its 10,000th telephone station in May 1889. As early as 1896 there were 130,000 "telephone stations" in Germany; in 1920 there were about 1.8 million, in 1930 over 3 million and in 1940 almost 5 million connections. Since the practical testing of Hertzian electromagnetic waves, i.e. since 1895, Swiss Post has paid great attention to the development and expansion of wireless telegraphy. From the very beginning, there was no doubt that the Reichspost was responsible for radio communications (as a type of communication). After the first radio telegraphy devices had been produced in Germany by Siemens and AEG and the first public radio stations had been put into operation in 1890, a regulated radio service began in the German Reich. In the following decades, the Reichspost retained the exclusive right to install and operate radio equipment. However, it was not in a position to carry out all the associated services itself and therefore delegated some of this right to other companies. Thus there were finally 3 groups of radio services: - the radio service operated by the Reichspost with its own radio stations (maritime radio, aeronautical radio), - the radio service operated by companies. The "Transradio AG für drahtlose Überseeverkehr" carried out the entire overseas radio traffic in the years 1921-1932 on behalf of the Deutsche Reichspost. Deep sea radio, train radio and police radio have been granted rights in their fields in a similar manner, - the radio services of public transport carriers such as Reichsbahn, Reichsautobahnen and waterways. Radio and television The exclusive competence for radio broadcasting also extended to radio broadcasting, which was established after the First World War. Legal and organisational issues had to be resolved for this new area of activity of Swiss Post more than for other areas. There are two phases to the relationship between the postal service and broadcasting: a) From 1923 to 1933, the Deutsche Reichspost was responsible for all legislative matters, the issuing of user regulations, the granting of licenses, the fixing and collection of fees, the setting up of transmitters, the technical operation and monitoring of economic management. The Reich Ministry of the Interior, together with the Länder governments, was responsible for the fundamental regulation of the political and cultural issues arising in the course of programme planning. The Reichspost left the broadcasting operations themselves to companies to which it granted a licence. The Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft, founded in 1923, acted as the umbrella organization, in which the Deutsche Reichspost held a major share through a majority of capital and votes and was headed by the Broadcasting Commissioner of the Deutsche Reichspost. b) In 1933, the newly created Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda assumed responsibility for all organizational and managerial issues relating to broadcasting; the Deutsche Reichspost remained only responsible for the cable network and transmitters, for licenses, fee collection and accounting. As a result of the Reichskulturkammergesetz of 22 September 1933, the Reichsrundfunkkammer was at the forefront of broadcasting, in which the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft and several other associations were represented. This marked the beginning of the absolute subordination of broadcasting to the National Socialist dictatorship. The first attempts at television were made in the 1920s, also under the direction of the Deutsche Reichspost. Swiss Post continued to play a major role in the scientific and technical development of television in the following years. After an improved Braun tube had been shown at the Funkausstellung Berlin in 1932, the 1933 annual report of the Deutsche Reichspost described trial television broadcasts in a large urban area as practically feasible. In March 1935, the Deutsche Reichspost set up the world's first public television station at the Reichspostmuseum in Berlin, where the public could follow the reception of the programmes free of charge. The Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda and the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG) shared the programming. The Reichspost Ministry subsidiary "Reichspost-Fernseh-GmbH" (since 1939) and the Reichsministerium für Luftfahrt (Reich Ministry of Aviation) were responsible for the transmitters "in view of their special significance for air traffic control and national air protection". The organisation and structure of the Deutsche Reichspost Of all the branches of the Reich administration, Die Post possessed the most extensive and clearly structured official substructure. It was taken over by the Prussian postal service in 1871 and was divided into the following 3 stages until the destruction of the German Reich in 1945: The Reichspostamt / Reichspostministerium Since 1880, the supreme Reichsbehörde has been divided into three departments: Post (I), Telegraph (and soon Telephone) (II) and Personnel, Budget, Accounting and Construction (III). A short time later Stephan was appointed Secretary of State and was thus placed on an equal footing with the heads of the other Imperial Offices established in the meantime. Division III was divided in 1896. General administrative matters were assigned to the new Division III, while Division IV was now responsible for personnel, cash management and accounting. Later, cash and accounting were transferred back to Division III and Division IV retained only personnel matters. From 1919, now as the Reich Post Ministry, a fifth department for radio communications and a sixth for social affairs expanded the organizational structure. Section VI, however, was discontinued after inflation in 1924, and at the same time Sections III and V exchanged their designations, so that in this Section the household, cash register and building trade, in that Section the telegraph and radio trade were dealt with, while Section II was responsible for the telephone trade, initially still combined with the telegraph building trade. On 1 June 1926 another department for economic and organisational questions was added, which was formed from the previous economic department. Since 1926 there have been eight departments: Abt. I Postwesen Abt. II Telegrafen- und Fernsprechtechnik und Fernsprachbetrieb Abt. III Telegrafenbetrieb und Funkwesen Abt. IV Personalwesen Abt. V Haushalts-, Kassen, Postscheck- und Bauwesen Abt. VI in Munich, for Bavaria, dissolved in 1934 Abt. VII for Württemberg, dissolved in 1934 Abt. VIII Wirtschaftsabteilung. From 1934 Abt. VI, later referred to as Abt. für Kraftfahrwesen, Maschinentechnik und Beschaffungswesen. From 30.11. 1942 Abt. VII: Independence of all radio and television affairs from Abt. III (since 1940 already under the direct control of State Secretary Flanze [at the same time President of the Reichspostzentralamt] as the "Special Department Fl") Under National Socialist rule in 1938, the Ministry was expanded by a Central Department (Min-Z) for political tasks and questions of personnel management. During the war, a foreign policy department, a colonial department and an eastern department were added. A special division F 1 for broadcasting affairs was also set up temporarily. During the Second World War, the organization of the postal system in the annexed and occupied territories was determined by the nature and intensity of its integration into the National Socialist sphere of power. In the annexed areas, the postal administration was completely taken over by the Deutsche Reichspost. In most occupied territories, on the other hand, the postal services of the respective countries remained unchanged. Next to them, the field post continued to work. A German service post was created in various administrative areas to supply the German occupation authorities, such as the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" (1939-1945), the Netherlands (1940-1945), Norway (1942-1945), the Adriatic and Alpine regions (both 1943-1945), the East and the Ukraine (both 1941-1944). The German service posts "Ostland" and "Ukraine", each under a general postal commissioner, simultaneously provided the business of the "Deutsche Post Ostland" and "Deutsche Post Ukraine", which were fictitious as Landespost. The attempts made by the Reich Ministry of Posts to establish a central management of the intelligence system of all annexed and invaded territories failed because of the principle of the unity of the administration in the respective territory. The Reich Ministry of Posts had a number of specialist offices for the handling of special subjects, such as the field post office, the motor vehicle office, the building administration office and the cheque office. The following departments were directly affiliated or subordinated to the Reich Ministry of Posts: - the General Post Office as the body responsible for the entire administration of the post office and telegraph system, - the Postal Money Order Office. From 1 April 1912 it was subordinated to the Oberpostdirektion Berlin as the postal accounting office from 1 April 1912, - the Postzeitungsamt, from 1 January 1918 also subordinated to the Oberpostdirektion Berlin, - the Postversicherungskommission für Angelegenheiten der Unfall- u.a. -fürsorge, which was transferred to the newly founded Versorgungsanstalt der Deutschen Reichspost on 1 August 1926. With this public corporation, the previously differently regulated supplementary provision for postal staff was unified: two thirds of the contributions were paid by the Deutsche Reichspost and one third by the insured themselves, - the Telegrafentechnische Reichsamt, founded in 1920. In 1928, it assumed further tasks from the Reich Post Ministry, such as railway postal issues, postal statistics, training and teaching matters, cash and accounting and procurement, and was renamed the Reich Post Central Office, - the Reich Post Museum, created in 1872, - the Reich Post Building Inspectorate, formed in 1937 to meet the postal service's needs in the structural redesign of Berlin, - the Postal Savings Bank Office in Vienna, which was taken over after the annexation of Austria in March 1938. In direct subordination to the Reich Ministry of Posts, it was responsible for the central account management of the Postal Savings Bank Service after it had been extended to the Old Empire. The "Postschutz", a paramilitary association under the umbrella of the Postal Ministry, had a special position. In June 1935, the Reich leadership of the SS and the Supreme SA leadership agreed on binding regulations regarding the affiliation of postal workers to the SA or SS. The postal service and thus also the postal security service were given priority over 'any use by the SA and SS. The claim for purposes of the SA and SS outside the postal service must not be to the detriment of the proper operation of the postal service', it said. Postal security was uniformed and uniformly armed. The research institute of the Deutsche Reichspost, founded on 1 January 1937, investigated special problems in television technology. The Reichspostforschungsanstalt was responsible for the coordination of all television armaments projects and orders to industry. It dealt with the further development of research areas for military purposes. The tasks are outlined in a document signed by Ohnesorge: "1. television; 2. general physics, in particular nuclear physics, optics, acoustics, electronics; 3. chemistry; 4. special tasks for the four-year plan". The Reichsdruckerei was not integrated into the structure of the Reichspost, but was associated with its top management in personal union. On 1 April 1879 it was placed under the control of the Reich Post and Telegraph Administration as an independent Reich enterprise. Through its products it maintained very close relations with the Reichspost, since, for example, postage stamps, postal cheques, the Reichskursbuch, etc. were produced for the account of the post office cashier. The Oberpostdirektionen/Reichspostdirektionen The Oberpostdirektionen (OPD) as intermediate authorities between the Berlin headquarters and the post offices were established as early as 1850 in Prussia. After their transfer to the Reichspost, they were among the higher Reich authorities. The Ministry of Postal Affairs has delegated more and more responsibilities to the OPDen, so that their freedom of action grew steadily and they gradually became the focus of the postal administration. 1928 saw the establishment of managing higher postal directorates, which together took over the leadership of a district group (several OPD districts) for certain tasks (e.g. training and education as well as procurement and supply). 1934 to 1945 as Reichspostdirektionen (RPD), they were subject to many changes in their area and in their number. In 1943 there were 51 RPD. The post office cheque offices (formed in 1909), the telegraph construction offices and the telegraph tool offices (set up in 1920) were responsible for several OPD/RPDs and thus also to be regarded as intermediate authorities. The Post Offices The Post Offices, referred to in the area of the Deutsche Reichspost as Verkehrsämter and Amtsstellen, formed the local offices of the lowest level; they were subordinate to the OPD/RPD closest to each other. The local offices included not only the post offices, which were divided into three classes until 1924 (only since 1924 did they have a uniform designation as post offices), but also the post agencies, postal assistance offices, railway post offices, telegraph and telephone offices as well as public pay telephones in the municipalities which were subordinate to them. In 1942 there were about 70,000 such offices and offices in the German Reich. The division into "secret archive" and "secret registry" was characteristic of the registry relations in the RPM until 1928. The general files and most important special files from the "Secret Registry" were transferred to the "Secret Archive", as were historically valuable files from the dissolved postal administrations of the German Länder, so that the "Secret Archive" developed more and more into a selection archive. In contrast, the "secret registry" was the actual general registry of the RPM. It consisted of a frequently changing number of registries. In the mid-twenties there were seventeen of them. The number of registries was greatly reduced by the formation of so-called specialist parties for individual fields of activity, such as Bp (Postbankverkehr) or Zp (Postal Newspapers). On January 1, 1928, a file plan was put into effect in the RPM and a little later in the entire area of the Deutsche Reichspost, the main features of which were still valid in the Deutsche Bundespost and in the Deutsche Post of the GDR until their end. It consisted of eight main groups, which essentially correspond to the present classification of the file stock, here on the basis of the file plan from the year 1938 under consideration of structural conditions of the inventory creator. In the period from 1933 to 1941, the Reich Ministry of Posts had handed over about 2,200 historically valuable file units, which were no longer needed in the service, to the Reich Archives. Towards the end of the war, most of the files, together with other holdings, were moved to the potash shafts near Staßfurt and Schönebeck. They survived the war there without any significant casualties. The files that had not been removed from the Reichsarchiv, above all the partial holdings of the Reichsdruckerei, were burnt during the air raid on Potsdam in April 1945. Losses were also recorded in the files remaining in the various departments of the RPM, in particular in a total of 15 alternative offices in the countryside, where the documents had been successively transferred since 1943, but also in the RPM building itself, which had been severely damaged by several bomb hits in the years 1943 to 1945. The total file loss of the RPM after 1945 was estimated at 2,417 files. The existing files formed the basis for the later named component R 4701 I, which until 1990 was located in the Central State Archives in Potsdam (ZStA) and was transferred to the Federal Archives with German unity. The holdings in the Federal Archives at the time of the retroconversion of the finding aids in 2009 For the period from 1945 onwards, the RPM file holdings must be viewed in a differentiated way, because its four parts have reached the Federal Archives in very different ways and accordingly had received not only their own history of tradition, but also their own finding aids, their own signatures, etc. For example, the letters B, D, GA, and P were used as signature additions, which sometimes proved to be quite impractical, not only in archival practice. For a long time it had been planned to record all parts in a common finding aid book. Since around 1990, the following distinguishing features have been used, but these have hardly had any effect on everyday archival life. Part R 4701 I, formerly R 47.01 - Potsdam until 1990 This is the bulk of the collection stored in the Central State Archives in Potsdam. As a rule, the designation R 4701 I was not used, but only R 4701 with the following signature, formerly R 47.01. This also contained the above-mentioned files with the additional identification letters. This part of the collection, which was outsourced by the Reichsarchiv, was transferred to the then Deutsche Zentralarchiv Potsdam in 1950. The DZA Potsdam received the majority of the files in 1957, 1960 and 1966 from the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of the GDR, but initially only the old files with a term until 1928 were handed over. The files since the introduction of the file plan in 1928 still remained in the GDR Ministry and were only handed over to the ZStA Potsdam in 1983, but by far not completely (cf. remarks on R 4701 II). In addition, RPM files from former storage sites in Potsdam had also been transferred to the DZA Potsdam in 1961. Also at the beginning of the 1960s, all files that were stored in
History of the Inventory Designer: The "Reichsstelle für Garten- und Weinbauerzeugnisse" (Reichsstelle) was established on 01 November 1936. The legal basis for the establishment was the Act on the Sale of Horticultural and Viticultural Products of 30 September 1936 (RGBL. I p. 854). The Reich Office carried out a state economic activity. Its main task was to monitor and direct the import of the products farmed, in terms of quantity, place and time, in accordance with the requirements of the internal market and, at the same time, to guide the pricing of these products in such a way as to avoid, as far as possible, disturbances resulting from the difference between world prices and domestic prices. The Reich Office was thus also involved in the internal market equalization process and in stock management. They were the only means by which horticultural and wine-growing products imported from a customs territory or a customs exclusion area could be placed on the market in the customs territory. All horticultural and wine-growing products to be imported from a customs foreign country or from a customs exclusion area which were subject to the Act on the Trade in Horticultural and Wine-growing Products of 30 September 1936 were therefore to be offered for sale to the Reich Agency. The takeover by the Reich Office was effected by means of a takeover certificate, the issuance of which the importer applied for from the Reich Office. The Reich agency was not obliged to take over the offered horticultural and wine-growing products. The import of the goods could therefore be stopped at any time. The horticultural and wine-growing products placed on the domestic market by the domestic producer were not subject to the restrictions of the Horticultural and Wine-growing Products Trade Act in view of the market organisation implemented for them. Only the products imported from a customs foreign country or a customs exclusion area were managed by the Reich Office. Its scope resulted from Article III of the seventh Regulation implementing and supplementing the Law on the marketing of horticultural and wine-growing products of 7 June 1940 (RGBl. I p. 862). The Imperial Agency mainly imported products from the following countries: - European countries of origin: Baltic States, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Spain, Hungary and Portugal. - Non-European countries of origin: Afghanistan, Egypt, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Japan, India, Iran, Cameroon, Canada, Mexico, Palestine, Somalia, South African Union, Syria, Turkey, USA, West Indies and Cameroon. Imported products have been grouped into the following product groups: - Vegetables, fruit, tropical fruits, potatoes, vegetable seeds, flower seeds, tobacco seeds, caraway seeds, azaleas, cut flowers and reindeer lichen. The Reich Office was divided into main departments, departments and subject areas. The division into departments and their subdivision into subject areas resulted from the business allocation plan. The "Überwachungsstelle für Gartenbau-Erzeugnisse, Getränke und sonstige Lebensmittel" (Überwachungsstelle), which was established on 24 September 1934 (Deutscher Reichs- und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger 1934 No. 209), was merged with the Reichsstelle to form the "Reichsstelle für Garten- und Weinbauerzeugnisse als Überwachungsstelle" (Reichsstelle as Überwachungsstelle) by ordinance of 6 December 1938 (Deutscher Reichs- und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger 1938 No. 291). The merger brought together, as far as possible, bodies of the same or a similar nature from the two services, such as money, assets, staff and materials management, registers, the law firm, the post office and the branches located in the same place. The former Main Department III of the Reich Office and the country groups I - VI of the Surveillance Office were also merged, so that the applications for the issue of foreign exchange certificates and takeover certificates could be dealt with in one operation. The Reich Office as a supervisory office was now divided into 5 main departments, 6 departments, 21 subdivisions and 15 subject areas. The range of tasks of the Reich Office as such, however, remained unchanged in principle. In addition, the tasks of the supervisory authority remained essentially unchanged, namely the examination of applications for foreign exchange certificates submitted by importers from a formal and economic point of view, in particular in accordance with the rules on foreign exchange control, the import of vegetables, fruit, juices, wines, tea and live plants, and their allocation. It also issued foreign exchange certificates applied for and checked that the importers used the certificates issued in due time and in the proper manner. The tasks of the Reich Office as a supervisory authority were thus also determined by the Foreign Exchange Control Act. Pursuant to § 2 (2) of this Act, in addition to the foreign exchange offices, the monitoring offices also took their measures and made their decisions in accordance with guidelines drawn up by the Reich Office for Foreign Exchange Management in agreement with the Reich Minister for Economic Affairs and the Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture. These directives delimited the tasks of the supervisory authorities in that they supervised the import and payment of goods and controlled purchase prices. They also had to take measures in the field of internal management (e.g. processing and export bans). The Reich Office as well as the Surveillance Office were corporations under public law, i.e. legal entities of their own, which financed themselves and were not maintained from Reich funds. They were subject to the supervision of the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The Reichstelle, as the supervisory authority, also had to obtain approval for the scale of fees from this authority. Examples of chargeable events were the issue of foreign exchange certificates and the issue of expert opinions on private settlement transactions. However, the monitoring agency carried out book and company audits free of charge, unless the audit revealed that a company had violated official orders. After the outbreak of the war, the Reich Office was confronted with new tasks as a supervisory office with regard to the procurement of goods. All enemy states and a large part of the neutral states failed as suppliers, while the demand for food imports of all kinds grew steadily. As a result, prices abroad also rose sharply, so that the Reich Office's previous task of raising foreign prices to the German price level by means of differential amounts became illusory and was finally reversed in the opposite direction, namely that of reducing the price of imported goods. The other task, the territorial control of the import of goods, had already been transferred to a greater extent to the main associations (e.g.: Main Association of the German Horticultural Industry) at the outbreak of the war, so that only the area of responsibility of the supervisory authority remained. The Reich office as such was therefore closed at the beginning of July 1943. In the course of the effects of the war, the surveillance agency took on ever greater dimensions as the difficulties in procuring goods grew. After the end of the war, the assets of the Reichsstelle were liquidated by the Allies. The storage and import point in Hamburg was authorized by § 5 No. 2 of the Ordinance of the Central Office for Food and Agriculture of 17 August 1946 (Official Gazette for Food and Agriculture No. 2 of 24 August 1946) and by decree of the Food and Agriculture Council in Stuttgart of 04 July 1946 to liquidate the assets of the Reich Office, insofar as they were located in the American and British occupation zone. The branch office in Bavaria was handled by the office of the trade associations. A trustee was appointed to carry out the liquidation, who received his activity permit from the competent British supervisory authority and headed the 'Liquidation Office of the Reich Office for Horticultural and Viticultural Products as a Supervisory Office' in Berlin and the 'Liquidation Office of the Main Association of the German Horticultural Industry and Reich Office for Horticultural and Viticultural Products as a Supervisory Office - Munich Branch'. The final dispute over the assets of the former Reich offices within the four occupation zones was reserved for the decision of the Allied Control Council. Inventory description: Inventory description The files of the Reich Office for Horticultural and Viticultural Products were transferred to the Federal Archives in Koblenz in 1974 from the Oberfinanzdirektion Berlin, which was responsible for handling the Reich's food supply. The 248 files have a term from 1930 to 1973, whereby the mass of the files originated between 1936 and 1945. The documents contain above all documents which have arisen as a result of the Reich Office's business relations with the importers: agreements on quantities and prices for various products, currency certificates and takeover certificates, notes on business trips and company audits. The inventory can also be used to a limited extent as a substitute for the insufficient inventory of inventory R 3601 (Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture) due to war damage. No cassations were made. A file plan for the Reich Office did not exist. There was also no registry in the Reich office. The order of the files and their filing was carried out by the employees of the Reich Office according to their respective tasks and priorities. The rules of procedure are therefore partly unconventional and unsystematic. Consequently, there are documents in the files with different thematic classifications. Only an order according to individual countries is recognizable. The classification in the finding aid is based on this order by country. Only a few files were prearchived with titles. The file titles were therefore formed according to the predominant factual content of the file. The units of description were, if necessary, indexed more deeply by means of contained annotations. Characterisation of content: The main focus of the text is on documents relating to the business activities of the Reich Office, in particular ministerial decrees and materials for foreign trade with European and non-European countries: BArch, R 15-IV/...