Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, I. HA Rep. 97a
·
Fonds
Part of Secret State Archive of Prussian Cultural Heritage (Archivtektonik)
- description: - Preliminary remark - - History of institutions - The Secret Upper Tribunal was formed on 30 November 1782 in the course of the judicial reform of the Grand Chancellor v. Carmer. With extended jurisdiction and as an independent all-Prussian court, it continued the functions of the Higher Appellate Court (1703-1748) [see inventory "GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 97 A Higher Appellate Court"] and the Tribunal as the 4th Senate at the Court of Appeal (1748-1782) [see inventory "GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 97 Court of Appeal"]. This brought to a conclusion a development that had already been prepared in the increasingly autonomous jurisdictional functions and in the constantly growing territorial jurisdiction of the Tribunal. The Court of Justice ruled in the third instance and in the appeal instance and was directly subordinate to the Department of Justice and from 1808 to the Ministry of Justice. - The territorial competence of the Secret Upper Tribunal for all Prussian provinces was restricted only for a short time due to the autonomy claim of the Neumark. The appeal rulings in Neumark affairs were initially drawn up in the name of the Privy Council of State. The territorial expansion of Prussia's territory in the 19th century resulted in the temporary division of the appeal instance into several courts on several occasions. This division of territorial competence was accompanied by important organisational changes. At the beginning of the 19th century, for example, the expansion of tasks made it necessary to delegate the appeal proceedings to higher regional courts with a dispute value of less than 500 talers from 1803 or less than 2000 talers after 1815. Furthermore, since 1815 the Province of Neuvorpommern and the Province of Poznan had their own courts of appeal in the Court of Appeal in Greifswald and in the 2nd Senate of the Higher Court of Appeal in Poznan. An essential restriction of the territorial competence of the upper tribunal meant the secondary order of a Rhenish Court of Appeal and Cassation for the territories of French law since 1819. In order to reduce this fragmentation, the delegation of appeal proceedings to higher regional courts was abolished in 1833 and the appeal senate in Posen was dissolved in 1834. - The jurisdiction of the upper tribunal was considerably restricted by the fact that the appeal in political criminal cases had been transferred to the Privy Judicial Council at the Court of Appeal since the beginning of the trials against the bourgeois-democratic movement. - The revolution of 1848/49 partially enforced the bourgeois demand for state legal unity in Prussia. The Prussian National Assembly included a provision in its draft constitution to unite the supreme courts. The demand continued in the constitutional debate of the two chambers of the Landtag in March 1849 could be enforced against the resistance of the Rhenish jurists, so that the announcement of a uniform court also passed from the imposed to the agreed constitution. This constitutional principle was implemented according to the law of March 1852. Already after the January regulation of 1849 the upper tribunal had been declared the highest instance in cases also from the district of the appellate court Greifswald. On January 1, 1853, the upper tribunal was merged with the Rheinischer Revisions- und Kassationshof (Rhenish Court of Appeal and Cassation), which meant that the Geheimer Justizrat (Privy Judicial Council) was joined by a unified supreme court, whose name was changed from Geheimes Obertribunal to Obertribunal (Privy Upper Tribunal) as a result of the public nature of the court hearings introduced in 1849. Its territorial competence was extended in 1851 to the newly accrued Hohenzollern principalities. - A temporary change in the leadership of the Prussian court organization occurred once again as a result of the 1866 war. Of the annexed areas, only the courts of the city of Frankfurt (Main) were directly assigned to the upper tribunal as an appeal instance. For the provinces Schleswig-Holstein, Hannover, Hessen-Nassau as well as for the duchy Lauenburg and the principalities Waldeck and Pyrmont a new court of appeal was formed in Berlin in 1867. It was united with the Supreme Tribunal in February 1874, and from 1851 the Supreme Tribunal was joined by the Disciplinary Court and the Formally Independent Court for Church Affairs, established in 1873 as a result of the Kulturkampf. The institutional historical development of the Upper Tribunal is characteristic of the efforts to achieve formal legal unity in Prussia, which was documented in its Supreme Court. - The mostly erratic expansion of the task area is also reflected in the inner structure of the upper tribunal. The Court had begun its work in the 18th century with a Senate occupied by a chief president, nine tribunal councils and a protonotarius of the upper tribunal. After 1874 it was divided into eight senates, in which one president, five vice-presidents and 62 supreme tribunal councils were active as judges. This resulted in a subdivision into a Senate for Personal Law, two Senates for Property Law, one Senate for Obligatory Law, two Senates for Civil Law of the Rhineland and the territories annexed in 1866, one Senate for Criminal Matters and one Senate for Disciplinary Investigations against Judicial Officials. The highest body was the plenum, which united all senates. The Upper Tribunal received a considerable increase in personnel when one of the main demands of the Vormärz and the Revolution of 1848/49, namely the publicity of civil and criminal proceedings, was enforced. In 1852, a Prosecutor General's Office was formed as an independent structural part of the Upper Tribunal, consisting of one Prosecutor General and three Prosecutors General. In addition, there were the lawyers admitted to the upper tribunal, whose number rose to 19 after the takeover of the so-called Public Ministry of the Rhineland Court of Appeal and Cassation. Since 1856 there has also been an honorary council of lawyers at the upper tribunal, which was renewed every two years. An administrative office of the Upper Tribunal had been available since the 1930s and was eventually staffed by 15 officials. - The Upper Tribunal was personally connected to the Higher Censorship Court constituted in 1843, three of whose members belonged to the Upper Tribunal. The chief presidents of the upper tribunal, mostly former ministers of justice, were directly responsible to the king until 1857 and were subordinated to the minister of justice. Members of the upper tribunal included such important bourgeois jurists as Carl Gottlieb Suarez and Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Ferdinand Bornemann. - The competence of the upper tribunal was comprehensive for the area of civil law. It extended to appeals and nullity appeals in civil trials, even when they concerned military personnel. It covered the following subjects: Personal law, professional and ethical law, rights and duties of companies, corporations, municipalities, schools and institutions for the poor, leasehold and tenancy matters, land, domains, regalia, jurisdiction, obligations, commercial and property matters. In criminal proceedings, on the other hand, only appeals for annulment belonged before the Supreme Tribunal in third instance. As stated above, the Supreme Tribunal was not responsible for political criminal cases. Additional areas of responsibility of the upper tribunal were conflicts of jurisdiction between courts of appeal and lower courts, complaints against court orders in procedural matters and disciplinary matters of all judicial officials, including military judges. In addition, on the basis of special treaties, the Obertribunal acted as supreme court for some German states, namely for the principalities Waldeck and Pyrmont in criminal cases and for the Duchy of Anhalt-Bernburg in criminal cases and disciplinary cases of the judges. Finally, the Obertribunal was also elected several times as Austrägalgericht for the decision of disputes between German princes. - The plenum of the Supreme Tribunal heard decisions of a Senate which deviated from a principle of law or a statutory provision, as well as all legislative matters, important disciplinary inquiries and judgments of general interest. Influence on contemporary jurisprudence was exerted by the publication of about 500 important decisions from the years 1836 to 1879 in a state publication series. - After the foundation of the North German Confederation and the German Reich, jurisdictional powers were increasingly transferred to the Reich. Initially, the last instance in commercial and bill of exchange matters was transferred to the Bundesoberhandelsgericht, the later Reichsoberhandelsgericht, founded in August 1870 in Leipzig. In the context of the Reichsjustizreform the national liberals with support of the Prussian Minister of Justice Leonhardt enforced the court constitution law from January 1877 against the Bavarian separatism. The Reichsgericht (Imperial Court) ordered in this law commenced its activities in Leipzig on 1 October 1879. At the same time the Prussian upper tribunal was abolished, 25 of its employees were appointed to the Reichsgericht, while 19 judges were retired. - Presidents of the upper tribunal: - 1782 - 1784 Münchhausen, Ernst Ferdinand Freiherr v. - 1784, 1788 - 1802 Reck, Eberhard Friedrich Rudolph Ludwig Freiherr v. d. - 1785 - 1788 Doernberg, Wolfgang Ferdinand v. - 1802 - 1805 Könen, Johann v. (since 1802) - 1805 - 1833 Grolman, Heinrich Dietrich v. - 1833 - 1844 Sack, Dr. Wilhelm Friedrich - 1844 - 1854 Mühler, Heinrich Gottlob v. - 1854 - 1878 Uhden, Carl Albrecht Alexander v. (since 1871) - - - - - - History and Inventory - After the dissolution of the Upper Tribunal in 1879, the organisational and administrative files were initially handed over to the Court of Appeal, the trial files to the Prussian Ministry of Justice. It is likely that the majority of the case files were collected by the Court of Appeal after 1880. The transfer of files from the Upper Tribunal to the Secret State Archives took place in 1880, 1911 and 1927, so that in 1928 the archiving of the only incompletely preserved holdings was largely completed. From 1932 to 1939, the order was mainly based on fundamental judgments and organizational acts. A motive report from 1939 on the archival evaluation of the files can be found in the file "I. HA Rep. 178 Generaldirektion der Staatsarchive, Nr. 604". The preserved files on proceedings in third instance until 1786 were simultaneously made available for use by old administrative repertories. The tradition of the Upper Tribunal, together with that of the old Higher Appeal Court and that of the Tribunal (4th Senate) at the Court of Appeal, formed the combined holdings of Rep. 97a. - After the Second World War, the holdings were transferred to the Central State Archives of the GDR in Merseburg without any losses during the war, where they were initially restored to their old signatures. For the lost find book a new one was made. In 1973 a new inventory was established, which was based on the decisive organisational caesura of 1782 with the foundation of the independent upper tribunal. The holdings of the old Higher Appeal Court and the Tribunal of the Court of Appeal from 1703 to 1782 [now: "GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 97 A Oberappellationsgericht] were separated from the holdings of the Upper Tribunal from 1782 to 1879. The upper tribunal was subsequently restructured and listed anew. At the beginning of the nineties he was transferred to the care of the Geheimes Staatsarchiv PK zu Berlin and transferred there in 1993. - Scope of stock: 1093 file units (20 linear meters), 1704-1910 - - The files are to be ordered as: - I. HA Rep. 97a, No. ### - - - The files are to be quoted as: - I. HA Rep. 97a Obertribunal, Nr. ### - - - - The last assigned number is: 1075 - - - - - - Author of the present introduction from 1975: - Dräger, Diplomarchivar - - - Revision in March 2010 by: - Dr. Kober, Archivrat - - Findmittel: Database; Findbuch, 1 Vol.* Secret State Archive of Prussian Cultural Heritage, I. HA Rep. 97a