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Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Abt. Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg, E 191 · Fonds · 1816-1971
Part of State Archives Baden-Württemberg, Dept. State Archives Ludwigsburg (Archivtektonik)
  1. on the history of the central management: The founding meeting of the central management of the charitable association took place on 29 December 1816 in the old castle in Stuttgart. Queen Katharina called together a circle of distinguished men and women to communicate her plan for a "charity society", drawn up with the permission of her husband, King Wilhelm I. After further meetings, the central management of the charity was constituted on 6 Jan 1817, approved by royal decree the following day, and the first public call for the formation of local and regional authorities was made. The new institution grew out of an older root. Already in 1805 a "private society of voluntary friends of the poor" had come together in Stuttgart, which wanted to alleviate the plight of the poor in the city by providing public food and employment. But in the inflation of 1816/17 their strength was by far not sufficient. On the one hand, the population in the flat countryside suffered, on the other hand, the society itself in the city of Stuttgart could only inadequately fulfil its self-imposed task. The members of the central administration were appointed and appointed by the queen, after her death by the king; they were active in an honorary capacity and were supposed to represent all strata of the population. The direct leadership had been reserved for the Queen; her deputy in the chair and her successor as president of the central leadership was Privy Councillor August von Hartmann (1819-1847). The office rooms were provided by the state and the reporters and civil servants were paid from the state treasury. The accounts were therefore subject to State control. Central management was not a government agency. As a special institution under the king's control, it was nevertheless able - in accordance with the queen's wishes - to make far-reaching decisions quickly and found the necessary support from the state administrative authorities during its implementation. It was active in the country through the "District Charity Associations", which were formed in the upper districts from the heads of the church and secular administration and in some cases also through "Local Charity Associations" in individual towns. In the city of Stuttgart, the "Lokalwohltätigkeitverein" (local charity association), which emerged from the "Privatgesellschaft" (private company), took over the tasks of a district charity association (see F 240/1), while a separate district charity association was set up at the Stuttgart office - as was the case with other higher offices. In addition to providing the population with food and clothing in years of need, the fight against beggars on the one hand and job creation on the other formed the focal points of their activities. To stimulate savings activity, the "Württembergische Sparkasse in Stuttgart" was founded with an announcement dated 12 May 1818, the supreme supervision of which was transferred to the central management (see portfolio E 193). On 16.5.1818 the "Royal Army Commission" (see fonds E 192) was established as a collegial state authority to carry out state tasks in the promotion of the poor and the economy. Practically only members of the central management belonged to it, so that a very close personal dovetailing with this was given. The central management not only wanted to eliminate current emergencies, but also to get to the root of the problem. For example, industrial and work schools have already been set up for children in order to promote diligence and manual skills through straw and wood work, to prevent neglect and to help them earn some money. In 1849, these existed in 99 towns of Württemberg and employed 6400 children. Vocational training for the next age group was promoted with apprenticeship contributions. Emergency shelters were built for girls at risk, sick and hard-to-reach people were supported in institutions and homes, trade and commerce were supported with loans. In cooperation with the Central Office for Trade and Commerce, the central management (see inventory E 170) introduced new branches of work into the Württemberg economy and promoted the sale of its products. Since 1823, the impoverished communities have been given targeted help in the form of a special state aid and improvement plan; the implementation of these measures was the responsibility of the Armenkommission. Since the middle of the 19th century, the fight against the consequences of natural disasters and war emergencies, as well as disease control, has slowly come to the fore of the central management's activities. The necessary funds were raised from collections and annual state contributions and have been held in an emergency fund since about 1895. In the time of crisis during and after the First World War, the central management used all means at its disposal to help steer the need. At the same time it was the office of the National Committee for War Invalidity Welfare, the National Foundation for the Survivors and the National Office for Homeworking Unemployed Women, organised large collections of money for the benefit of children's, middle-class, old-age and homeland emergency aid and managed the distribution of donations from foreign relief organisations in cooperation with the district charity associations. In addition, she conducted the business for social charitable associations and for national collections, in particular for the Landesverband für Säuglingsschutz und Jugendfürsorge, the Verein für entlase Strafgefangene, the Heimatnothilfe, the Künstlerhilfe and took over the tasks of numerous welfare associations and foundations that had entered into the inflation period (see For more than a century, the central management of the charitable association was and remained the switchboard for welfare work in Württemberg. The central management has always been in close contact with the institutions and associations and has turned its special attention to them by giving suggestions or making significant contributions to numerous foundations. She promoted them by regular contributions and helped by advice, especially in financial terms. The "Blätter für Wohltätigkeit in Württemberg", today "Blätter der Wohlfahrtspflege", published since 1848, spread far beyond the immediate sphere of activity of the central management, but with the expansion of the state tasks the central management gradually lost its independent position. In 1921 it became an institution under public law under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior and was now called "Central Management for Charity". During the National Socialist era it was renamed "Zentralleitung für das Stiftungs- und Anstaltswesen" (Central Management for Foundations and Institutions), with corresponding restrictions on its scope of duties, since the "National Socialist People's Welfare Office" reserved for itself the more popular areas, in particular emergency aid ("Winterhilfswerk"). After the end of the 2nd World War, the scope of the central management was expanded again and its sphere of activity extended to the former Prussian administrative district of Hohenzollern. But it could no longer attain its former significance. In 1957 it became the "Landeswohlfahrtswerk für Baden-Württemberg" in the form of a foundation under civil law with its registered office in Stuttgart, Falkertstr. 29. 2. On the history of the registry: the first office of the central management of the charitable association was established in the summer of 1817 in the old castle in Stuttgart, in the same place where the constituent meeting of the central management had taken place on 6 January of the same year. The Chancellery, which was also responsible for the business of the agricultural central office, was run from 1817 to 1857 by Regierungsrat Schmidlin as secretary. In 1820 the Chancellery rooms were moved from the Old Palace to the Ministerial Building of Foreign Affairs. In the end, this had an unfavorable effect on the management of the registry and constantly forced compromises to be made. In 1825, 1837 and 1846 Schmidlin had lists drawn up of the files kept in the registry of the Central Management and the Army Commission. The files of both bodies were kept together. The special files (Aalen to Welzheim) were filed in subjects 1 - 66, the general files in subjects 67 - 84. The list of 1837 contains in contrast to the list of 1825, which only describes the general files, also a list of the existing special files and in the appendix a list of the 15 file fascicles handed over in December 1838 by Geh. Rat von Hartmann from the estate of Queen Katharina to the registry of the central administration. Unfortunately, the 1846 directory is no longer available. The connection between the offices of the central management of the charity association and the central office of the agricultural association (with separate registries), which had existed since 1817, was dissolved in 1850 with the transfer of the latter to the Legion barracks, when a second registry was formed for the latter on the occasion of the internal separation of the central management and the Army Commission in 1855; copyist Rieger had great difficulty in dividing up the files and ordering both registries. Due to the close interdependence of the Central Management and the Armed Commission - the members of the Armed Commission were all members of the Central Management - however, a strict separation was not always necessary at that time (and also with the new indexing 1977 to 1979, see E 191 and E 192).1856 In 1857 Chancellor Keller, successor of Secretary Schmidlin in the chancellery, expanded Schmidlin's file plan to accommodate the rapidly growing registry, whereby in particular the various matters previously united under general headings were separated. In the special files, subjects 1 - 66 increased by six to 72, so that the general files were now distributed among 73 - 114 instead of subjects 67 - 84. The files, which were stored in confined spaces in various rooms, could be found quickly on the basis of a central management file directory produced by Keller around 1860 and supplemented up to the beginning of the 20th century, which lists the file subjects in alphabetical order with fan descriptions. Secretary Kuhn undertook a comprehensive reorganization of the registry in 1874. On the one hand, he eliminated 403 file fascicles, mainly local files, for the old registry, which had been completed in 1877, and on the other hand he systematically structured the remaining registry files, leaving out the old subject classification. Obviously this new plan did not come to fruition due to a chronic lack of space, which the Secretariat complained about in a note dated 10 Dec. 1896 to the Ministry of Finance and asked for new premises to be provided. As a result of the sale of the entire property, these offices had to be vacated in 1906; since no suitable state building was available, the private house Furtbachstraße No. 16 was rented. Probably with regard to the move into the house Furtbachstraße, secretary Kuhn designed around 1903 in a modified form a new registry order, which was also then applied in practice. On 26 June 1914 the central administration finally moved into the house at Falkertstraße 29, which it had acquired from the estate of the Kommerzienrat von Pflaum and set up for its purposes. The new accommodation had a favourable effect on the registry conditions insofar as more extensive file accesses could be accommodated in the subsequent period. These were above all the files of numerous associations dissolved as a result of inflation, as well as files from the management of the Central Management for Social Charitable Associations, committees and large relief actions in the emergency years between the two world wars. The storage of these files took place in loose connection with the remaining files. Around 1936, a provisional list of files ("registry plan") was created for the files of the NS-Volkswohlfahrt (National Socialist People's Welfare) with the inclusion of newer files of the central administration. Archival documents on the history of the registry see E 191 Rubr. III 1c Büschel 4532 (offices) and Büschel 4533 (tools). 3. to the order and distortion of the stock: The old files of the central management were handed over to the Ludwigsburg State Archives by the Landeswohlfahrtswerk in 1968 and 1976. In 1976, individual books and periodicals were placed in the service library of the archive from the outset. State Archives Director Dr. Robert Uhland began in 1968 to organize and record the files and volumes, but was already stuck in the early days with this work because of other obligations. As part of a research contract with the support of the Volkswagenwerk Foundation, the holdings were then transferred from 1977 to 1979 under the direction of Senior State Archives Councillor Dr. Wolfgang Schmierer by the scientific director of the Volkswagenwerk Foundation. Employees Dr. Hans Ewald Kessler in cooperation with the archive employees Erwin Biemann and Helga Hecht. The final works, which included the inventory classification and revision of the title records, were carried out from 1981 to 1982 for the inventory group A (files and volumes), Amtsrat Karl Hofer, and for the inventory group B (printed matter), Archivoberinspektorin Regina Glatzle. Since at the beginning of the indexing there were no finding aids available, apart from a very inaccurate index of the older archives, especially for the older ones, it was also not possible to use the older registry data, some of which still existed. The old registers (E 191, Rubr. III 1b Bü 5992 - 5998) were only found during the indexing process. The extensive files and volumes were divided in the course of the indexing work and divorced into the holdings E 191 (central management of the charitable association), E 192 (Armenkommission) and E 193 (central management of the Sparkasse für Württemberg). The external files burst in the registry were excavated and integrated as independent holdings in accordance with their provenance into the corresponding holdings series of the State Archives F 240/1 (Lokalwohltätigkeitsverein Stuttgart), F 240/2 (Bezirkswohltätigkeitsverein Cannstatt), PL 408 (Wichernhaus Stuttgart), PL 409 (Verein zur Unterstützung älterer Honoratiorentöchter), PL 410 (association for artificial limbs), PL 411 (association for worker colonies), PL 412 (association for folk sanatoriums), PL 413 (national association for infant protection and youth welfare), PL 416 (Paulinenverein), PL 417 (Comité zur Beschaffung von Arbeit), PL 418 (association for shameful house arms), PL 419 (harvest association) and PL 705 (estate Heller). All these holdings contain files of originally independent organisations which have been taken over by the central management over time. The inventory E 193 was arranged and registered as a separate file group, which originated at the central management, but concerned its own closed field of work, as a separate file group.15 file fascicles originate from the estate of Queen Katharina and were handed over to the registry of the central management in the year 1838 by Privy Councillor v. Hartmann: they are incorporated in the majority in section I 3 of the inventory E 191. A list of these files is attached to the registry of 1837. E 191 was indexed in individual connected groups according to numerus currens, whereby the title records could only be arranged objectively after completion of the indexing.After several registration plans had been valid for the files of the central management, also different stock groups were not registered by these, the stock E 191 was arranged according to a new stock systematics under consideration of the business circles of the central management and preservation of old registration structures. the stock contains a large number of brochures, above all annual reports and statutes of socially active institutions and associations from the whole German-speaking area. As far as these were collected independently, they were registered under the inventory department B, further are in the associated files. Duplicates as well as the periodical "Blätter für das Armenwesen" and "Blätter der Zentralleitung für Wohltätigkeit in Württemberg", volumes 1890 - 1891, 1896 - 1922 and 1925 - 1939, were taken over to a large extent into the collections (JL 415) or into the service library of the State Archives Ludwigsburg. 7107 numbers in the volume of 97 m were included in the holdings E 191. However, 264 numbers are not documented by subsequent summarization of tufts.Ludwigsburg, March 1982Gez. Dr. Schmierer Supplement 2006: The documents received in 2001, 2004 and 2005 from the Baden-Württemberg Welfare Office were incorporated into the inventory in 2005 (= E 191 Bü 7445-7499).Ludwigsburg, July 2006W. Schneider Supplement 2013: In the course of packaging the inventory in 2010, title recordings and archive units were systematically compared and some errors and inconsistencies were corrected. Stephen Molitor
BArch, R 2301 · Fonds · 1822-1946
Part of Federal Archives (Archivtektonik)

History of the Inventory Designer: Under the name Rechnungshof des Norddeutschen Bund (Court of Audit of the North German Confederation), the Prussian Chamber of Upper Legislation took control of the budget of the German Reich for the financial years 1867-1869 for the first time, renaming the authority the Rechnungshof des Deutschen Reiches (Court of Audit of the German Reich). In addition to controlling the Reich's budget, the Oberrechnungskammer, in its function as Court of Audit, was responsible for auditing the budget of Alsace-Lorraine (1874-1919) and for controlling the budget of the protectorate (since 1892/95 Africa, since 1898 all protectorates). The Court of Audit (Rechungshof, RH) was chaired by the Chief President of the Chamber of Appeal; its members were appointed by the Emperor at the suggestion of the Federal Council. The task of auditing the accounts of the Reich's budget had to be transferred to the Upper Chamber of Accounts by repeated individual legislation, usually on an annual basis. Article 86 p. 2 of the Weimar Constitution ("The audit of accounts is regulated by the Reich Law") established the audit of accounts for the Reich Administration under constitutional law. The Reich Budget Code of 31.12.1922 accordingly provided for the fundamental audit of the Reich budget by the Court of Audit of the German Reich (legalization of the audit of the "economic efficiency of the administration"). Thus, for the first time, auditing was fixed as a right of the state; at the same time, the establishment of the Court of Audit as an independent Reich authority independent of the Reich government was regulated. The Imperial Budget Code determined - as an important objective of the Court of Audit after examination of the submitted annual accounts - to prepare memoranda on the most important audit results and to submit proposals to the Imperial Government for the amendment and interpretation of laws in order to remedy identified deficiencies in the administration. The Court of Audit of the Weimar Republic represented a college of President, Directors and Councillors, which decided all fundamental matters by majority vote in the Plenary Assembly. In order to decide on matters that were limited in scope and only concerned individual administrative areas, the Reich Budget Code granted the formation of senates consisting of at least 3 members. In addition, the expert activity could be carried out at the request of the Reich Ministers, the Reich Parliament and the Reich Council; in addition, companies with their own legal personality could also be audited by the Court of Audit. The President and the other members of the Court of Audit were now appointed by the President of the Reich, countersigned by the Reich Minister of Finance. The President of the Court of Audit was also responsible for the management of the Prussian Chamber of Accounts. From October 1, 1922, however, he no longer headed the Prussian but the Reichsbehörde full-time. Presidents of the Court of Audit were: 1869-1890: Karl Ewald von Stünzner 1890-1898: Arthur Paul Ferdinand von Wolff 1898-1914: Eduard Ludwig Karl von Magdeburg 1914-1922: Ernst Holz 1922-1938 Friedrich Ernst Moritz Saemisch 1938-1945 Heinrich Müller 1922 was also appointed Reichssparkommissara with the task, together with the Reich Minister of Finance, of examining the entire budget and drawing up expert opinions on it. He was supported by the savings committee of the Reichstag. In December 1933 this office was closed again and the tasks were transferred to the new presidential department of the Court of Audit. As the supreme audit and control authority, the Court of Audit was responsible for supervising the entire Reich budget by examining the budget accounts, including the unscheduled income and expenditure of all Reich administrations, the accounts for the entire non-monetary property of the Reich as well as the books and accounting documents of the enterprises of the Reich. Since the end of the First World War, the Court of Audit has also had to increasingly control the use of Reich funds, which flowed into the private economy in the form of loans, credits, guarantees, subsidies and participations, by including both important business enterprises and a rich country of smaller enterprises in its audit area. The internal structure of the RH remained essentially unchanged throughout its existence. It was divided into the presidential department and a changing number of audit departments, to which the authorities and companies to be audited were allocated according to objective criteria. For the collection and cartographic indexing of laws, ordinances, administrative provisions, official regulations and other documents required for auditing the accounts, a news agency was attached to the Presidential Department, which from 1937 was known as the "Archive". In 1933 the Court of Audit was confirmed as an independent supreme Reich authority vis-à-vis the Reich government, but the previous procedure of majority decisions was abolished and the President was largely granted authority to issue directives to all organs of the Court of Audit. With the exception of the Wehrmacht control and the use audit of state subsidies to the NSDAP, the Court was initially able to perform its duties within the framework of financial control to the full extent even after 1933. In 1934, the office of the Reich Savings Commissioner, who was responsible for advising the Reich government on all matters relating to budget management and the appropriate design, simplification and cost reduction of the administration, was dissolved and its most important functions transferred to an office of the Presidential Department of the Court of Audit. Also from 1934, the Act on the Maintenance and Increase of Purchasing Power (Gesetz zur Erhaltung und Hebung der Kaufkraft) made it possible to extend the jurisdiction of the Court of Audit to include the auditing of corporations, institutions and other legal entities under public law (finally laid down by law in the Reich Auditing Ordinance of 30 March 1938). In the course of the imperial reform efforts of the Third Reich, the "Law on the Budgetary Management, Accounting and Auditing of the Länder and on the Fourth Amendment to the Reich Budget Code" of 17 June 1936 brought important changes: with the beginning of the 1936 accounting year, the auditing of the budget and economic management of the Länder was transferred to the Technical University. For this purpose, based on the already existing State Audit Offices, the Regional Court set up in 1937 foreign departments responsible for one or more Länder, initially in Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Leipzig (from 1940 Dresden) and Munich. Later Vienna (1939), Poznan (1942) and Metz (1942) were added. These external departments of the Court of Audit were assigned "accounting offices" by the Länder as preliminary audit offices in accordance with the "Vorprüfordnung für die Länder" of 9 April 1937. After 1938, especially during the war, the focus of the audit activities of the Court of Audit shifted: on the one hand, the audit of the administrations in the so-called "Old Empire" was reduced, on the other hand, however, the jurisdiction of the Court of Audit was extended to all German administrations in the occupied territories and also exercised there to a large extent. Only the Generalgouvernement and the autonomous protectorate government had their own examination offices. . Inventory description: Inventory history The majority of the RH's registry, which is already in the Reichsarchiv, was transferred to the former Central State Archives of the GDR after the war. At the end of the war, a further part of the existing records was still kept in the RH buildings in Potsdam and Berlin and was archived after 1946. The losses caused by the Allied air raid on Potsdam in April 1945 amount to approx. 9 running metres. Since the Prussian Oberrechungskammer took over the examination of Reichaufgabe für Kunst, Wissenschaft, kirchliche Angelegenheiten und Forstwirtschaft in 1934 (the Prussian Oberrechungskammer already had corresponding departments for these areas), these records - as well as the previous files of the Court of Audit in the holdings of Rep. 138 of the Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Stiftung prußischer Kulturbesitz. Archival evaluation and processing The registries of the Court of Audit distinguished three groups of files according to the tasks of the authority, which are also reflected in the classification: - General files - Technical files with special audit documents and instructions - Audit files for the actual audit negotiations. In this finding aid book, both the relevant files of the tradition kept until 1990 in the Central State Archives as fonds R 2301 and the files kept in the Federal Archives as fonds R 47 are recorded. Although the necessary standardisation of individual development information was achieved by merging the two parts of the transmission, a complete re-drawing did not take place. The general files were kept according to a uniform file plan and are summarised at the beginning of the inventory. The specialist and examination files are arranged according to the most recently valid business distribution plan. In addition, the files of the "archive" are listed separately as a relatively independent structural part with various special registries. The creation of archival file titles, volume sequences and series was usually required when the files were recorded; the creation of identical titles was unavoidable due to the specific nature of the structure. Characterisation of content: The Court of Audit's transmission more or less comprehensively covers the authority's entire spectrum of tasks with the following focal points: - Organisational, legal, administrative and operational matters - Court of Audit and Reich Savings Commissioner - Civil servant duties and rights - Affairs of employees and workers - Budget, cash, accounting and auditing - Specialist and audit files on individual authorities and companies such as the Reich Ministry of Finance, the Reich Ministry of Labor, the Reich Ministry of the Interior, the Reich Office for Regional Planning, the Reich Nourishment State, Reich offices and main associations, Vereinigte Industrieunternehmungen AG und Untergesellschaften (VIAG), Kleinbahnunternehmen und Wohnungsbauunternehmen, Hauptversorgungs- und Versorgungsämter sowie Wehrmachttversorgungsämter - Collection of administrative reports, statutes and other printed matter from local and district administrations (locations A-Z) - Budgets and budget accounts of the Länder and municipal institutions - Gesetzsammelmappen In addition, 3089 personnel files are part of the inventory. , citation style: BArch, R 2301/...

BArch, R 113 · Fonds · 1935-1945
Part of Federal Archives (Archivtektonik)

History of the Inventor: The Act of 29 March 1935 on the Regulation of Public Land Requirements (Gesetz über die Regeung des Landbedarfs der öffentlichen Hand) (1) issued by the Reich Ministry of Food and Drink (Reichsernährungsministerium) established an Imperial Authority which, with the Führer Decree of 26 June 1935, was to assume the role of "Reich Office for Spatial Planning (RfR)" (Reichsstelle für Raumordnung) "for the entire territory of the Reich"(2). The expansion of planning to the Reich and state level led to the separation of spatial planning from local political sovereignty. "In agreement with the Reich and Prussian Ministers of Labor, the head of the Reich Office for Spatial Planning shall in particular regulate the organization of the planning associations and supervise them. (3) The RfR with its seat in Berlin, as the supreme Reich authority, was directly subordinate to the Führer and Reich Chancellor and, in fulfilling its tasks, made use of the Society for the Preparation of Reich Planning and Regional Planning (Gezuvor) (4), later known as the Reichsplanungsgemeinschaft e.V. (Reich Planning Association). (RPG). Head of the RfR and President of the RPG was the Reich Minister and Prussian State Minister Hanns Kerrl, who also headed the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs (RKM) in personal union. After his death in 1941, Hermann Muhs, until then State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs, took over the management of the official business. Due to close personal and organizational ties, the Reichsplanungsgemeinschaft appeared in the business distribution plan of the RfR from June 1937. Both as members of an organization in which the Reich Office for Spatial Planning was assigned the task of "administration", the Reich Planning Community the task of "design". The business distribution plan named two registries which served both offices according to the subject area. (5) The joint budget for the financial year 1937 stated: "Since the fields of activity of the RfR and the RPG overlap in many respects, there has been no complete administrative and budgetary separation between the RfR and the RPG, either in terms of the specific nature of the tasks to be performed or in terms of the appropriate use of all manpower. (6) Kerrls Erste Verordnung zur Durchführung der Reichs- und Landesplanung vom 15. Februar 1936(7) contains the regulations on the organization of subordinate agencies. The organic structure of the regional planning administration should correspond to the dual task of Nazi regional planning - political leadership on the one hand and coordination of all spatially relevant issues on the other. The Reich Office for Spatial Planning was established as an "organ of state and party, and it must be emphasized in particular that its competence is not limited to regulatory work in relation to agriculture, housing and industry, but that it is also co-determinative in the requirements of terrain for the public sector". (8) In organisational terms, a distinction was made between planning authorities and state planning associations. The former were the governors of the Reich and the presidents of Prussia. They supervised the state planning communities and had the task of enforcing the guidelines issued by the central office. They were able to arrange for an annual audit of the accounts and approve the relevant budget. The actual planning work was carried out by the regional planning associations, of which 22 were established throughout the country and whose number increased to 33 by 1941 as a result of the annexations that began in 1938. (9) Its members consisted of rural and urban districts, Reich and Land authorities, self-governing bodies, the administrations of professional organisations and the scientific institutions appointed to promote Reich and Land planning. The managing directors were the state planners. The statutes of the Landesplanungsgemeinschaften were based on the model statutes issued by the head of the Reich Office. Hanns Kerrl had set this up in order to maintain uniformity within the organisation. The statutes provided for the head of the planning authority as chairman and also ensured a close link between the planning communities and planning authorities in the further administrative substructure. According to the model scale of contributions, costs were borne in the following proportions: 51% was borne by the Reich, the remainder was borne equally by the member groups "self-government" (e.g. provincial associations, urban and rural districts) and "economy" (e.g. German Labour Front, Reichsnährstand, Chambers of Industry and Commerce). (10) The Landesplanungsgemeinschaften were treated as public corporations. (11) The services of the State, local authorities and professional organisations were required to provide administrative and administrative assistance to planning authorities and associations. Created as a management and coordination body for territorial planning in the entire territory of the Reich, the RfR was first to "ensure that the German area was shaped in a manner appropriate to the needs of the people and the state". (12) In addition to civilian settlement planning and management, the armament programme also dealt with the location distribution of military installations and traffic routes. Nevertheless, the decisive plans were ultimately drawn up by the Wehrmacht, the Reich Ministry of Economics and the four-year plan officers. (13) The Reich Office had practically no decision-making powers and could only veto them in individual cases. Its activities were thus limited to administrative supervision of regional planning authorities, state planning associations and the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung, which directed and coordinated research results on questions of territorial planning. In cooperation with the Reich Minister for Science, Education and People's Education, "the faculties of all German universities were called upon in the largest form to cooperate". (14) With the help of the scientific universities, expert opinions were developed on issues of emergency and conurbation rehabilitation in the pre-war period, with the focus after the outbreak of war also on the integrated eastern regions. As the central control authority, however, the Reich Office for Spatial Planning gradually lost its authority, at the latest at the time of the intensive work of the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German People, created under Heinrich Himmler, in shaping the "living space in the East". (15) The ban of all post-war planning imposed by Hitler during the war led to the cessation of the actual professional activity. The personnel of the RfR (16) was increasingly reduced. The exemptions from military service required by the planning institutions were no longer granted after the defeat of Stalingrad. On 6 February 1943, the head of the Reich Chancellery, Dr. Lammers, informed the Supreme Reich Authorities that the Reich Office would now only administer its documents and provide information on request. (17) For reasons of air-raid protection, the documents were transferred to Wittenberg in 1943/44 together with those of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung and parts of the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs. Notes (1) RGBl. 1935, I, p. 468 (2) RGBl. 1935, I, p. 793 (3) RGBl. 1935, I, p. 1515 (4) Previously Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung der Reichsautobahnen e.V. (until 1935) (5) BArch, R 113/2030 (6) BArch, library 96.11.22, p.3 (7) RGBl. 1936, I, p.104 (8) BArch, R 113/2439 (9) Michael Venhoff, "Die Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung (RAG) und die reichs- deutsche Raumplanung seit ihrer Entstehung bis die Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges 1945", Hanover 2000, p.15 (10)Pfundtner/Neubert, Das neue Deutsche Reichsrecht I b 25 p.12 (11)See, inter alia, Werner Weber, "Die Körperschaften, Anstalten und Stiftungen des öffentlichen Rechts", Munich and Berlin, 1943, p.52 (12)See §3 of the Gesetz über die Regelung des Landbedarfs der öffentlichen Hand vom 29.3.1935 (13) "Special planning in the individual fields of activity continues to be the responsibility of the responsible departments. They have the obligation to announce their planning plans to the Reich Office for Spatial Planning." (2nd decree on the Reich Office for Regional Planning of 18 Dec. 1935), R 113/128 (14)BArch, R 113/2439 (15)Cf. Michael Venhoff, see above, p.73 (16)Exact number of employees not available (17)BArch, R 43 II/708, p.51 Inventory description: In March 1946, Martin Mäckler, then Director of Construction in the sector of the British military government, was commissioned by the Berlin magistrate to initiate the return of files from the Reich Office for Regional Planning in Wittenberg. After they had been reviewed, part of these documents were sent in 1947 to the Department of Housing, Urban Planning and Regional Planning of the Central Office of the Labour Department of the British Occupation Zone in Lemgo. After the dissolution of the head office, the maps, files and books were first forwarded to the local tax office and finally requested by the Federal Ministry of Housing. Another much larger part went to the Berlin Main Office for Overall Planning of the West Berlin Magistrate, including personnel files, and was finally handed over to the Berlin branch of the Institute for Spatial Research (Bad Godesberg). The transfer to the Berlin main archive, which had been responsible for official files since 1946 (since 1963 again Secret State Archive), took place in 1959, where the indexing began under the signature Rep.325. In 1962 2295 maps and plans as well as 1717 files in the form of a card index were listed. A mixed collection returned from the USA in April 1962 contained 15 volumes of RfR files, which were combined with the archival records in the main archive. In the course of the exchange of archival records in 1969, the Secret State Archives transferred to the Federal Archives not only the files but also the entire map section of the RfR, which was stored in Koblenz in 1971. On the basis of the first file indexing carried out in the Secret State Archives, the new indexing of the files began in 1987 in the Federal Archives under the inventory signature R 113. A first finding aid book for the approx. 2400 files has been available since 1990. The merger of Koblenz and Potsdam files in the Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde was completed in 1993. The latter, mainly newspaper clippings, printed publications, and annual and working reports, had been handed over to the German Central Archive in Potsdam by the Magdeburg State Archives in 1957 and by the Wittenberg District Council in 1963. During the database-supported recording of the stock a revision of file titles and classification took place, whereby based on the finding aid book from the year 1990 however it was renounced to sift each of the altogether more than 3000 file volumes again. The majority of series and tape sequences were archived. The map holdings held in Koblenz were not taken into account here. For data protection reasons, the personnel files available in portfolio R113 are not shown in the online find book. Requests in this respect should be addressed directly to the relevant Unit R 3. Characterisation of content: The general organisation and working methods of the Reich Office for Spatial Planning and its branches are documented in the files of the office administration and planning authorities. The traditions of the individual regional planning communities provide an insight into concrete tasks, procedures and areas of activity. The focus here is on documents relating to various economic sectors. The intention to incorporate scientific aspects of spatial research into regional economic and social structures is illustrated, among other things, by the files of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung and the Deutsche Akademie für Städtebau. Ultimately, the collection contains material collections from the archive and the press office, most of which consist of newspaper clippings and printed matter. Supplementary records are the R 164 Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumordnung and the RfR map collection (R 113 Kart) in the Federal Archives in Koblenz. State of development: Findbuch (2013) Citation method: BArch, R 113/...