Carl Richard Müller was born on 2 June 1889 in Knauthain near Leipzig. After finishing school, he learned the profession of gardener from 1903-1906 and then worked in several German and Swiss towns. From the beginning of 1908 until October 1909 he had a job as a gardener at the cemetery on Casinostraße in Solingen. In 1910 and 1911 he did his military service as a naval artillerist in the German colony of Tsingtau in China. At the end of his service he concluded a contract of several years with the company Hernsheim, which traded and planted in the German colonial area of New Guinea/Bismarck Archipelago on the equator north of Australia. In 1912 he worked on the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands Bougainville. After an eventful year in which he was able to realize his childhood dream as a planter in the South Seas for the first time, but also lost some illusions about life in the colonies, the employment contract was terminated prematurely (apparently after differences with the company) and Müller returned to Germany via Australia. Severe malaria attacks tortured him on his way home and in Germany, but his homeland could not keep him in the long run. From summer 1913 to spring 1914 he sought his fortune in Argentina, but found no satisfactory job and decided to apply for immigration to Australia. At the end of June 1914 he had the necessary entry papers and boarded the German steamer Roon in Antwerp with the destination Freemantle. When the world war broke out in August 1914 and Great Britain took the side of the German opponents, the ship had to break off the voyage to Australia and seek refuge in Dutch India. From 1914 to 1940 he worked at four different stations, from 1927 on Tandjongdjati in southern Sumatra, where he cultivated coffee and rubber, and in 1939 the Belgian owners appointed him manager. The climax of his career was followed by a sudden end. The invasion of the Netherlands by the Wehrmacht on 10 May 1940 turned German citizens into enemies in the Dutch colonial empire. For Müller and many others the period of internment began - until the end of 1941 in the Dutch camp Alasvallei in northern Sumatra, then under British control in the camp Premnagar near Dehra Dun in northern India at the foot of Hima-laya. Only in autumn 1946 the prisoner Carl Richard Müller number 56134 was released and arrived in Solingen in December 1946. Here he found work in the nursery Diederich in Wald, to which he also remained faithful as a pensioner with casual work. In 1966 he had to give up his independent life because of bad health and moved to the Eugen-Maurer-Heim in Gräfrath. There he died on 21 March 1973. The estate has preserved some of Müller's adventurous life. Müller and other prisoners used the enforced inactivity during the long internment years for writing and for lectures in their own circle. Of these works, pieces have been preserved which are of particular interest for research into German colonial rule and European planting in the South Seas. Müller's autobiographical manuscripts about the years 1912-1940, which he thought he could summarize as the "ro-man of a fortune-seeker" (documents 11 and 12 with the addition of the photographs in documents 6 and 7 and cards in documents 17 and 26), are to be mentioned first and foremost. In addition there are numerous essays by Müller on plant cultures, economic and technical problems on the plantations and abstracts on the nature and fauna of Indonesia, mainly Sumatra (documents 13 to 16). Work done by fellow prisoners on their experiences in Indonesia and Australia can be found in file 23, including a report on detention in Sumatra with a shorter annex on time in India. Relatively little is known about camp life in Dehra Dun; Müller, however, kept a booklet titled "Männerworte" (Aktenstück 5), in which 22 fellow prisoners registered themselves with words of remembrance. The photographs of Müller's life in Solingen after 1946 are primarily preserved, of which the works for Diederich may be of local historical interest (file 8). Furthermore, the collection contains a file of the Social Welfare Office of the City of Solingen. The stock was handed over to the City Archive by the Social Welfare Office in a suitcase, which was separated from the above documents at the time of recording. The stock was recorded for the first time in September 1998 by Anika Schulze, developed by Hartmut Roehr in 2007.
History of the Inventory Designer: 1907 Formation of the R e i c h s k o l o n i a l a m t from the Colonial Department of the A u s w ä r t i g e s A m t ; 1919 Transformation into a R e i c h s k o l o n i a l ministry and assumption of the liquidation business for the former German colonial territories; after its dissolution in 1920, assumption of the tasks by the R e i c h s m a r i n a m i n g for reconstruction (Colonial Central Administration) until its dissolution in 1924; thereafter, processing of colonial affairs again by the A u s w ä r t i g e s A m t . Inventory description: Inventory history The files of the central colonial administration of the German Reich have been subject to organisational changes from the subject area or department at kaiserli‧chen Auswärtiges Amt to the Imperial Reichsamt and Ministry of the Wei‧marer Republic and back to the department or department at the Auswärtiges Amt. Many volumes of files or subject series were easily continued organically beyond the verschie‧denen changes; for the period after 1920 this often means that they slowly ebbed away. Real breaks in the Aktenfüh‧rung can usually not be determined. The registry of Reichskolonialmi‧niste‧riums therefore formed a closed one in 1919 and after the extensive loss of colonial political tasks in the eyes of many even closed Kör‧per. The files were distributed according to the former secret registries of the Reichsko‧lonialamts as follows: Secret registry KA I East Africa Secret registry KA II Southwest Africa Secret registry KA III South Sea Secret registry KA IV Cameroon and Togo Secret registry KA V Legal cases Secret registry KA VI Scientific and medical cases Secret registry KA VII General secret registry KA VIII Agriculture Secret registry KA I-VII Foreign Countries and Possessions Secret Registry KB I Budget and Accounting Secret Registry KB II Technical Matters Secret Registry KB III Railway Matters Already in the Cabinet Meeting on 1. In 1919, the Reich Minister of the Interior, Matthias Erzberger, had spoken about the files of the then still existing Kolonialministeri‧ums and had suggested that "the archives of the Reichs‧kolonialamts and the Reich Marine Office should be merged with the corresponding facilities of the Großer Generalstab and an independent Reich archive should be created in a city yet to be determined, which would be directly subordinated to the Reich Ministry [cabinet]". Ministerialdirigent Meyer-Gerhard had contradicted this in his memorandum of 30 Sept. 1919 and demanded that both the files and the extensive library of the R e i c h s k o l o n i a l ministry be handed over to the A u s w ä r t i g e s A m t , where he also wanted to see the permanently preserved Orga‧nisati‧onseinheiten of the Colonial Ministry located. Only the files that were no longer needed were to be destroyed or handed over to the Reich Archives. In fact, the files were initially handed over to the R e i c h s m i n g e r a m i n g for reconstruction and were inspected in 1924 when the Colonial Department was transferred to the Foreign Office. An inventory shows which files were transferred directly to the Reichsarchiv, transferred to the Auswärtiges Amt, or immediately became ver‧nichtet . While only very few files were immediately destroyed and by far the largest part of the files were immediately handed over to the archive, bean‧spruchte the Federal Foreign Office, in addition to some documents of fundamental Be‧deutung, even from long chronological volume sequences, mostly only those volumes which were important for the ak‧tuellen business and left the older volumes in each case to the archive. However, a large part of the Ak‧ten taken over from the Federal Foreign Office was also handed over to the Reichsarchiv during the course of the continuous reduction process to which the kolonialpoliti‧sche subdivision or the "Colonial Department" was exposed. Remnants of these documents were handed over to the Federal Archives by the Auswärti‧gen Office in February 2000. In 1945 the Reichsarchiv was probably home to a largely complete record of the central colonial administration of the German Reich. The orga‧nische character of the tradition forbid a breakdown of the documents, so that the entire tradition was stored in one inventory at the R e i c h s k o l o n i a l a m t zusammenge‧faßt . The R e i c h s k o l o n i a l a m t's destruction of the R e i c h s c h s a f t on 14 April 1945 severely affected the R e i c h s k o l o n i a l a m t's Ak‧ten . Approximately 30 of the holdings were burnt, including the registries KB I (budget and Rech‧nungswesen), II (technical matters) and III (railway matters). Also the files of the Schutztruppen and the files of the administrations that have reached the Reichsarchiv ein‧zelner Schutzgebiete have completely fallen victim to the flames. Archivische Bewertung und Bearbeitung In the Central State Archives of the GDR in Potsdam, the original registry order was discarded as Klassifika‧tion for the holdings during the processing of the Be‧stands 10.01 R e i c h s k o l o n i a l a m t . The mixed order, which combined registration, systematic and territorial criteria of order, was replaced by a structure, which arranged the files according to territorial aspects as far as possible. In the course of the revision of the finding aids for the present finding aid, which were compiled in the Central State Archives, the original order of the holdings was restored with the help of the registry aids that had been transferred to Bundesar‧chiv in 2000. The contexts of the original Regi‧straturordnung, according to An‧sicht, provide the author with a better and more systematic overview of the overall tradition than the systematic aspects of ver‧schleiernde "regionalisation" of the holdings. The former "Koblenz" inventory R 101 Reichskolonialamt consisted mainly of copies which the colonial writer Georg Thielmann-Groeg made, mainly in Reichsar‧chiv, from the files of the Reichskolonialamt. The indexing of this collection die‧sem Findbuch, which goes down to the individual file piece, is attached in an appendix because it compiles important documents on German colonial history in compressed form - with a focus on GermanSüd‧west‧afrika. For reasons of conservation, the oversized investment cards were taken from the volumes in inventory R 1001 and replaced by reference sheets. The maps were recorded on color macrofiches and organized in a mapNeben‧bestand under the designation R 1001 Kart. Content characterisation: Colonies and colonial policy, general; military and navy; colonial law, police matters; slaves and slave trade; research, surveying, demarcation; immigration, settlement, support, civil status; economy, trade, customs, taxes; agriculture and forestry; post and transport; missions and schools; health care. Non-German colonies and Liberia: British colonies; French colonies; Portuguese and Spanish colonies; Italian, Dutch, North American colonies. D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i k a and D e u t s c h - S ü d w e s t a f r i k a: Colonisation, general management and administration, political development; military and police, inspection and information tours; colonial law, criminal cases, inheritance and real estate; slavery and slave trade; research, surveying, demarcation; immigration, settlement, support, civil status; economy, trade, customs, taxes; agriculture, forestry, fishing; postal services and transport; missions and schools; health care. Cameroon: German-West African Trading Company, South and North-West Cameroon Society; colonisation, central and regional administration; political development; military and police, inspection and information tours; colonial law; research, surveying, demarcation; immigration, settlement, support, civil status; economy, trade, customs, taxes, banks, agriculture and forestry, fisheries; postal and transport services; health care; missions and schools. Togo: central and regional administration, political development; military and police, inspection and information missions; colonial law; research, surveying, demarcation; immigration, settlement, support, civil status; economy, trade, customs, taxes, banks; agriculture, forestry, fisheries; postal services and transport; missions, schools, health care. Congo: General; Berlin Conference. New Guinea: New Guinea company; colonization, central and regional administration, political development; military and police; colonial law; research, surveying, demarcation; immigration, settlement, support, civil status; economy, trade, taxes, customs, banks; agriculture, forestry, fishing; post and transport; health care, schools. Caroline, Mariana and Palau Islands: colonisation, general, management and administration, political development; colonial law; research, surveying, demarcation; immigration, settlement, support, civil status; economy, trade, customs, taxes; post and transport; missions, schools, health care. Samoa: colonisation, central and regional administration, political development; military; colonial law, police matters; research, surveying, demarcation; immigration, resettlement, civil status; economy, trade, customs, taxes, banks; agriculture and forestry; post, transport, shipping; missions, schools, health care. Marshall Islands: colonization, general management and administration, political development; research, surveying, settlement, employment; trade, customs, taxes, post, transport; missions, school, health care. Solomon Islands: Kiautschou/China R 1001 Annex: photocopies of documents on the acquisition of German colonial territories; photocopies of documents on Deutsch-Südwestafrika; copies of files of the Reichskolonialamt on Deutsch-Südwestafrika; diary of the Hottentot leader Hendrik Witbooi in Deutsch-Südwestafrika; horse breeding in North Cameroon. Erinnerungen von Kurt Freiherr von Crailsheim; "Kriegsnachrichten" newspaper from Deutsch-Südwestafrika, vol. 1915 no. 3; reproductions of portraits of various persons in Deutsch-Südwestafrika; curriculum vitae of Reichskommissar Dr. jur. Heinrich Goering. State of development: Publication Findbuch (2002); Online Findbuch (2003) Citation method: BArch, R 1001/...
Reichskolonialamt