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Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, VI. HA, Nl Althoff, F. T., Nr. 1039 · File · 1885 - 1912, ohne Datum
Part of Secret State Archive of Prussian Cultural Heritage (Archivtektonik)

Contains: - Bismarck, Fürst Otto v., Reichskanzler, Berlin: Letter (copy) to His Majesty the Emperor about the scholarly proletariat 16.3.1890 - Berchem, Count v., (Federal Foreign Office), Berlin: Conference with Director A. Hellwig and Prof. Foerster 23.7.1886 - Conrad, Geheimer Legationsrat, (Reich Chancellery), Berlin: Englers Memorandum on the German-Catholic Question in Posen 9.8.1903 - Cramm-Burgdorf, v., (Braunschweigische Gesandtschaft), Berlin: Acknowledgements for the publication "Die Reform des höheren Schulwesens" 5.1.1903, Professor Lexis 1.2.1903 - Dernburg, Excellence, (Colonial Office), Berlin: Oilfruits from Cameroon 10.5.1907 - Eichhorn, v., Really Secret Legation Council, Berlin: Letter from Althoff concerning appeals and cooperation of the Foreign Office and corresponding reply of G. L. R. v. Eichhorn 1.3.1897 - Goudriaan, Jungheer van, Minister of the Netherlands, Berlin: planned conference 20.6.1902 - Gude, v., Swedish-Norwegian Embassy, Berlin: Lymphatic discharge for Swedish hospitals 4.12.1890 - Günther, v., Reichskanzlei, Berlin: Acknowledgement for the brochure by Savigny "Die Reichstagsauflösung" 18.1.1907 - Goering, Heinrich Ernst, Konsul,: Request of the Devant des Ponts for transfer to colonial service 6.3.1885, Cape Town, trip to Damaraland 7.10.1886 - Holstein, Friedrich v., Excellency, Reich Chancellery, Berlin: Visit of A. 14.7.1895, thanks for the news about Hirschberg 23.7.1895, request to A. for a visit 22.12.1901, reports of Prince Eulenburg on the occasion of the Poland excesses o.D., Request for visit to his friend A. in his private apartment 30.6.1906 - Hutten-Czapski, Count, Strasbourg: wish of acquaintance with A. 9.2.1885, Hanover, because of an honorary pension for Freifrau von Manteuffel or a statue for the field marshal of M. 26.7.1885, entry for the teacher Dalkowski in Wilda in Posen because of threatening dismissal 17.11.1885 - Hansemann, v., Minister, Berlin: Thanks to Dr. Triebke for the donation 15.5.1897 - Hohenthal, Count v., Saxon Minister, Berlin: Realabiturienten und das juristische Studium 23.4.1901 - Holleben, v., Excellency, Berlin: Visit in Charlottenburg 29.10.1892, Oberlehrer Grunewald of the Joachimsthalschen Gymnasium 23.9.1901 - Humbert, Really Secret Legation Council, (Foreign Office), Berlin: Letter from A. to him because of missed visit 9.12.1890, Answer to A. because of missed visit 3.11.1897, Conference with A. and Conze 11.4.1892 - Jagemann, v., Badische Gesandtschaft, Berlin: Invitation to the Souper o. D. - Kayser, Dr., Geheimer Legationsrat, (Foreign Office), Berlin: Prof. Baron, Bonn July 1888, Berlin, entry of the Referendar Tübben into colonial service 7.1.1891, letter from Schweinfurth 14.4.1891 - Keudell, Baron v., Berlin: Acknowledgment for the report about Prof. Michel 13.2.1900 - Kiderlen-Wächter, Alfred v., envoy, Hamburg: Request to Dr. Landerer from Stuttgart for reception 21.9.1895 - Klehmet, R., Geheimer Legationsrat, Berlin: Draft of an answer to the petition of the cathedral provost Dittrich 18.12.1903 (missing) - Klewitz, Geheimer Regierungsrat, Berlin: Congratulations on the award 16.10.1904 - Knorr v. Rosenroth, Exzellenz, Darmstadt: Transmission of the commemorative publication of the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt 9.12.1897 - Koeller, v., Exzellenz, Berlin: Acknowledgement for congratulations 19.2.1888, 20.2.1903 - König, v., (Auswärtiges Amt), Berlin: Thanks for information about the Geographical Institute in Weimar 27.1.1892 - Krauel, R., Real Geheimer Regierungsrat und Gesandter, Berlin: Request for a Conversation 27.9.1903 - Krug, Leopold, Prof. und Konsul, Groß-Lichterfelde: Donation of his Herbarium to Dahlem 14.12.1890, Letter of 6.4.1898 - Kusserow, v., Berlin: Appointment of Goering as Commissioner for Angra Pegrena 10.4.1885 - Lanza de Busca, Ch., Graf, Italienischer Gesandter, Berlin: Information about the request of Prof. Volterra to get to know the Polytechnikum Charlottenburg better 23.2.1904, Request for audience for Professor Marigliano 5.1.1901 - Lehmann, Privy Legation Council, Berlin: Invitation to dinner 20.3.1899 - Lewald, Reichskommissar für die Weltausstellung St. Louis: Information about the Villa d 'Este 4.8.1905 - Loebell, Friedrich Wilhelm v., Reich Chancellery, Berlin. Zorn's expert opinion on the Coburg-Gotha domain question 1.12.1904, sending a copy of an article in the Allgemeine Zeitung 22.6.1906 - Marschall von Bieberstein, Freiherr Adolf Hermann, Berlin: Mitteilung über die Gewährung einer Audienz beim Großherzog von Baden 13.4.1888 - Mongenast, envoy, Luxembourg: sending of a work about the Luxembourg Athenaeum 20.7.1904 - Mosler, Privy Councillor, Berlin: Information about the death of his father-in-law, Excellency v. Friedberg 3.6. o. J. - Mühlberg, Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin: Press conference and orthography regulation 13.1.1901 - Mutius, Legationsrat von, Berlin: Acknowledgment for the congratulations on the transfer to Beijing 14.1.1908 - Ochsenius, Dr. (C.) Karl, Consul a. D.., Marburg: Promotion of Dr. Kohl to Professor 23.1.1887 - Pourtalès, Count v. F., Federal Foreign Office, Berlin: Request for a conference 14.11.1893, Acknowledgment for dealing with his question 20.2.1894 - Ratibor, (Prince) Herzog v., Rauden: Agreement to use his name as co-founder of the Academy for German Literature in Weimar 21.5.1901, letter of 26.2.1900 - Richthofen, v., Excellency, Federal Foreign Office, Berlin: Award of the large gold medal to Ambassador White 19.11.1902, Lexis meets with the Prime Minister of Holland Knyper 3.5.1902 - Rangabé, Kleon, Greek envoy, Berlin: Dr. Macke's handwriting about Erasmus and Reuchlin 30.4.1900 - Rotenhan, v., Minister of, Rome: Audience with Cardinal Merry del Val o. D., Return in October to Berlin 13.9.1905 - Roth, A. Oberst, Swiss Legation, Berlin: Lectures at the Berlin University 19.1.1887 - Senden, Baron v., (Military Attaché Madrid): Madrid Chapel 23.3.1908 - Speck v. Sternburg, Ambassador, Washington: Professor Keutgen's recommendation from Jena 4.4.1905 - Speßhardt, Consul v., Lemberg: Registration for a meeting 28.7.1902 - Schwarzkoppen, Hauptmann v., (Reich Chancellery), Berlin: Inquiry about the possibility of a visit to the Botanical Garden by Princess Bülow on 17.6.1907 15.6.1907, agreement on the visit of Princess Bülow to the Botanical Garden on 29.6.1912 - Schlözer, Kurd v., German Legation, Rome: Employment of Dr. Schellhass at the historical institution in Rome 23.2.1891 - Tiedemann, Freiherr v., Berlin: Loss of files 18.5.1886 - Tower, Charlemagne, American envoy, Berlin: Introduction of Mr. Alb. A. Showden as representative of the Carnegie Foundation 29.5.1907, Acknowledgement for Lexis' Louis-Werk and the pictures of Mommsen 10.2.1905 - Usedom, v., (Reich Chancellery), Berlin: Appointment of Fassbender as Professor 18.12.1900 - Varnbüler, v., Excellency, Württemberg Envoy, Berlin: Immediatgesuch des Dr. Brönnle 4.9.1906 - Wilmowski, v., (Reich Chancellery), Berlin: Confession of the officials of the Chancellor 29.4.1895 - Zahn, Legationsrat, Berlin: Visit of the Dutch Prime Minister Knyper to the Reich Chancellery 30.3.1902 - Zimmermann, Legationsrat, Berlin: Request for a visit date (no D.), congratulations on the award (no D.)

Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, I. HA Rep. 208 A, Nr. 404 · File · 1891 - 1903
Part of Secret State Archive of Prussian Cultural Heritage (Archivtektonik)

261 sheet, Contains and others: - Memorandum by Prof. Dr. Eduard Sachau on the training of aspirants for colonial service in D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i k a, 1 March 1891 - Note concerning the career of interpreters. Berlin 1888 (print) - Excerpt from the report of the Imperial Governor of D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i k a Hermann von Wissmann in Dar-es-Salam (Dar es Salaam) to the Imperial Chancellor Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on the training of colonial civil servants, 30th ed. January 1896 (copy) - Excerpt from the report of the Imperial Governor of Togo August Köhler in Sebbe to the Imperial Chancellor Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on the training of colonial officials, January 22, 1896 (copy) - Report of the Imperial Government of Cameroon to the Imperial Chancellor Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on the training of colonial officials, January 19, 1896 (copy) - Report of the Imperial Government of Cameroon to the Imperial Chancellor Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on the training of colonial officials, January 22, 1896 (copy) - Report of the Imperial Government of Cameroon to the Imperial Chancellor Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on the training of colonial officials, January 22, 1896 (copy) - Report of the Imperial Government of Cameroon on the training of colonial officials, January 19, 1896 (copy) February 1896 (copy) - Report of the Imperial Governor of Southwest Africa Theodor Leutwein to the Imperial Chancellor Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on the training of colonial civil servants, April 1, 1896 (copy) - Excerpts from the Journal officiel de la République Française of April 4, 1896 (in German). The French Colonial Minister's Decree of 14 April 1896 and 14 April 1896 on the training of colonial officials - note concerning the persons to be transferred to the higher administrative service of the protectorates. Berlin 1894 (print) - Note, concerning the persons to be taken over into the subalterndienst of the protectorates. Berlin 1894 (print) - Excerpt from the report of the Imperial Government of D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i k a to the Imperial Chancellor Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on the linguistic training of colonial officials, 30th ed. December 1896 (copy) - Invitation to drawing by the Vereinigung zur Errichtung einer deutschen Kolonialschule für Landwirtschaft, Handel und Gewerbe of 7 September 1897 (print) - Conditions for the acceptance of customs officers for service in the protectorates (as at 3 July 1900) - Programme of conditions d´admission a l´Ecole Coloniale. Paris [1897] (print) - Zitting 1901 - 1902. Aanvulling und verhooging der begrooting van uitgaven van Nederlandsch-Indie vor den dienstjaar 1902. Memorie van toelichting, Nr. 3. o. O. 1902] (print) - Zitting 1901 - 1902. Aanvulling und verhooging der begrooting van uitgaven van Nederlandsch-Indie vor het dienstjaar 1902. Bijlage der memorie van toelichting, Nr. 4. o. O. 1902] (print) - Zitting 1901 - 1902. Aanvulling und verhooging der begrooting van uitgaven van Nederlandsch-Indie vor den dienstjaar 1902. Voorloopig verslag, Nr. 5. o. o. 1902] (print) - Zitting 1901 - 1902. Aanvulling und verhooging der begrooting van uitgaven van Nederlandsch-Indie vor den dienstjaar 1902. Memorie van antwoord. Ingezonden bij letter of 11 February 1902, No. 6. o. O. 1902] (print) - Zitting 1901 - 1902. Aanvulling und verhooging der begrooting van uitgaven van Nederlandsch-Indie vor den dienstjaar 1902. Verlag, Nr. 7. o. O. [1902] (print) - Seminar for Oriental Languages. Weekly timetable for the aspirants of the Imperial Colonial Service. Summer semester 1903 [Berlin] [1903] (print) - Regulation for the officers called in at Reich expense by the High Command of the Schutztruppen to take part in the lectures in the Oriental Seminary (according to the status of 29. semester 1903 [Berlin] [1903] (print) - Regulation for the officers called in at Reich expense by the High Command of the Schutztruppen to take part in the lectures in the Oriental Seminary). June 1903) - Instructions for officers visiting the Oriental Seminar at their own expense with the agreement of the High Command of the Schutztruppen (as of 29 June 1903) - Regulations for officers called in at Reich expense by the A u s w ä r t i g e s A m t , Colonial Department to teach Oriental Languages at the Seminar for Oriental Languages pp. (as at 3 November 1903) - Instructions for officials visiting the Seminar for Oriental Languages at their own expense with the agreement of the Colonial Department of the Federal Foreign Office pp. (as of 3 November 1903).

BArch, R 901 · Fonds · 1867-1945
Part of Federal Archives (Archivtektonik)

History of the Inventor: 1867 Interim assumption of the foreign policy tasks for the North German Confederation by the Prussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; on 1 January 1867, the Prussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs took over the tasks of the North German Confederation. January 1870 Foundation of the Foreign Office of the North German Confederation, 1871 of the German Rei‧ches as a subordinate authority of the Reich Chancellor with the main departments Politics, Han‧delspolitik, Law (from 1885) and News (from 1915); until 1918 at the same time foreign Ver‧tretung Prussia; 1919 appointment of a politically responsible Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs; 1920 extensive reorganization in regional departments and assumption of cultural-political tasks, 1936 dissolution of the regional departments, reintroduction of the departments inventory description: The Foreign Office, which emerged in 1870 from the Royal Prussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the North German Confederation (since 1867), underwent numerous reforms and restructurings during the Bismarck period and the Wilhelminian Empire, the Weimar Republic until the end of the National Socialist dictatorship. old office) comprise only a fraction of the total volume (approx. 1.6 shelf kilometres) from this period. The largest part (about 18 shelf kilometres) of the files remaining after the losses in the final phase of the Second World War is now in the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. In the 1920s, mainly for reasons of space, the Political Archive had deposited most of the local archival material in the Potsdam Reichsarchiv (mainly files of the Imperial Office, the Trade Policy Department and the Legal Department). Together with other holdings, the Reichsarchiv also stored these documents in 1944/45 in the salt mine shafts near Staßfurt (Saxony-Anhalt) to protect them from bombing. Confiscated by the Soviet occupying forces, most of the material was transferred after 1949 to the then German Central Archive Potsdam (later the Central State Archive of the GDR, inventory signature 09.01) via the Ministry for State Security of the GDR in several charges, and after the German division was overcome to the responsibility of the Federal Archive. Residual files of the Trade Policy and Legal Departments (Dept. II and III, 1885-1920), which for official reasons had remained in the Political Archives of the AA and had finally been taken to England after confiscation by the British occupying forces, were recorded by the then Federal Archives after their return to the Federal Republic (1957) in October 1962 under the inventory signature R 85. About 350 file units are currently still in the "Special Archive" at the Russian State Military Archives in Moscow under the ("Fund") stock number 1357. They are described there in 3 finding aids (for further information and contact see www.sonderarchiv.de). The Federal Archives have lent important documents and files to the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin (Auswärtiges Amt, Politisches Archiv, 10117 Berlin; Tel.: 49 (0) 30/5000-3948). They can only be used and evaluated there (see the respective finding aids for further information). Archival evaluation and processing The first archival revision of the volumes took place at the end of the 1950s in what was then the German Central Archive. They were originally described in a total of 44 finding aids from the Reichsarchiv. The file titles of the units of registration recorded in the Potsdam DZA at the time were integrated into the database of the Federal Archives by means of a retroconversion procedure. When processing the data records, numerous corrections were made to the file titles and runtimes. The currently valid archive rules could not always be applied. While maintaining the existing classification, which was predominantly no longer based on the organisational structure of the AA, series or series of bands were formed as required, whereby numerous subordinate series of bands were also created in series. In some cases, the existing factual structure was expanded and supplemented with modern terminology (e.g. legal department). The Potsdam tradition was merged with that of the old Federal Archives in Koblenz (old finding aids for stock R 85, legal department and trade policy department). Characterization of content: Traditional focus Office of the Reich Foreign Minister 1928-1943: Minister's Office and Personal Staff 1928-1944, Personal Press Archive of the Minister 1934-1943 Personnel and Administration Department (incl. Protocol) 1876-1944 [loaned to Political Archive AA] Commercial Policy Department 1869-1920: Exhibition 1875-1920, Service 1885-1914, Railways 1866-1915, Fisheries 1903-1913, Trade, Generalia 1884-1921, Trade, Countries 1868-1920, Foreign Trade 1867-1922, Trade and Shipping, Generalia 1862-1906, Trade and Shipping, Countries 1858-1909, Agriculture 1868-1920, Literature 1847-1917, Marine 1853-1913, Weights and Measures 1911-1920, Medical 1868-1913, Coinage 1867-1913, Minting 1853-1913, Trade, Generalia 1884-1920, Trade, Countries 1868-1909, Agriculture 1868-1920, Trade and Shipping 1847-1917, Marine 1853-1913, Weights and Measures 1911-1920, Medical 1868-1913, Coinage Shipping, Generalia 1887-1914, Inland Navigation, Countries 1907-1913, Shipping, Countries 1844-1913, River Navigation 1869-1913, Telegraphing 1866-1913, Transportation 1890-1920, Insurance 1895-1920, Economics, Generalia 1887-1920, Economics, Countries 1881-1920, Water Management 1907-1913, Customs and Tax, General 1910-1919, Customs and Tax, Countries 1902-1920 Commercial Policy Division 1936-1945: Exhibitions 1936-1943, emigration 1937-1943, railway 1921-1943, finance 1936-1943, fishing 1936-1943, business 1937-1943, health 1937-1942, trade 1936-1945, industry, technology, Trade 1936-1943, Internal Administration of the Länder 1936-1943, Motor Vehicles 1936-1942, Agriculture 1936-1943, Politics 1941-1942, Post, Telegraph and Telephone 1936-1943, Legal 1936-1942, Raw Materials and Goods 1936-1943, Shipping 1936-1943, social policy 1941-1942, taxation 1936-1943, transport 1936-1945, veterinary 1936-1942, roads 1936-1942, economy 1936-1944, customs 1936-1945, trade in war equipment 1936-1944, Handakten 1920-1944, telegram correspondence with the German representations, offices and commercial enterprises 1941-1943 Länderabteilung II und III (1920-1936) [loaned to Political Archive AA] Rechtsabteilung 1858-1945: Emigration, General 1868-1932, Citizenship and Liquidation 1928-1944, Emigration, Countries 1858-1932, International Law Differences 1867-1920, Clergy, School and Abbey Matters 1867-1933, Border Matters 1862-1944, Hand Files 1900-1926, Internal Administration of Individual Countries 1862-1940, Intercessions 1871-1932, Art and Science 1865-1914, Mediatized 1866-1913, Militaria 1869-1942, News 1869-1936, neutrality 1854-1918, passport matters 1816-1932, police matters 1865-1937, postal matters 1829-1932, press 1861-1931, cases, general 1836-1944, cases, countries outside Europe 1869-1936, cases countries Europe 1869-1936, international law 1941-1945, delivery of documents and orders 1937-1945 news and press department 1915-1945: General 1915-1938, war 1914-1921, colonies 1915-1920, head of state 1910-1919, parliaments 1910-1921, state parliaments 1917-1921, imperial government 1916-1924, revolution 1910-1921, League of Nations 1918-1920, parliamentarization and democratization 1918, right to vote 1917-1918, armistice and peace 1914-1923, news about individual countries 1918-1921, news 1914-1921, Business files of the Press Department 1939-1945, German News Office 1940-1943, Interception Service 1942-1943, Foreign Agencies 1942-1945, Own Service 1942-1943, News Material 1933-1945, Press Attachments 1939-1944, Press Archive 1927-1945, Press Information Service 1936-1945, Foreign Information Bodies 1934-1945, Central Office for Foreign Service 1912-1922: Service and business operations 1914-1921, personnel affairs 1912-1921, passport affairs 1917-1920, budget and cash affairs 1914-1922 , relations with institutions and individuals 1914-1920, libraries, publishing houses, bookshops and art dealers 1915-1920, Economic, Political and Military Situation 1915-1920, Propaganda 1914-1921 Department of Cultural Policy 1865-1945 Department of Broadcasting Policy 1939-1945 Department D (Germany) [Liaison Office to the NSDAP] 1939-1943 State of Development: Files from the Personnel and Administration Department and the Country Department were transferred to the Political Archive of the AA as a permanent loan to supplement the holdings there. Citation style: BArch, R 901/...

Federal Foreign Office
Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, VI. HA, Nl Althoff, F. T., Nr. 1051 · File · 1880 - 1908, ohne Datum
Part of Secret State Archive of Prussian Cultural Heritage (Archivtektonik)

Contains: - Bartsch, v., Excellenz, Undersecretary of State, Berlin: Report of his appointment as Undersecretary of State 23 March 1899, his trip to Paris - Madrid 10 April 1898, title "Professor" for Dr. v. Düring 3 July 1900 - Berlepsch, Freiherr Hans Hermann v., Düsseldorf: Participation of industrialists in the solution of social issues 11 September 1885, transmission of the statutes of the "Verein für Gemeinwohl im Lande Bergen" 21 December 1885 - Berseviczy, Albert v., State Secretary, Scheveningen/Netherlands: Acknowledgement for the letters of recommendation sent to him 13.9.1887 - Bitter, v., Excellency: Appointment to Bonn 31.3.1907, Berlin, Draft Budget for the Meteorological Institute 23.5.1885, Congratulation for the appointment to "Excellency" 7.10.1904 - Bötticher, Karl Heinrich v., Exzellenz, Berlin: Repositioning of the Archive Directorate 2.11.1895, 8.7.1897, Naumburg, congratulations on the Order of William 18.11.1906, recommendation for v. Borcke as curator of Göttingen o. D., Frau, Magdeburg, Einladung nach Magdeburg 9.6.1899 - Bonitz, Hermann, Unterstaatssekretär, Berlin: Thanksgiving from Ragaz for the congratulations on his 70th birthday 30.7.1884 - Bosse, Minister, Berlin: Please excuse his absence at the committee (Helmholtz monument) 24.2.1895, Application by Prof. Liesegang as Editor-in-Chief of the Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung 6.6.1898 - Brefeld, Minister, Berlin: Invitation to Lunch 2.7.1884 - Bremen, v., Berlin: Report on Schwartzskoppf's appointment as successor to Kügler, his resignation March 15, 1901 - Budde, Minister of Public Works, Berlin: Invitation to a lecture, with His Majesty 2 February 1903 - Berlepsch, Freiherr v., Minister, Seebach: Recommendation of Privy Councillor Wilhelmi to a national economic professorship 4.7.1897 - Croix, de la, Exzellenz, Berlin: Congratulations, Csáky, Graf, Exzellenz, (Hungarian Minister of Culture), Budapest: Send a work on Hungarian education 28.4.1889 - Dernburg, Exzellenz, Grunewald: Invitation to a car ride to visit the international balloon race 10.10.1906 (missing) - Dulheuer, Geheimer Finanzrat, Berlin: Acknowledgement for the work of Lexis "Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich" 20.8.1904 - Dusch, Alexander v., Privy Councillor, Ministry of Justice, Culture and Education, Karlsruhe: Sending a jubilee letter Heidelberg "Acta saecularia" 24.6.1904 - Dombois, Adolf, Erkelenz: Congratulation on the title "full professor" 30.12.1880 - Dambach, Exzellenz, Berlin (Post): Appointment as "full honorary professor" 16.7.1897 - Delbrück, Ludwig, Berlin: Congratulations for the appointment to "Excellence" 8.10.1904 - Dittmar, Ministerialdirektor, Darmstadt: Recommendation for Dr. Horn from Charlottenburg as mathematician for Königsberg 7.11.1896 - Einem, Karl v., (War Minister), Berlin: Recommendation for the appointment of Dr. Dapper from Kissingen as Professor 18.10.1905 - Eilsberger, Geheimer Oberregierungsrat, Ministry of Education, Berlin: Acknowledgement for the South West Africa Medal 30.3.1908 - Elster, Dr.., Geheimer Oberregierungsrat, Kultusministerium, Berlin: Notification of his appointment as Privy Oberregierungsrat 2.1.1901, Meldung zum Tod (Selbstmord) seines Sohnes Ernst 10.4.1908 - Ernsthausen, v., Your Excellency, Gdansk: Message about an article in the Kreuzzeitung on the founding of the University of Strasbourg 28.2.1883 - Etzdorf, v., Elbing: Acknowledgement for the volume "landwirtschaftliche Verhandlungen 1990" 23.7.1900 - Eichhorn, v., (Federal Foreign Office), Berlin: Conference postponed because of the Oriental Seminary 15.6.1896 (missing), admission of the young priest into a local specimen institute 24.2.1900 (missing) - Foerster, Prof. Wilhelm, Privy Councillor, Director, Observatory, Berlin: degree measurement 29.5.1886, his journey to Neuchâtel 1.6.1886 - Freund, Dr.., Geheimer Oberregierungsrat, Ministry of the Interior, Berlin: Message to celebrate his father's 70th birthday 18.8.1903 - Friedberg, v., Exzellenz, Berlin: Education of the children of Professor v. Savigny 30.3.1890, invitation to lunch 3.9.1892 - Falck, v.., Geheimer Rat, (Liter. Büro), Berlin: Inclusion of political news in the Berlin Correspondence 11.4.1901, Acknowledgement for the kind words for his farewell 13.12.1903 - Fleck, F., Geheimer Rat, Minister of Public Works: Studienfonds für seinen Sohn 19.4.1899, President of the Eisenbahndirektion aus Breslau wegen der Einführung eines neuen Rades an den Eisenbahnwagen 16.10.1882 - Fleischer, Geheimer Rat, Kultusministerium, Berlin: Dankagung für die übersandt Kuchen, Revanche mit Aalen 8.8.1901 (fehlt), Dankagung für den Geburt seiner Tochter 31.12.1902 (missing, congratulations for the appointment to "Excellence" 6.10.1904, invitation to dinner 20.6.1908 - Förster, Geheimer Rat, Kultusministerium, Berlin: Zusammenberufung der erweiterten Wissenschaftlichen Deputation 15.9.1902, article in Grenzbote wegen Geschlechtlicher Abende bei Studentenverbindungen 19.12.1891.

BArch, NS 6 · Fonds · 1933-1945
Part of Federal Archives (Archivtektonik)

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.

BArch, R 601 · Fonds · (1917) 1918 - 1945
Part of Federal Archives (Archivtektonik)

History of the Inventor: Establishment of an office on 12 February 1919 for the processing of the duties assigned to the Reich President by the Constitution as head of state, at the same time official liaison office between the Reich President and the Reich and state authorities; transfer of the powers of the Reich President to the "Reich Chancellor and Führer" Adolf Hitler by the law on the head of state of 1 August 1934; retention of the office of the Reich President and renaming of the office to Präsidialkanzlei by ordinance of 4 September 1934. Inventory description: Inventory history In the 1930s, the office of the Reich President regularly handed over so-called "Weglegesachen" to the Reich Archives, for example in April 1932 and March/April 1935. However, the registry, which was still ready for handing over in 1944, with processes up to 1934, no longer reached the Reich Archives. In 1944, the archives already kept in the Reichsarchiv Potsdam were transferred to the galleries of Staßfurt and Schönebeck a.d.Elbe. The office of the presidential chancellery and the current registry were maintained at the end of the war in Kleßheim Castle near Salzburg. In 1942/1943 Schloss Kleßheim had been lavishly refurbished as the guest house of the presidential chancellery and the Führer for special purposes. After the capitulation of the German Reich and the occupation by the Allies, the archive holdings fell into their hands. For the files of the presidential chancellery, this meant, in accordance with the territorial division of the occupation zones, that the documents from the tunnels in Staßfurt and Schönebeck a.d.Elbe were largely transported to the USSR, and that the service records at Schloss Kleßheim were under American administration. During the Berlin blockade of 1948/49, the ministerial holdings subsequently brought together in the western sectors of Berlin were transferred to Whaddon Hall in Buckinghamshire and jointly administered by the Foreign Office of the United Kingdom and the American State Department. File returns from the Soviet Union to the GDR began in the mid-1950s. As part of the most extensive restitution campaign, the files of the Presidential Chancellery were transferred to the German Central Archive Potsdam (DZA) in 1959 and stored here under the signature 06.01. The holdings were supplemented in 1963 by further additions that had previously been assigned to the Reich Chancellery. At the same time, the files from American and English administration were transferred from the archive in Whaddon Hall to the Federal Archives in Koblenz. The inventory signature was R 54. After the unification of the two German states and the takeover of the Central State Archives of the GDR (ZStA) by the Federal Archives, the partial inventories were merged and are now stored in Berlin with the inventory signature R 601. 2,536 transactions from the NS archive of the MfS were incorporated during the current processing, the third comprehensive addition. After the repatriation of the files from the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1950s, the MfS also took over documents in order to expand and build up a personal collection for "operative" purposes. As a consequence, the concentration on individual persons, i.e. the person-related filing, meant the destruction of the historical context in which the tradition originated, as files and processes were torn apart or reformed. In autumn 1989 the archive came under the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR (MdI) and thus of the Central State Archive of the GDR. After its transfer to the Federal Archives and its provisional use in the 1990s, comprehensive IT-supported indexing began in 2001. At the Centre for the Preservation of Historical Documentary Collections, formerly the Central State Archives Special Archive Moscow, there are still 53 file units from the period 1921-1944 as Fund 1413 in the Centre for the Preservation of Historical Documentary Collections. These are "...above all files on the awarding of the Ostmark Medal (12 volumes, 1938 - 1943), Police Service Award (3 volumes, 1938 - 1943), and the.., 1942) and other awards (4 vols.), among others to railway workers in the Eastern territories, furthermore individual political reports (2 vols., 1935 - 1937) and documents on the representation at the London Disarmament Conference (1933), the discontinuation of proceedings for maltreatment of prisoners (1935 - 1936), racial and population policy (1935 - 1936) as well as a list of employees (1942 - 1943)". In the course of processing, the inventory was supplemented by files that had been proposed for cassation at an earlier date, but were returned to the inventory due to requests for use. These are files from Department B (Domestic Policy), Title XV, support given by the Reich President of Hindenburg to corporations and individuals, but above all for the purpose of assuming honorary sponsorships - inventory adjustments between the holdings R 43 Reich Chancellery, R 1501 Reich Ministry of the Interior and with the Central Party Archives of the SED The volumes with the previous signatures 1499 to 1502 were the provenance adjutant of the Wehrmacht to the Führer and Reich Chancellor. It was handed over to the Department of Military Archives in Freiburg/ Breisgau and assigned to the holdings RW 8. R 2 Reich Ministry of Finance R 43 Reich Chancellery R 2301 Court of Audit of the German Reich N 429 Paul von Hindenburg Estate NS 3 Economic and Administrative Main Office NS 6 Party Chancellery of the NSDAP Foundation Reichpräsident-Friedrich-Ebert Memorial, Heidelberg Archive of Social Democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, Bonn Zentrum für die Aufbewahrung historisch-dokumentarischer Sammlungen (formerly Zentrales Staatsarchiv Sonderarchiv Moskau) Fonds 1413 Archivische Bewertung und Bearbeitung A first finding aid book on the files of the presidential chancellery was produced in the German Central Archive Potsdam in 1960. The 1,213 volumes of files were broken down by administrative structure and provisionally recorded. In 1967 the provisional indexing took place in the Federal Archives in Koblenz and in 1981 the submission of a finding aid book to the 241 volumes under the stock signature R 54. After the consolidation of the partial stocks from Potsdam and Koblenz a complete finding aid book was submitted in 1998. At the end of 2008, the database-supported revision of the finding aid book and the incorporation of 2538 files with the provenance Presidential Chancellery from the NS archive of the MfS began. The present archival records are composed of files in their original order of origin, partly with the original file covers and in the predominant number of individual folders comprising only a few sheets. The stock grew from 1,581 files by 933 signatures to a total of 2,547 files. The majority of these are personal transactions such as appointments and dismissals of civil servants and awards of orders. However, it was possible to supplement the volume series with two fact files from the years 1926 and 1927 both chronologically and verifiably on the basis of the diary numbers with volumes 8 and 9. The five-volume series in connection with Paul von Hindenburg's honorary membership is a complete complement. The current processing, including classification, was based on the registry order already used in the previous finding aid: Department A (Internal Affairs) Department B (Internal Policy) Department C (Foreign Policy) Department D (Military Policy) Department E (Not documented) Department O (Chancellery of the Order) Citation BArch R 601/1... Content characterization: Internal affairs of the presidential chancellery 1919-1945 (56): Correspondence with other authorities, rules of procedure of the Reich government, of Ministe‧rien and of the Reich Representation of the NSDAP 1924-1943 (8); organization, personnel, cash and budget matters of the presidential chancellery, private correspondence of Staatsmini‧ster Dr. Otto Meissner 1919-1945 (48); domestic policy 1919-1945 (939): Constitution 1919-1936 (19), Reich President 1919-1939 (190), Reich Government 1919-1936 (23), Legislation 1919-1936 (24), Civil Service 1919-1943 (109), Departments of the Reich Ministry of Labor 1919-1943 (46), Peripheral Areas of the Reich (Saar, Eastern Provinces), including Eastern Aid, Revolutionary Movements, Press, Police and Technical Emergency Aid, Disputes between Princes, Holidays and constitutional celebrations 1919-1945 (42), ministries of the Reich Ministry of Finance 1919-1944 (40), ministries of the Reich Ministry of Justice 1919-1942 (35), church, cultural and health services 1919-1944 (20), Economic and financial policy 1919-1944 (21), economic policy 1919-1944 (40), transport 1919-1943 (26), Disposi‧tionsfonds and donations 1919-1940 (292), Prussia 1919-1937 (5), Bavaria 1919-1936 (15); Foreign Policy 1919-1945 (143): Treaty of Versailles and its implementation 1919-1940 (39), international organizations and treaties 1919-1944 (26), Foreign Office 1921-1945 (2), intergovernmental agreements 1919-1944 (64), cultural relations with foreign countries 1920-1944 (4), foreign policy situation, weekly reports of the Foreign Office 1920-1933 (8); military policy 1919-1939 (48): Military Legislation and Policy 1919-1934 (39), Submitted Writings and Books 1928-1932 (1), Adjutant of the Wehrmacht to the Führer and Reich Chancellor 1934-1939 (4), Prisen‧ordnung 1939-1941 (1), Civil Air Defence 1927-1938 (2), Reich Labour Service 1935-1941 (1); Order Chancellery 1935-1945 (237): Management of orders and decorations 1935-1944 (3), service awards 1937-1945 (102), decorations 1939-1945 (43), decorations on certain occasions 1937-1944 (43), acceptance of foreign titles, orders and decorations by Germans 1941-1944 (6), war awards 1939-1944 (34), trade with orders and decorations 1941-1944 (6); Miscellaneous (congratulations) 1935-1944 (65); Letter diaries 1942 (1) State of development: Findbuch 2011 Citation method: BArch, R 601/...

BArch, R 43-I · Fonds · 1919-1945
Part of Federal Archives (Archivtektonik)

History of the Inventory Designer: The Constitution of the German Reich of 16 April 1871, as well as the Constitution of the North German Confederation of 1867, contained no more detailed provisions on the design of the Reich Administration. Only the Reich Chancellor was the only responsible minister of the German Reich with constitutional rank. How he should fulfil his duties and tasks, on the other hand, remained largely undefined and left to the concrete will of the respective office holder. Because of this constitutional indeterminacy, the Reich level of the administration of the German Empire was bound to the character of the improvised and sometimes also the unstable until the end of the German Empire. At first it actually seemed as if Bismarck, as the only minister of the Reich, wanted to work with only one central, unified administrative authority. The Federal Chancellery, on whose organisation its later President Rudolf Delbrück had exerted considerable influence, began its work in 1867 as the office of the Federal Chancellor and was continued in the expansion of the North German Confederation into the German Reich under the name of the Reich Chancellery. The responsibilities of the Office were comprehensive and included the function of an office for the standing committees of the Federal Council, the handling of the revenues and expenditures of the Confederation and the preparation of the presidential bills. With the foundation of the German Reich, the Imperial Chancellery also took over the direct administration of the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine and the Reichseisenbahnen. Karl Hofmann, the President of the Reich Chancellery, was instructed by decree of 6 August 1877 to prepare for the creation of a special office which would take care of all the affairs of the Reich Chancellor for which he had "previously used forces of the Foreign Office for spatial reasons". Hofmann's submission of 29 Nov. 1877 then also provided for the establishment of such a central office under the designation "Special Office of the Reich Chancellor", but placed this office in the budget of the Reich Chancellery. However, Hofmann did not succeed in this attempt to fortify the position of his office again. Although Bismarck agreed with Hofmann's proposals concerning the internal organisation and salary classification of the staff in his new office, he changed the name of the new post to "Centralbureau" on the basis of his own hand. More important than this change in the nomenclature, however, was the fact that Bismarck, by decree of 16 December 1877, called on Hofmann to draw up a special budget for an independent authority not incorporated into the Imperial Chancellery. The draft of a "Budget for the Imperial Chancellor and his Central Office for the Budget Year 1878/79" provided funds for the salaries of a speaking council, an expediting secretary, a clerical secretary and a clerical servant. The new authority was to take its seat in the former Palais Radziwill in Wilhelmstraße 77; the Imperial Chancellor was also to move into an official residence there. Bismarck requested with Immediatbericht of 16 May 1878 from Wilhelm I. the permission for the constitution of the new office, which should be called Reich Chancellery, because this designation might correspond "most exactly to the position and the tasks of the same". Christoph von Tiedemann, who had been Bismarck's closest collaborator since 1876 and was therefore familiar with the habits of the Reich Chancellor to the best of his ability, became head of the Reich Chancellery. Under his leadership, the Reich Chancellery actually developed into a political relay station in the centre of the political decision-making structure, whose function was also recognised by the State Secretaries of the Reich Offices. Under constitutional law, the Reich Chancellery was never more than the office of the Reich Chancellor, which "had to mediate the official dealings of the latter with the heads of the individual departments". The office character is expressed not least in the official rank of the head of the Reich Chancellery and the very limited staff until the end of the imperial era. It was not until 1907 that the head of the Reich Chancellery was elevated to the rank of Undersecretary of State and thus placed on an equal footing with the senior officials of the Reich Offices. Although the number of employees grew from originally four in 1878 to 19 in 1908 and continued to rise to 25 in 1918 due to the requirements of the First World War, the Reich Chancellery never even came close to the number of staff of a Reich Office. The private and representative affairs of the Reich Chancellor were handled by the special office of the Reich Chancellor, which continued to reside in the Foreign Office even after the establishment of the Reich Chancellery. With the beginning of the First World War, a joint branch office of the Reich Chancellery and the Foreign Office was established at the Great Headquarters under the name "Formation Reichskanzler und Auswärtiges Amt". This branch existed until the end of the war. A permanent representative was here to represent the interests of the Reich Chancellor when he was in Berlin. In the Reich Chancellery, on the other hand, the Undersecretary of State ran the business if the Reich Chancellor was in the headquarters. In February 1917 a permanent representative of the Reich Chancellor was installed at the Supreme Army Command in order to get a better grip on the continuing disagreements between Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and the 3rd Supreme Army Command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. His task was to keep the Supreme Army Command constantly informed about the policy of the Reich Administration. With the forced abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II and the resignation of Reich Chancellor Max von Baden, business was transferred to the Council of People's Representatives on 11 Nov. 1918, which temporarily exercised the function of an imperial government until the government of Philipp Scheidemann took office on 19 February 1919. From 9 November 1918 to 3 March 1919, the head of the Reich Chancellery was the journalist Curt Baake. After the Weimar parliamentary democracy was established, the position of the Reich Chancellor also changed, as did that of the Reich Chancellery. While the Imperial Chancellor was no longer the only Imperial Minister, as he was in the Empire, he, as Chairman of the Imperial Government, determined the political guidelines in accordance with Articles 55 and 56 of the Imperial Constitution, through which he was able to exert a decisive influence on the fate of the Empire. His authority to issue directives was, of course, restricted by constitutional law and political practice to a considerable extent, for it had to be brought into line politically with the powers of other organs provided for in the Reich Constitution. These were less the Reichsrat, which as a permanent conference of delegates of the state governments had only limited powers in the field of legislation and administration and whose significance cannot be compared with that of the Bundesrat of the Kaiserreich, than the other two constitutional organs: Reichstag and Reichspräsident. With the change of the position of the Reich Chancellor in the Weimar Republic, the tasks of the Reich Chancellery also increased. The Reich Chancellery remained, as in the imperial period, the office of the Reich Chancellor for his dealings with the constitutional organs, now the Reich President, the Reichstag, the Reich Council and the individual Reich Ministers. The State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery took part in the cabinet meetings, informed the Reich Chancellor about the current fundamental issues of politics as a whole, accompanied him at all important conferences in Germany and abroad, observed the formation of opinion in parliament, the press, coordinated legislative work with the Reich parties on his behalf, and gave a lecture to the Reich Chancellor himself. The Reich Chancellery was also represented by a member in the above-mentioned intergroup meetings, in which the most important decisions of the Cabinet were discussed in advance with the party and parliamentary group leaders. She made sure that, despite the constant tensions in the constantly changing coalitions, the objective work of the Reich's departments continued. he preparation of the collegiate decisions and the reliable monitoring of their implementation, two of the Reich Chancellery's main tasks, was of particular importance in this respect. The necessary consequence of these increased tasks was an increase in the number of departments in the Reich Chancellery from three (as of 1910) to eight (as of 1927) and in the number of civil servants from 20 before the outbreak of the First World War. Formally, the Reich Chancellery had various offices attached to it, which were either directly subordinated to it, such as the Reich Headquarters for Homeland Service, or under the direct control of the Reich Chancellor. When, after the death of the Reich President von Hindenburg, the Reich Chancellor took over the powers and rights of the head of state of the German Reich by the Law of August 1, 1934 - including the supreme command of the Wehrmacht - and thus united the office of Reich President with the office of Reich Chancellor in his person, this also had an effect on his relationship with the Reich government. As head of state, Hitler had the right to appoint and dismiss the Reich Ministers without having to wait for the proposal of the Reich Chancellor, as the Reich President had done. The Reichsminister were therefore completely dependent on him. According to the Reich Law of 16 October 1934 on the Oath of the Reich Ministers and Members of the State Governments, the formula of which was later also incorporated into the German Civil Servants Law of 26 January 1937, they were obliged to loyalty and obedience to him. The Führer principle of the NSDAP now also applied to the Reich government, whose members the "Führer und Reichskanzler," as Hitler was called after the decree to the Reich Minister of the Interior of August 2, 1934, only had to advise in inner-German dealings, but were now also legally obliged to submit to his will in case of a dissenting opinion. This meant that the Reichskabinett was no longer a decision-making body in which the Reich Chancellor could possibly have been majorized, but rather a "Führerrat", which only had to advise the head of government. It was planned to also fix this changed position of the Reich Chancellor vis-à-vis the Reich government in law, an intention which, at Hitler's request, was postponed in the cabinet meeting of 26 January 1937, particularly with regard to foreign countries, until the creation of a new Basic Law. The above-mentioned concentration of state tasks on the Führer and Reich Chancellor naturally also had an effect on the responsibilities of the Reich Chancellery. Thus, for example, the Enabling Act already brought about a certain increase in tasks for them, because the laws passed by the Reich government were no longer to be drawn up and promulgated by the Reich President, but by the Reich Chancellor, and the fewest laws were still passed in the ordinary legislative process, through the Reichstag, but went the second legislative process described above, or were passed as Führer decrees or ordinances - without the participation of the Cabinet. The strengthened position of the head of the Reich Chancellery was conspicuous externally in the fact that the documents of government laws signed by Hitler and co-signed by the participating Reich Minister now always also bore the co-signature of the Reich Minister and head of the Reich Chancellery, who thus assumed responsibility for the proper course of the legislative process. After the establishment of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich at the end of August 1939, the signature of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich was also necessary in second place behind that of Hitler. In addition, the head of the Reich Chancellery also signed all the Führer decrees with legislative content and, if necessary - which never occurred - the Reichstag laws and the laws enacted on the basis of the "Volksgesetzgebung" (People's Legislation). The increasing workload of Hitler, who in addition to the powers of the Reich Chancellor and the Reich President also exercised supreme command over the Wehrmacht, meant that the cabinet meetings gradually ceased. In addition, the Reich Chancellor, who could no longer be informed by the Reich Ministers united in the cabinet about the completion of individual tasks in the departments, was increasingly dependent on information from the head of the Reich Chancellery. The task of selecting from the wealth of information supplied and processed those suitable for presentation to the Reich Chancellor and of deciding whether Hitler's intervention in certain matters appeared necessary was therefore the responsibility of the head of the Reich Chancellery, who granted him another key position in the leadership apparatus of the state civilian sector. The Reichsminister also had the opportunity to give individual lectures directly to the Reich Chancellor. But Hitler also made less and less use of this, so that the head of the Reich Chancellery practically advised him alone, which strengthened his position vis-à-vis the specialist ministers, who tried in vain to reach certain agreements among themselves through private meetings, especially towards the end of the war. The office of the Reich President, renamed "Präsidialkanzlei" and renamed "Präsidialkanzlei des Führers und Reichskanzlers" by decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor of 1 December 1937, remained responsible for the handling of all matters concerning the head of state even after the merger of the offices of the Reich President and the Reich Chancellor.B. the preparation of ceremonial receptions of foreign heads of state, princes and statesmen, the receipt of letters of attestation and recall from foreign diplomats, congratulations and condolences from the head of state, the processing of petitions in matters of grace and the entire title and religious order system. On the other hand, the political affairs in which, in addition to the decision of the Reich government, the decision of the head of the Reich was also necessary, were now taken care of by the Reich Chancellery, as was the preparation of political decisions, which up to then had to be made by the head of state, such as the enactment of organizational decrees, which were now the sole responsibility of the Reich Chancellery. Although the documents of appointment and dismissal for the higher Reich officials were still to be submitted to Hitler for execution by the office of the head of state, i.e. now by the head of the presidential chancellery, the responsible ministers and the Reich Chancellery were responsible for the factual and political preparation. Inventory description: Inventory history The day after the Reich Chancellery was established, on 19 May 1878, the expediting secretary in the Foreign Office, Hans Rudolf Sachse, who shortly afterwards began his service as a registrar in the new Reich authority, presented the draft of a registry order for the Reich Chancellery to the lecturing council of Tiedemann. His "basic features for the book and file keeping at the Reich Chancellery" were obviously based on the experience of the Foreign Office's records administration. The records were initially stored loosely in shelves in the registry, probably lying from the outset in the provided and already inscribed file covers. If a file unit had reached a thickness of 2 - 3 cm, it was provided with a linen back and another dust jacket and formed into a tape by means of thread stitching. This organisation of written records proved to be sufficient and practicable for a long series of years. With the gradual further development of the functions and activities of the Reich Chancellery, and as a result of the development of constitutional law and administrative organization in the Reich and in the federal states, however, it had to appear in need of change over time. At the turn of the century it was therefore decided to introduce a more differentiated file system, which came into force on 1 January 1900. The state's new beginning on 13 February 1919, the day on which Cabinet Scheidemann took office, brought a continuous cut in the registry of the Reich Chancellery. The entire file inventory was transferred to the old filing system and new files were created. The 30th of January meant a noticeable, but not sharp cut in the records administration of the Reich Chancellery. In order to start a new filing layer on this day, numerous files were removed from the current filing system, stapled and repositioned in the old filing system. They were replaced by new volumes. However, this only happened if the running band was filled to some extent anyway; if this was not the case, it was continued. In any case, the band counting began again with the number 1, although the series from the Weimar period continued seamlessly. The file structure, however, was left unchanged, and thread-stitching generally remained the same; standing files were used for the first time only for newly created series. In addition to the files kept in the registry, other records were also handed down by the fact that the Reich Chancellors and senior officials of the Reich Chancellery did not have handwritten records, personal papers, and a large part of their private correspondence filed in the registry, but as a rule kept them in their offices. It was not uncommon for such documents to be taken along when leaving office. Thus the estates of the Reich Chancellors Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Bülow, Hertling and Luther as well as of the chiefs of the Reich Chancellery Rottenburg and Pünder, which are kept in the Federal Archives, almost regularly contain official or semi-official documents in addition to private records, which have arisen from the exercise of official functions. The fact that the files of the Lammers Minister's Office have remained in the inventory is a consequence of their joint outsourcing with the inventory towards the end of the Second World War. In other cases, files of Reich Chancellors and senior officials with material on specific issues, with documents for conferences, meetings, etc., were handed over to the registry for safekeeping as soon as they were no longer needed and assigned to the relevant subject series as supplements. As a result, such hand files are scattered over the inventory, e.g. the hand files for the series "Execution of the Peace Treaty, Reparations" in the group "Foreign Affairs". The secret files of the Reich Chancellery formed another complex of documents separate from the registry holdings, the content, scope and structure of which unfortunately are not known in detail. According to the information available in the Federal Archives, they were probably burned before the end of the war by members of the Reich Chancellery in accordance with the decree of the Reich Minister of the Interior to the Reich Defence Commissioners of 12 October 1944 concerning "Behaviour of the Authorities in the Event of Enemy Occupation"[85] Individual fragments of secret files, which probably accidentally escaped annihilation and were in the inventory, were listed in the present find book at the end of the section "Files of the Minister's Office". In Potsdam, with a few exceptions, there are those old files of the Reich Chancellery from the period 1878 - 1919 which had been removed from the current registry in mid-February 1919 and deposited in an old file file. The Reichsarchiv had only been able to take it over in 1937 or 1938, after earlier efforts in vain. Only the old files of the service administration, including the personnel files, remained in the Authority. During the Second World War, the holdings of the Reich Archives, together with other archival materials, were moved to the Staßfurt salt mine near Magdeburg, where they fell into the hands of the Red Army in 1945. It was taken to the Soviet Union and 10 years later, in July 1955, handed over to the German Central Archive (renamed the "Central State Archive of the GDR" in 1973) in Potsdam. There it formed the inventory 07. 01. The inventory division into four departments was retained. In addition to the former Reichsarchiv holdings, the Central State Archives also kept about 800 individual records of the registry from the years 1933 - 1945, which were presumably found in the Wilhelmstraße office building. The majority of the Reichskanzleiakten from the years 1919 - 1945 as well as the old files of the office administration had been in Berlin only until the last phase of the war. As the situation in and around Berlin worsened, they were relocated to southern Germany, where they were confiscated by American troops in 1945. Via the Ministerial Collecting Center in Hessisch-Lichtenau and Fürstenhagen near Kassel, the central collection point for all material found by the Americans in their occupation zone[90], they reached the Berlin Documents Unit at the beginning of 1946. Here they - like other German files stored there - were evaluated for investigations against leading personalities from the state, the party and other areas of public life in preparation for war crimes trials. During the Berlin blockade in the summer of 1948, the files united in the Documents Unit were transferred to Whaddon Hall near Bletchley in the southern English county of Buckinghamshire. The files of the Reich Chancellery were stored there until 1958 and were provisionally arranged, recorded and selected for filming. In addition to the tradition of the Federal Foreign Office, which is primarily relevant, they also served as the basis for the edition of files on German foreign policy, which was initially edited exclusively by Anglo-Saxon and French historians. These files finally reached the Federal Archives in two transports in December 1958 and January 1959, a remainder at the end of April 1959. Here they form the listed holdings R 43 I, II. Archivische Bearbeitung During the provisional arrangement and indexing of the files of the Reich Chancellery from the years 1919 - 1945 in Whaddon Hall, the editors proceeded from two partial holdings. One of them essentially covered the tradition of the Weimar period, the other mainly the files from the period after 30 January 1933; they were briefly referred to as the "Old" and "New" Reich Chancelleries. As mentioned above, this division had already taken place in January/February 1933 in the Reich Chancellery and had been maintained during the relocation of the files during the war and after their confiscation. In the course of the processing, it was refrained from restoring the consistent arrangement of the file groups in both partial holdings, e.g. according to the alphabet of the group titles as they had existed in the registry of the Reich Chancellery. Only the registry connections within the groups that were presumably largely lost due to frequent relocations of the holdings were taken into account, whereby errors and mistakes were often made due to a lack of familiarity with the registry relationships and the file management of the Reich Chancellery. Nevertheless, it was possible to restore the mass of files to their original order with the help of the old signatures and tape numbers. Less satisfactorily, the classification of the not insignificant remnant of the tradition was resolved, which consisted of files of the minister's office, hand files of officials, secret file fragments, volumes with collections of circulars, circulars and press cuttings, registration aids, etc. Materials of this kind came to various places, especially at the end of both parts of the stock. In each part of the collection, the volumes were numbered consecutively. The distortion was also differentiated between the two partial stocks. The sequential number, the old signature and the runtime were included as formal specifications. In order to identify the contents of the file, the serial title was taken from the inscription of the file as the subject of the thread-stitched volumes, i.e. above all the files of the older part. In the case of standing folders, on the other hand, the titles of the individual transactions were entered in the list, as far as Rotuli was available with the corresponding information, and the subject series title was usually dispensed with. As a result, two very different lists were drawn up in terms of their degree of resolution. In the Federal Archives, these directories served for a long time as exclusive finding aids. This meant that the division into two parts, R 43 I (Old Reich Chancellery) and R 43 II (New Reich Chancellery), was retained. The consecutive numbering carried out in Waddon Hall also remained unchanged, since the files had already frequently been quoted in scientific publications afterwards. For conservation reasons, however, the documents stored in standing files and folders had to be transferred to archive folders; as a rule, two or three or sometimes more volumes were formed from the contents of one folder. This was necessary in order to separate files from various subject series that had been united in the Reich Chancellery and to form handy, not too extensive volumes. The volumes formed from the documents of a standing file, however, retained its serial number and were distinguished by the addition of letters (a, b, c, etc.). Within the volumes, the delimitation of the processes from each other, which had previously been recognizable by filing them in hanging binders, was marked by the insertion of separator sheets. On the other hand it turned out that 84 volumes from R 43 I and 205 volumes from R 43 II could not be separated and destroyed. The largest part (125 volumes) concerned the administration of the Aid Fund and the Disposition Fund of the Reich Chancellor; it consisted of individual files on the acceptance and use of donations from private sources, on the granting or refusal of support, other donations or gifts of honour to private individuals, associations and federations in emergencies, birthdays, anniversaries, events and on the occasion of the assumption of honorary sponsorships by the Reich Chancellor. The corresponding activity of the Reich Chancellery is already documented by several series in the groups "Reich Chancellor" and "Welfare" as well as by a number of files of the minister's office. The second largest group of documents collected (about 120 volumes) were files of the service administration. They mainly contained cash documents, invoices and receipts, company offers, correspondence with individual companies about deliveries and services for the Reich Chancellery as well as irrelevant documents about various house matters. The rest of the non-archival material consisted of volumes with multiple traditions and collections of official printed matter, in a few cases volumes containing only individual transmission letters. Finally, 44 volumes with documents of foreign provenances were removed from the holdings and assigned to other holdings, in some cases also to places outside the house. The majority of the documents are from the Community of Student Associations, which Reichsminister Dr. Lammers managed and whose business he had led through his office. Details are given in the Annex. The maps and plans, which were taken from the files for conservation reasons, were combined in the map archive to an independent group "Plan R 43 II". These are in particular planning breaks for the new building from the years 1943 ff. They are indexed by a separate index. The holdings of the Central State Archives (07.01) and the Federal Archives (R 43) were merged into holdings R 43 following the merger of the two archives in 1990. For the files of the Reich Chancellery from the years 1919 to 1945, a publication index was available since 1984, which also takes into account the files of this epoch kept in the Central State Archives until 1990. For the files of the "Old Reich Chancellery" (1878-1919), the Central State Archives had a finding aid book that had already been compiled in the Reich Archives. State of development: finding aids: publication find book (1984); online find book citation method: BArch, R 43-I/...

BArch, R 43 · Fonds · (1862) 1878-1945
Part of Federal Archives (Archivtektonik)

History of the Inventory Designer: The Constitution of the German Reich of 16 April 1871, as well as the Constitution of the North German Confederation of 1867, contained no more detailed provisions on the design of the Reich Administration. Only the Reich Chancellor was the only responsible minister of the German Reich with constitutional rank. How he should fulfil his duties and tasks, on the other hand, remained largely undefined and left to the concrete will of the respective office holder. Because of this constitutional indeterminacy, the Reich level of the administration of the German Empire was bound to the character of the improvised and sometimes also the unstable until the end of the German Empire. At first it actually seemed as if Bismarck, as the only minister of the Reich, wanted to work with only one central, unified administrative authority. The Federal Chancellery, on whose organisation its later President Rudolf Delbrück had exerted considerable influence, began its work in 1867 as the office of the Federal Chancellor and was continued in the expansion of the North German Confederation into the German Reich under the name of the Reich Chancellery. The responsibilities of the Office were comprehensive and included the function of an office for the standing committees of the Federal Council, the handling of the revenues and expenditures of the Confederation and the preparation of the presidential bills. With the foundation of the German Reich, the Imperial Chancellery also took over the direct administration of the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine and the Reichseisenbahnen. Karl Hofmann, the President of the Reich Chancellery, was instructed by decree of 6 August 1877 to prepare for the creation of a special office which would take care of all the affairs of the Reich Chancellor for which he had "previously used forces of the Foreign Office for spatial reasons". Hofmann's submission of 29 Nov. 1877 then also provided for the establishment of such a central office under the designation "Special Office of the Reich Chancellor", but placed this office in the budget of the Reich Chancellery. However, Hofmann did not succeed in this attempt to fortify the position of his office again. Although Bismarck agreed with Hofmann's proposals concerning the internal organisation and salary classification of the staff in his new office, he changed the name of the new post to "Centralbureau" on the basis of his own hand. More important than this change in the nomenclature, however, was the fact that Bismarck, by decree of 16 December 1877, called on Hofmann to draw up a special budget for an independent authority not incorporated into the Imperial Chancellery. The draft of a "Budget for the Imperial Chancellor and his Central Office for the Budget Year 1878/79" provided funds for the salaries of a speaking council, an expediting secretary, a clerical secretary and a clerical servant. The new authority was to take its seat in the former Palais Radziwill in Wilhelmstraße 77; the Imperial Chancellor was also to move into an official residence there. Bismarck requested with Immediatbericht of 16 May 1878 from Wilhelm I. the permission for the constitution of the new office, which should be called Reich Chancellery, because this designation might correspond "most exactly to the position and the tasks of the same". Christoph von Tiedemann, who had been Bismarck's closest collaborator since 1876 and was therefore familiar with the habits of the Reich Chancellor to the best of his ability, became head of the Reich Chancellery. Under his leadership, the Reich Chancellery actually developed into a political relay station in the centre of the political decision-making structure, whose function was also recognised by the State Secretaries of the Reich Offices. Under constitutional law, the Reich Chancellery was never more than the office of the Reich Chancellor, which "had to mediate the official dealings of the latter with the heads of the individual departments". The office character is expressed not least in the official rank of the head of the Reich Chancellery and the very limited staff until the end of the imperial era. It was not until 1907 that the head of the Reich Chancellery was elevated to the rank of Undersecretary of State and thus placed on an equal footing with the senior officials of the Reich Offices. Although the number of employees grew from originally four in 1878 to 19 in 1908 and continued to rise to 25 in 1918 due to the requirements of the First World War, the Reich Chancellery never even came close to the number of staff of a Reich Office. The private and representative affairs of the Reich Chancellor were handled by the special office of the Reich Chancellor, which continued to reside in the Foreign Office even after the establishment of the Reich Chancellery. With the beginning of the First World War, a joint branch office of the Reich Chancellery and the Foreign Office was established at the Great Headquarters under the name "Formation Reichskanzler und Auswärtiges Amt". This branch existed until the end of the war. A permanent representative was here to represent the interests of the Reich Chancellor when he was in Berlin. In the Reich Chancellery, on the other hand, the Undersecretary of State ran the business if the Reich Chancellor was in the headquarters. In February 1917 a permanent representative of the Reich Chancellor was installed at the Supreme Army Command in order to get a better grip on the continuing disagreements between Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and the 3rd Supreme Army Command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. His task was to keep the Supreme Army Command constantly informed about the policy of the Reich Administration. With the forced abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II and the resignation of Reich Chancellor Max von Baden, business was transferred to the Council of People's Representatives on 11 Nov. 1918, which temporarily exercised the function of an imperial government until the government of Philipp Scheidemann took office on 19 February 1919. From 9 November 1918 to 3 March 1919, the head of the Reich Chancellery was the journalist Curt Baake. After the Weimar parliamentary democracy was established, the position of the Reich Chancellor also changed, as did that of the Reich Chancellery. While the Imperial Chancellor was no longer the only Imperial Minister, as he was in the Empire, he, as Chairman of the Imperial Government, determined the political guidelines in accordance with Articles 55 and 56 of the Imperial Constitution, through which he was able to exert a decisive influence on the fate of the Empire. His authority to issue directives was, of course, restricted by constitutional law and political practice to a considerable extent, for it had to be brought into line politically with the powers of other organs provided for in the Reich Constitution. These were less the Reichsrat, which as a permanent conference of delegates of the state governments had only limited powers in the field of legislation and administration and whose significance cannot be compared with that of the Bundesrat of the Kaiserreich, than the other two constitutional organs: Reichstag and Reichspräsident. With the change of the position of the Reich Chancellor in the Weimar Republic, the tasks of the Reich Chancellery also increased. The Reich Chancellery remained, as in the imperial period, the office of the Reich Chancellor for his dealings with the constitutional organs, now the Reich President, the Reichstag, the Reich Council and the individual Reich Ministers. The State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery took part in the cabinet meetings, informed the Reich Chancellor about the current fundamental issues of politics as a whole, accompanied him at all important conferences in Germany and abroad, observed the formation of opinion in parliament, the press, coordinated legislative work with the Reich parties on his behalf, and gave a lecture to the Reich Chancellor himself. The Reich Chancellery was also represented by a member in the above-mentioned intergroup meetings, in which the most important decisions of the Cabinet were discussed in advance with the party and parliamentary group leaders. She made sure that, despite the constant tensions in the constantly changing coalitions, the objective work of the Reich's departments continued. he preparation of the collegiate decisions and the reliable monitoring of their implementation, two of the Reich Chancellery's main tasks, was of particular importance in this respect. The necessary consequence of these increased tasks was an increase in the number of departments in the Reich Chancellery from three (as of 1910) to eight (as of 1927) and in the number of civil servants from 20 before the outbreak of the First World War. Formally, the Reich Chancellery had various offices attached to it, which were either directly subordinated to it, such as the Reich Headquarters for Homeland Service, or under the direct control of the Reich Chancellor. When, after the death of the Reich President von Hindenburg, the Reich Chancellor took over the powers and rights of the head of state of the German Reich by the Law of August 1, 1934 - including the supreme command of the Wehrmacht - and thus united the office of Reich President with the office of Reich Chancellor in his person, this also had an effect on his relationship with the Reich government. As head of state, Hitler had the right to appoint and dismiss the Reich Ministers without having to wait for the proposal of the Reich Chancellor, as the Reich President had done. The Reichsminister were therefore completely dependent on him. According to the Reich Law of 16 October 1934 on the Oath of the Reich Ministers and Members of the State Governments, the formula of which was later also incorporated into the German Civil Servants Law of 26 January 1937, they were obliged to loyalty and obedience to him. The Führer principle of the NSDAP now also applied to the Reich government, whose members the "Führer und Reichskanzler," as Hitler was called after the decree to the Reich Minister of the Interior of August 2, 1934, only had to advise in inner-German dealings, but were now also legally obliged to submit to his will in case of a dissenting opinion. This meant that the Reichskabinett was no longer a decision-making body in which the Reich Chancellor could possibly have been majorized, but rather a "Führerrat", which only had to advise the head of government. It was planned to also fix this changed position of the Reich Chancellor vis-à-vis the Reich government in law, an intention which, at Hitler's request, was postponed in the cabinet meeting of 26 January 1937, particularly with regard to foreign countries, until the creation of a new Basic Law. The above-mentioned concentration of state tasks on the Führer and Reich Chancellor naturally also had an effect on the responsibilities of the Reich Chancellery. Thus, for example, the Enabling Act already brought about a certain increase in tasks for them, because the laws passed by the Reich government were no longer to be drawn up and promulgated by the Reich President, but by the Reich Chancellor, and the fewest laws were still passed in the ordinary legislative process, through the Reichstag, but went the second legislative process described above, or were passed as Führer decrees or ordinances - without the participation of the Cabinet. The strengthened position of the head of the Reich Chancellery was conspicuous externally in the fact that the documents of government laws signed by Hitler and co-signed by the participating Reich Minister now always also bore the co-signature of the Reich Minister and head of the Reich Chancellery, who thus assumed responsibility for the proper course of the legislative process. After the establishment of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich at the end of August 1939, the signature of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich was also necessary in second place behind that of Hitler. In addition, the head of the Reich Chancellery also signed all the Führer decrees with legislative content and, if necessary - which never occurred - the Reichstag laws and the laws enacted on the basis of the "Volksgesetzgebung" (People's Legislation). The increasing workload of Hitler, who in addition to the powers of the Reich Chancellor and the Reich President also exercised supreme command over the Wehrmacht, meant that the cabinet meetings gradually ceased. In addition, the Reich Chancellor, who could no longer be informed by the Reich Ministers united in the cabinet about the completion of individual tasks in the departments, was increasingly dependent on information from the head of the Reich Chancellery. The task of selecting from the wealth of information supplied and processed those suitable for presentation to the Reich Chancellor and of deciding whether Hitler's intervention in certain matters appeared necessary was therefore the responsibility of the head of the Reich Chancellery, who granted him another key position in the leadership apparatus of the state civilian sector. The Reichsminister also had the opportunity to give individual lectures directly to the Reich Chancellor. But Hitler also made less and less use of this, so that the head of the Reich Chancellery practically advised him alone, which strengthened his position vis-à-vis the specialist ministers, who tried in vain to reach certain agreements among themselves through private meetings, especially towards the end of the war. The office of the Reich President, renamed "Präsidialkanzlei" and renamed "Präsidialkanzlei des Führers und Reichskanzlers" by decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor of 1 December 1937, remained responsible for the handling of all matters concerning the head of state even after the merger of the offices of the Reich President and the Reich Chancellor.B. the preparation of ceremonial receptions of foreign heads of state, princes and statesmen, the receipt of letters of attestation and recall from foreign diplomats, congratulations and condolences from the head of state, the processing of petitions in matters of grace and the entire title and religious order system. On the other hand, the political affairs in which, in addition to the decision of the Reich government, the decision of the head of the Reich was also necessary, were now taken care of by the Reich Chancellery, as was the preparation of political decisions, which up to then had to be made by the head of state, such as the enactment of organizational decrees, which were now the sole responsibility of the Reich Chancellery. Although the documents of appointment and dismissal for the higher Reich officials were still to be submitted to Hitler for execution by the office of the head of state, i.e. now by the head of the presidential chancellery, the responsible ministers and the Reich Chancellery were responsible for the factual and political preparation. Inventory description: Inventory history The day after the Reich Chancellery was established, on 19 May 1878, the expediting secretary in the Foreign Office, Hans Rudolf Sachse, who shortly afterwards began his service as a registrar in the new Reich authority, presented the draft of a registry order for the Reich Chancellery to the lecturing council of Tiedemann. His "basic features for the book and file keeping at the Reich Chancellery" were obviously based on the experience of the Foreign Office's records administration. The records were initially stored loosely in shelves in the registry, probably lying from the outset in the provided and already inscribed file covers. If a file unit had reached a thickness of 2 - 3 cm, it was provided with a linen back and another dust jacket and formed into a tape by means of thread stitching. This organisation of written records proved to be sufficient and practicable for a long series of years. With the gradual further development of the functions and activities of the Reich Chancellery, and as a result of the development of constitutional law and administrative organization in the Reich and in the federal states, however, it had to appear in need of change over time. At the turn of the century it was therefore decided to introduce a more differentiated file system, which came into force on 1 January 1900. The state's new beginning on 13 February 1919, the day on which Cabinet Scheidemann took office, brought a continuous cut in the registry of the Reich Chancellery. The entire file inventory was transferred to the old filing system and new files were created. The 30th of January meant a noticeable, but not sharp cut in the records administration of the Reich Chancellery. In order to start a new filing layer on this day, numerous files were removed from the current filing system, stapled and repositioned in the old filing system. They were replaced by new volumes. However, this only happened if the running band was filled to some extent anyway; if this was not the case, it was continued. In any case, the band counting began again with the number 1, although the series from the Weimar period continued seamlessly. The file structure, however, was left unchanged, and thread-stitching generally remained the same; standing files were used for the first time only for newly created series. In addition to the files kept in the registry, other records were also handed down by the fact that the Reich Chancellors and senior officials of the Reich Chancellery did not have handwritten records, personal papers, and a large part of their private correspondence filed in the registry, but as a rule kept them in their offices. It was not uncommon for such documents to be taken along when leaving office. Thus the estates of the Reich Chancellors Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Bülow, Hertling and Luther as well as of the chiefs of the Reich Chancellery Rottenburg and Pünder, which are kept in the Federal Archives, almost regularly contain official or semi-official documents in addition to private records, which have arisen from the exercise of official functions. The fact that the files of the Lammers Minister's Office have remained in the inventory is a consequence of their joint outsourcing with the inventory towards the end of the Second World War. In other cases, files of Reich Chancellors and senior officials with material on specific issues, with documents for conferences, meetings, etc., were handed over to the registry for safekeeping as soon as they were no longer needed and assigned to the relevant subject series as supplements. As a result, such hand files are scattered over the inventory, e.g. the hand files for the series "Execution of the Peace Treaty, Reparations" in the group "Foreign Affairs". The secret files of the Reich Chancellery formed another complex of documents separate from the registry holdings, the content, scope and structure of which unfortunately are not known in detail. According to the information available in the Federal Archives, they were probably burned before the end of the war by members of the Reich Chancellery in accordance with the decree of the Reich Minister of the Interior to the Reich Defence Commissioners of 12 October 1944 concerning "Behaviour of the Authorities in the Event of Enemy Occupation"[85] Individual fragments of secret files, which probably accidentally escaped annihilation and were in the inventory, were listed in the present find book at the end of the section "Files of the Minister's Office". In Potsdam, with a few exceptions, there are those old files of the Reich Chancellery from the period 1878 - 1919 which had been removed from the current registry in mid-February 1919 and deposited in an old file file. The Reichsarchiv had only been able to take it over in 1937 or 1938, after earlier efforts in vain. Only the old files of the service administration, including the personnel files, remained in the Authority. During the Second World War, the holdings of the Reich Archives, together with other archival materials, were moved to the Staßfurt salt mine near Magdeburg, where they fell into the hands of the Red Army in 1945. It was taken to the Soviet Union and 10 years later, in July 1955, handed over to the German Central Archive (renamed the "Central State Archive of the GDR" in 1973) in Potsdam. There it formed the inventory 07. 01. The inventory division into four departments was retained. In addition to the former Reichsarchiv holdings, the Central State Archives also kept about 800 individual records of the registry from the years 1933 - 1945, which were presumably found in the Wilhelmstraße office building. The majority of the Reichskanzleiakten from the years 1919 - 1945 as well as the old files of the office administration had been in Berlin only until the last phase of the war. As the situation in and around Berlin worsened, they were relocated to southern Germany, where they were confiscated by American troops in 1945. Via the Ministerial Collecting Center in Hessisch-Lichtenau and Fürstenhagen near Kassel, the central collection point for all material found by the Americans in their occupation zone[90], they reached the Berlin Documents Unit at the beginning of 1946. Here they - like other German files stored there - were evaluated for investigations against leading personalities from the state, the party and other areas of public life in preparation for war crimes trials. During the Berlin blockade in the summer of 1948, the files united in the Documents Unit were transferred to Whaddon Hall near Bletchley in the southern English county of Buckinghamshire. The files of the Reich Chancellery were stored there until 1958 and were provisionally arranged, recorded and selected for filming. In addition to the tradition of the Federal Foreign Office, which is primarily relevant, they also served as the basis for the edition of files on German foreign policy, which was initially edited exclusively by Anglo-Saxon and French historians. These files finally reached the Federal Archives in two transports in December 1958 and January 1959, a remainder at the end of April 1959. Here they form the listed holdings R 43 I, II. Archivische Bearbeitung During the provisional arrangement and indexing of the files of the Reich Chancellery from the years 1919 - 1945 in Whaddon Hall, the editors proceeded from two partial holdings. One of them essentially covered the tradition of the Weimar period, the other mainly the files from the period after 30 January 1933; they were briefly referred to as the "Old" and "New" Reich Chancelleries. As mentioned above, this division had already taken place in January/February 1933 in the Reich Chancellery and had been maintained during the relocation of the files during the war and after their confiscation. In the course of the processing, it was refrained from restoring the consistent arrangement of the file groups in both partial holdings, e.g. according to the alphabet of the group titles as they had existed in the registry of the Reich Chancellery. Only the registry connections within the groups that were presumably largely lost due to frequent relocations of the holdings were taken into account, whereby errors and mistakes were often made due to a lack of familiarity with the registry relationships and the file management of the Reich Chancellery. Nevertheless, it was possible to restore the mass of files to their original order with the help of the old signatures and tape numbers. Less satisfactorily, the classification of the not insignificant remnant of the tradition was resolved, which consisted of files of the minister's office, hand files of officials, secret file fragments, volumes with collections of circulars, circulars and press cuttings, registration aids, etc. Materials of this kind came to various places, especially at the end of both parts of the stock. In each part of the collection, the volumes were numbered consecutively. The distortion was also differentiated between the two partial stocks. The sequential number, the old signature and the runtime were included as formal specifications. In order to identify the contents of the file, the serial title was taken from the inscription of the file as the subject of the thread-stitched volumes, i.e. above all the files of the older part. In the case of standing folders, on the other hand, the titles of the individual transactions were entered in the list, as far as Rotuli was available with the corresponding information, and the subject series title was usually dispensed with. As a result, two very different lists were drawn up in terms of their degree of resolution. In the Federal Archives, these directories served for a long time as exclusive finding aids. This meant that the division into two parts, R 43 I (Old Reich Chancellery) and R 43 II (New Reich Chancellery), was retained. The consecutive numbering carried out in Waddon Hall also remained unchanged, since the files had already frequently been quoted in scientific publications afterwards. For conservation reasons, however, the documents stored in standing files and folders had to be transferred to archive folders; as a rule, two or three or sometimes more volumes were formed from the contents of one folder. This was necessary in order to separate files from various subject series that had been united in the Reich Chancellery and to form handy, not too extensive volumes. The volumes formed from the documents of a standing file, however, retained its serial number and were distinguished by the addition of letters (a, b, c, etc.). Within the volumes, the delimitation of the processes from each other, which had previously been recognizable by filing them in hanging binders, was marked by the insertion of separator sheets. On the other hand it turned out that 84 volumes from R 43 I and 205 volumes from R 43 II could not be separated and destroyed. The largest part (125 volumes) concerned the administration of the Aid Fund and the Disposition Fund of the Reich Chancellor; it consisted of individual files on the acceptance and use of donations from private sources, on the granting or refusal of support, other donations or gifts of honour to private individuals, associations and federations in emergencies, birthdays, anniversaries, events and on the occasion of the assumption of honorary sponsorships by the Reich Chancellor. The corresponding activity of the Reich Chancellery is already documented by several series in the groups "Reich Chancellor" and "Welfare" as well as by a number of files of the minister's office. The second largest group of documents collected (about 120 volumes) were files of the service administration. They mainly contained cash documents, invoices and receipts, company offers, correspondence with individual companies about deliveries and services for the Reich Chancellery as well as irrelevant documents about various house matters. The rest of the non-archival material consisted of volumes with multiple traditions and collections of official printed matter, in a few cases volumes containing only individual transmission letters. Finally, 44 volumes with documents of foreign provenances were removed from the holdings and assigned to other holdings, in some cases also to places outside the house. The majority of the documents are from the Community of Student Associations, which Reichsminister Dr. Lammers managed and whose business he had led through his office. Details are given in the Annex. The maps and plans, which were taken from the files for conservation reasons, were combined in the map archive to an independent group "Plan R 43 II". These are in particular planning breaks for the new building from the years 1943 ff. They are indexed by a separate index. The holdings of the Central State Archives (07.01) and the Federal Archives (R 43) were merged into holdings R 43 following the merger of the two archives in 1990. For the files of the Reich Chancellery from the years 1919 to 1945, a publication index was available since 1984, which also takes into account the files of this epoch kept in the Central State Archives until 1990. For the files of the "Old Reich Chancellery" (1878-1919), the Central State Archives had a finding aid book that had already been compiled in the Reich Archives. In addition to the files of the "old" Reich Chancellery from the years 1878 - 1918 described since January 2005 with an online find book (editor: Mr. Hollmann), those of the so-called "new" Reich Chancellery for the years 1919 - 1945 were also added in September 2006 (editor: Simone Walther). Because of the recording of the approx. 10,000 archive units in three different signature systems or partial inventories at that time, there were some database-technical peculiarities to consider. A re-signing of the microfilmed files for easier integration as closed holdings in the database of the Federal Archives was out of the question for various archival reasons. The units of description (files) identified with various text programs in the 1984 Publication Findbuch were imported into the database using a retroco-version procedure. Three so-called partial or secondary stocks were created, which differ from each other by their signature system. In the earlier distortion, the editors formed tape series or series that very often consisted of two or three of the "partial stocks". In the database, however, it is technically not possible to create such a tape or series across all stocks. The presentation of the series and volume series in the now available online finding aid required the relatively time-consuming "manual" merging of the various parts of a volume sequence in the cross-folder classification scheme (classification). In such a volume series, the volume sequence title appears repeatedly within the volume sequence before the volume or the volumes from another "partial stock". Since the creation of series, partly with additional subordinate volume sequences from different partial stocks, was just as impossible to implement, the corresponding information was partly recorded in supplementary classification points. As a rule, however, the structure handed down in the Publication Findbuch has been retained and the units of description have been classified according to their order. In the course of the processing, the signatures displayed incorrectly or incompletely in the printed finding aids could be corrected. A revision of the directory data according to the now valid archive rules did not seem to be necessary due to the very high effort involved. Minor corrections were made to the titles. Dates in titles that did not belong directly to the title were moved from there to the differentiated runtime field. Citation style: BArch, R 43/...

BArch, R 55 · Fonds · 1920-1945
Part of Federal Archives (Archivtektonik)

History of the inventor: Joseph Goebbels, who had already been head of the NSDAP's Reich Propaganda Department since 1929, had certainly developed plans for a Ministry of Propaganda even before the seizure of power.(1) The Reichskabinett (Reich Cabinet) dealt with the issue of the Propaganda Department on 11 September. The arguments for the foundation, which the Reich Chancellor (Hitler) himself presented, sounded extremely harmless ex post and far from future realities: "One of the predominant tasks of this ministry would be the preparation of important acts of government. On the oil and fat issue, for example, which now occupies the cabinet, the people should be enlightened in the direction that the farmer would perish if something were not done to improve the sale of his products. The importance of this matter also for the war measures would have to be pointed out ..." Government action would only begin if the awareness-raising work had taken place and worked for some time. ..."(2) On 16 March 1933, however, Goebbels described the future tasks of his ministry programmatically three days after his appointment in a remarkably open manner in front of press representatives: "If this government is now determined never to give way again, never and under no circumstances, then it need not make use of the dead power of the bayonet, then in the long run it will not be able to be satisfied with knowing 52 percent behind it ..., but it will have to see its next task in winning the remaining 48 percent for itself. This is not only possible through objective work". And about the nature of his propaganda he proclaimed: "Not any aesthete can judge the methods of propaganda. A binding judgment can only be given on the basis of success. For propaganda is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.(3) A timid attempt by Hugenberg to at least delay the decision to establish the Ministry of Propaganda in the cabinet meeting of March 11, 1933 failed miserably. Already on 13 March 1933 the law on the establishment of the RMVP was signed by the Reich President and the "writer" Dr. Goebbels was appointed minister.(4) Almost three weeks later, on 5 April 1933, Goebbels noted in his diary: "The organisation of the ministry is finished".(5) In difficult negotiations(6) with the ministries, which had to cede parts of their competences to the new ministry, the responsibilities were determined in detail. The RMVP was responsible for all tasks relating to intellectual influence on the nation, advertising for the state, culture and economy, informing the domestic and foreign public about them, and the administration of all institutions serving these purposes. As a result, the business area of the RMVP will be: 1. from the business area of the Federal Foreign Office: News and education abroad, art, art exhibitions, film and sports abroad. 2. From the RMI division: General Domestic Enlightenment, Hochschule für Politik, introduction and celebration of national holidays and celebration of national holidays with the participation of the RMI, press (with Institute for Newspaper Science), radio, national anthem, German Library in Leipzig, art (but without art-historical institute in Florence, copyright protection for works of literature and art, directory of nationally valuable works of art, German-Austrian Convention on the Export of Art, Protection of Works of Art and Monuments, Protection and Maintenance of Landscape and Natural Monuments, Nature Parks, Preservation of Buildings of Special Historical Importance, Preservation of National Monuments, Verband Deutscher Vereine für Volkskunde, Reich Memorial), Music Conservation, including the Philharmonic Orchestra, Theatre Matters, Cinema, Combating Trash and Dirt 3. From the business areas of the Reich Ministry of Economics and the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture: Economic Advertising, Exhibitions, Trade Fairs and Advertising 4. From the business areas of the Reich Ministry of Posts and the Reich Ministry of Transportation: Traffic Advertising Furthermore, all radio matters dealt with by the Reich Ministry of Posts and the Reich Ministry of Transportation are transferred from the business area of the Reich Ministry of Posts, unless they concern the technical administration outside the premises of the Reich Broadcasting Company and the radio companies. In matters of technical administration, the RMVP shall be involved to the extent necessary to carry out its own tasks, in particular in determining the conditions for the awarding of broadcasting rights and the regulation of fees. In particular, the representation of the Reich in the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft and the broadcasting companies is fully transferred to the RMVP. The RMVP is in charge of all tasks, including legislation, in the designated areas. The general principles shall apply to the participation of the other Reich Ministers." (RGBl. 1933 I, p. 449) These competences were exercised by seven departments, so that the business distribution plan of 1 Oct. 1933 (7) shows the following picture: Ministerial office (with five employees), directly subordinated to the Minister. State Secretary, at the same time Head of Press of the Reich Government I. Administration and Law with one main office Administration, three departments as well as the registry II. Propaganda with 10 departments 1. Positive world view propaganda, shaping in state life, press photography 2. Jewish question, foundation for victims of work, Versailles treaty, national literature, publishing etc. 3. Demonstrations and regional organisation 4. Opposing world views 5. German University of Politics 6. Youth and sports issues 7. Economic and social policy 8. Agricultural and eastern issues 9. Transport 10. Public health III. Broadcasting with three sections 1. Broadcasting 2. Political and cultural affairs of broadcasting 3. Organisation and administrative issues of German broadcasting IV. Press, simultaneously press department of the Reich government with eleven papers V. Film with three papers VI. Theatre, music and art with three papers VII. Defence (defence against lies at home and abroad) with eight papers Goebbels was obviously not satisfied with the official title of his ministry. The extensive tasks in the fields of culture and the arts did not come into their own and the word propaganda, of which he was aware, had a "bitter aftertaste" (8). His proposal to rename his department "Reichsministerium für Kultur und Volksaufklärung", however, met with Hitler's rejection. (9) In July 1933, a circular issued by the Reich Chancellor drew the attention of the Reich governors to the exclusive competence of the Reich or of the new Ministry for the above-mentioned competences and called on them to cede to the RMVP any existing budget funds and offices of the Länder. (10) At the same time, 13 regional offices were established as the substructure of the Ministry, the sprinkles of which corresponded approximately to those of the regional employment offices, and 18 imperial propaganda offices, which subdivided the territory of the regional offices once again. After the Reichspropagandastellen were already converted after short time (approx. 1934) to Landesstellen, in each Gau of the NSDAP a Landesstelle of the RMVP was located. Their leaders were in personal union at the same time leaders of the Gaupropagandaleitungen of the NSDAP, which in its leadership, the Reichspropagandalleitung, was also perceived by Goebbels in personal union. (11) As a result, conflicts of loyalty between the Gaupropaganda leaders/leaders of the RMVP regional offices were unavoidable in disputes between Goebbels and individual Gauleiters. According to theory, the regional offices were supposed to monitor and implement the political decisions made in the ministry in the individual districts, but in practice their heads were often more dependent on their respective Gauleiter than on the ministry due to the above-mentioned personal union. By the Führer decree of 9 September 1937 (RGBl. 1937 I, p. 1009), the Landesstellen were renamed Reichspropagandaämter and elevated to Reich authorities. After the integration of Austria there were no less than 42 Reichspropagandaämter with 1400 full-time employees. (12) In addition to the state offices and Reich Propaganda Offices, a whole range of offices, organizations, associations, societies and societies soon developed, which are to be counted to the subordinate area of the Ministry. (13) Despite the apparently clear regulation on the responsibilities of the RMVP, the 13 years of its existence were marked by disputes over responsibilities with other ministries, in particular with the ministers Rust, Rosenberg and Ribbentrop, of whom Goebbels, as is known, held very little personally. Successes and failures in the competence disputes cannot be followed in detail here; they depended to a large extent on Hitler's relationship with Goebbels. For example, Goebbels did not succeed in extending his competence in theatre to the Prussian State Theatres in Berlin. By contrast, in 1943 the RMVP assumed responsibility for carrying out the Eastern propaganda, while Rosenberg, as Reich Minister for the occupied Eastern territories, was left with only the authority to issue guidelines. (14) In the conflict with the Federal Foreign Office over the delimitation of responsibilities for foreign propaganda, an arrangement was reached in a working agreement in October 1941. (15) Wehrmacht propaganda also remained long and controversial. Despite many efforts (16), Goebbels did not succeed in making a decisive break in the competencies of the OKW/Wpr department until the end of the war in March 1945. Propaganda into the Wehrmacht and about the Wehrmacht at home and abroad was then to be taken in charge by the RMVP. It is not possible to determine whether the planned organizational consequences have yet been implemented. (17) Another major success for Goebbels was the establishment of the Reichsinspektion für zivile Luftschutzmaßnahmen (Reich Inspection for Civilian Air Defence Measures), which was headed by the RMVP (18), and his appointment as Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War Operations by Führer Decree of 25 July 1944 (19). For the last months of the Third Reich, Goebbels had reached the zenith of power with this function, apart from his appointment as Reich Chancellor in Hitler's last will and testament of April 29, 1945, which had become effective only theoretically. As Reich Plenipotentiary for the total deployment in war, he had extremely far-reaching powers over the entire state apparatus with the exception of the Wehrmacht. (20) Until that date, the competences of the RMVP had changed only slightly in the main features of all disputes over jurisdiction. That it nevertheless grew enormously and steadily until 1943 (21) was mainly due to diversification and intensification in the performance of its tasks. After 1938, the expansive foreign policy of the Third Reich necessitated further propaganda agencies to direct and influence public opinion in the incorporated and occupied territories. In the occupied territories with civil administrations, "departments" (main departments) for "popular enlightenment and propaganda" were usually set up in the territories with military administration, "propaganda departments", which exercised roughly the functions of the Reich Propaganda Offices. Their position between their superior military services and the RMVP, which sought to influence the content of the propaganda and from where part of the personnel came, was a constant source of conflict. As an indication for the weighting of the individual areas of responsibility of the Ministry in relation to each other, the expenditures for the individual areas in the 10 years from March 1933 to March 1943 are mentioned. With a total volume of 881,541,376.78 RM (22), the expenses for the Active propaganda: 21.8 Communications: 17.8 Music, visual arts, literature: 6.2 Film: 11.5 Theatres: 26.4 Civil servants and equipment: 4.3 Salaries, business needs, including film testing agencies and RPÄ: 12.0 By 1942, the RMVP and its division had been continuously expanded, before facilities in the subordinate area were shut down and departments in the ministry were merged as part of the total war from 1943 onwards. The business distribution plan of Nov. 1942 was as follows: (23) Ministerial Office, reporting directly to the Minister with adjutants, personal advisers and press officers of the Minister, a total of 10 employees State Secretaries Leopold Gutterer, Reich Press Head Dr. Otto Dietrich, Hermann Esser Budget Department (H) with 11 departments; reporting to the Head of the Department, the Main Office and the House Administration Personnel Department (Pers) with seven departments Legal and Organisation Department (R) with three departments Propaganda Department (Pro) with the following ten departments: 1. Political Propaganda 2. Cultural Propaganda 3. Propaganda Exploration 4. Public Health, Social Policy 5. Economy 6. Imperial Propaganda Offices 7. Major Events 8. Youth and Sports 9. Representation 10. Budget of the Department, Preparation of the Peace Treaties, Stagma and other Press Department of the Imperial Government I. Department German Press (DP) with 13 Speeches II. Foreign Press Department (AP) with 19 papers III. Journal Press Department /ZP) with five papers Foreign Press Department (A) with the following five groups: 1. Organization 2. Europe and Middle East 3. Non-European 4. Propaganda Media 5. Deployment abroad and in the Reich Tourism Department (FV) with four units Broadcasting Department (Rfk) with the following eight units 1. Coordination, Interradio and others 2. Broadcasting Command Office 3. Mob Department 4. Broadcasting Programme Support 5. Foreign Broadcasting 6. Broadcasting Industry 7. Broadcasting Organisation 8. Rundfunk-Erkundungsdienst Filmabteilung (F) with five departments Schrifttumsabteilung (S ) with eight departments Theaterabteilung (T) with seven departments Bildende Kunst (BK) with four departments Musik-Abteilung (M) with ten departments Reichsverteidigung (RV) with six departments Abteilung für die besetztischen Ostgebiete (Ost) with twelve departments Generalreferate with State Secretary Gutterer directly subordinated: 1. Exhibitions and Fairs 2nd General Cultural Department (General Cultural Department for the Reich Capital) 3rd General Department for Reich Chamber of Culture Matters 4th Technology (propaganda, radio, film, sound, stage, press, service installations of the RMVP) Press Recording Office for the PK reports of the Press Department of the Reich Government (directly subordinated to the Reich Press Head) A major change in this distribution of responsibilities took place in September 1944 (24). The art departments of theatre, music and visual arts were dissolved and merged into a single department of culture (cult). The East Department was integrated into the Propaganda Department as a main department, the Tourism Department was shut down and the General Departments of the Reich Cultural Chamber, Armaments and Construction and Propaganda Troops were dissolved. Notes (1) J. Goebbels: Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, p. 28. (2) R 43 II/1149, p. 5, excerpt from the minutes of the ministerial meeting of 11 March 1933. (3) R 43 II/1149, pp. 25 - 29, wording of Goebbels' speech of 16 March 1933 according to W. T. B. (4) R 43 II/1149, RGBl. 1933 I, p. 104 (5) J. Goebbels: Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, p. 293 (6) In an elaboration presumably by Goebbels on a "Reichskommissariat für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda" to be created (R 43 II/1149, pp. 49 - 53) further competences had been demanded. In particular, additional responsibilities were demanded of the German section of the RMI and section VI of the AA, as well as in foreign propaganda. (7) R 43 II/1449, pp. 126 - 133. Heiber gives a diagram of the organisational development of the RMVP at department level with the names of the department heads on the inside of the cover of his Goebbels biography. (8) See speech to representatives of the press on the tasks of the RMVP of 16 March 1933 in R 43 II/1149. It was not without reason that there was a language regulation for the press according to which the term propaganda was to be used only in a positive sense (R 55/1410, Decree of the RMVP to the RPA Nuremberg, 8 Nov. 1940). (9) R 43 II/1149, p. 169, Note by Lammers of 9 May 1934 on a lecture to the Reich Chancellor. (10) R 43 II/1149. (11) After the establishment of the Reichskulturkammer organization, they were also state cultural administrators in the substructure of the RKK. (12) Boelcke, Kriegspropaganda, p. 185. (13) Ebendort, p. 136 ff. there are hints for some institutions. (14) The Führer's order concerning the delimitation of responsibilities dated 15 Aug. 1943, cf. R 55/1435, 1390. (15) Boelcke, Kriegspropaganda, p. 126/127. (16) Lochner, Joseph Goebbels, p. 334, p. 442. (17) R 55/618, p. 123; cf. also the depiction of Hasso v. Wedel, the propaganda troops of the German Wehrmacht. Neckargemünd 1962, Die Wehrmacht im Kampf, vol. 34 (18) Führer decree of Dec. 21, 1943, R 55/441 (19) RGBl. 1944, p. 161, R 43 II/664 a. (20) This competence is virtually not reflected in the RMVP files available in the BA. However, it is well documented in R 43 II. See R 43 II/664 a. (21) See the annual budget negotiations on increasing the number of posts in R 2/4752 - 4762. (22) R 55/862, Statistical overview of monetary transactions. Accordingly, 88,5 % of the expenditure was covered by the licence fee. It remains unclear whether the old budgetary expenditure has been taken into account. (23) R 55/1314 According to this schedule of responsibilities, the files held in the Federal Archives were essentially classified. (24) Newsletter of 13 Sept. 1944 in R 55/441. Inventory description: Inventory history The RMVP records have suffered substantial losses, although the main building of the Ministry, the Ordenspalais am Wilhelmplatz, was destroyed relatively late and almost accidentally in March 1945. Large parts of the old registries, including the previous files from the Federal Foreign Office and the Reich Ministry of the Interior (1), had already been destroyed by air raids in 1944. Moreover, in the last days of the war before and during the conquest of Berlin by the Soviet Russian army, files were also systematically destroyed. (2) In view of the total collapse and devastation of Berlin by the air war, it is not surprising that hardly any manual or private files of RMVP employees have been handed down. Notable exceptions are, in particular, documents from Ministerialrat Bade (press department) (3) and hand files of the head of the broadcasting department, Ministerialdirigent Fritzsche. In this context, the diaries of Goebbels should also be mentioned, which, with the exception of those edited by Lochner in 1948, had been lost for almost 30 years. (4) The bulk of the volumes available in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz until 1996 was transferred from Alexandria (cf. Guide No. 22) and from the Berlin Document Center to the Bundesarchiv in the years 1959 - 1963. The personnel files still held back were added to the portfolio in 2007. The RMVP files kept by the Ministry of State Security of the GDR (mainly personnel files, personnel processes of the theatre, music and defence departments), which were stored in the so-called NS archive until 2006, are also assigned to the holdings. Not in Allied hands was only a small collection from the Music Department and some documents from the German Press Department, which were transferred to the Federal Archives in 1969 as part of the land consolidation with the Secret State Archives of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Some original RMVP files can still be found at the Hoover Institution Standford, the Yivo Institute New York and the Wiener Library London. Fortunately, all three institutions were willing to produce microfilms for the Federal Archives (5). In 1974, the Rijksinstitut voor Oologsdocumentatie Amsterdam (Rijksinstitut for Oologsdocumentatie Amsterdam) kindly handed over some original fragments of files to the Federal Archives. In 1946, officers of the French and Soviet secret services found films of about 35,000 documents that had been filmed in the RMVP and buried near Potsdam at the end of the war with the help of an American mine detector (6). The films were taken to Paris to make re-enlargements of them, and it is possible that they will still be kept in the French secret service. The Americans apparently did not receive copies because they had withheld from the French documents of other provenance found in the CSSR. Only incomplete information is available about the content of the films; it can be assumed, however, that not exactly unimportant files have been filmed. Notes (1) Only a few handfiles and a few volumes on the promotion of music have survived. (2) Files of the Reichsfilmarchiv that had been moved to Grasleben/Helmstedt were even to be destroyed by agents of the RSHA when they threatened to fall into the hands of the English (cf. R 55/618). (3) Cf. Kl. Erw. 615, which is a selection of the bath papers from the time around 1933 in the Hoover library. (4) Frankfurter Allgemeine, 21 Nov. 1974, reader's letter. Insignificant fragments from Goebbels' estate from his student days can be found in the Federal Archives under the signature Kl. Erw. 254. (5) A collection of newspaper clippings concerning Goebbels in the amount of 82 Bde for the years 1931 - 1943 was not filmed at the Yivo-Institut. (6) See the documents in: National Archives Washington, RG 260 OMGUS 35/35 folder 19. Archival processing The order and indexing work on the holdings was relatively time-consuming and difficult, as the order of the files was extremely poor. On the one hand there were no detailed file plans or other registry aids for the mass of files from the budget and personnel departments, on the other hand the file management in the ministry, which at least in its development phase was always deliberately unbureaucratic, left a lot to be desired. Especially during the war, when inexperienced auxiliaries had to be used more and more during the war, the Ministry's staff often complained about the inadequacy of the registries. The organisation of the RMVP's records management showed typical features of office reform (1): Registries were kept on a departmental basis, with each registry having a "self-contained partial list of files". The documents were stored in standing folders (System Herdegen). Instead of a diary, an alphabetical mailing card was kept, separated according to authorities and private persons. The reference numbers consisted of the department letter, file number, date as well as an indication, on which card of an order file the procedure was seized. All in all, the files of the Budget and Human Resources Department were in a certain, albeit unsatisfactory, state of order when they entered the Federal Archives. Numerous volumes from the other departments, on the other hand, were formed in a chaotic manner, possibly as a result of a provisional recording of loose written material when it was confiscated. These were often amorphous and fragmentary materials that lacked the characteristics of organically grown writing. So it was practically impossible to form meaningful band units in all subjects. In the case of some "mixed volumes" with written material on numerous file numbers, only the most frequent ones were noted in the finding aid book. Due to the high loss of files, no strict evaluation standard was applied to the files. The main items collected were volumes from the budget department on preliminary checks in the subordinate area and individual procedures for the procurement and management of managed goods for the purposes of the Ministry. Formal records of non-compliant positions in the business division and a number of unarchivalable documents from the Human Resources Department will still be kept for the foreseeable future for the purpose of issuing service time statements. It is not listed in this guide. Preparatory work for the indexing of the Koblenz part of the stock was carried out by Mr. Oberarchivrat Regel (1967) with regard to the files of the budget department on the Reich's own film assets, Mr. Ltd. Archivdirektor Dr. Boberach (1966) with regard to correspondence and the reference files of the head of the broadcasting department, Hans Fritzsche and Ms. Archivoberinspektorin Schneider, née Fisch (1966) for files of the propaganda department. In 2005, the inventories of the finding aids of both sections of the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda were imported into the database of the Federal Archives via a retroconversion procedure. The data records were then combined in a classification. Despite the inhomogeneity of the traditions of most specialist departments, it was advisable to maintain the division by departments. (2) Within the departments, the structure was essentially based on file numbers and factual contexts. The file numbers used in the RMVP were - as far as possible - used as aids for further subdivision. The final step was the integration of the personnel files and personal documents from the NS archive (approx. 5000 individual transactions) and the former Berlin Document Center (approx. 700 transactions). The documents taken over are mainly documents from the personnel department (in addition to personnel files also questionnaires and index cards), theatre (applications, appointments, confirmation procedures) and imperial defence (applications in propaganda companies). The personal records also contain isolated documents on denazification from the period 1946-1950. Since a relatively large number of individual transactions from the NS archives were often only a few sheets, transactions that objectively related to one transaction (e.g. applications for interpreting) were merged into one file. The names of the individual persons as well as the old signatures from the NS archive can still be traced via the BASYS-P database. Both the files from the NS archive and those from the former BDC are not always filed according to the provenance principle. However, the files were not separated again. Most of the files taken over from the former BDC are personal files and questionnaires as well as personnel index cards of individual employees of broadcasting stations. A search is still possible via the BASYS-P database. The procedures for the donation "Artist's thanks" still present in the personal records of the former BDC concerning the Theatre Department were not adopted in this context (approx. 15,000 procedures). The names are entered in the BASYS-P database and can be searched there. Notes (1) Rules of Procedure and Registration of 8 May 1942 in R 55/ 618. (2) The structure of the business distribution plan of Nov. 1942 was used as a basis. Abbreviations AA = Federal Foreign Office Department A = Department Abroad AP = Foreign Press BDC = Berlin Document Center BdS = Commander of the Security Police ChdZ = Chief of the Civil Administration DAF = German Labour Front DASD = German Amateur Broadcasting Service e.V. DNB = Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro DRK = Deutsches Rotes Kreuz Dt. = Deutsch DVO = Durchführungsverordnung french = French Gestapo = Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt KdF = Kraft durch Freude KdG = Kommandeur der Gendarmerie KdS = Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei Kl. Erw. Small acquisition KLV = Kinderlandverschickung LG = District Court MA = Military Archives, Department of the Federal Archives MdR = Member of the Reichstag MinRat = Ministerialrat MdL = Member of the Landtag NDR = Norddeutscher Rundfunk NSV = National Socialist Volkswohlfahrt o. Az. = without file number or date = without date OKW = Oberkommando der Wehrmacht OLG = Oberstes Landesgericht OLT = Oberleutnant ORR = Oberregierungsrat OT = Organisation Todt PG = Parteigenosse PK = Propagandakompanie RAVAG = Österreichische Radio-Verkehrs-AG Reg. Pres. RMI = Reich Ministry of the Interior RMJ = Reich Ministry of the Interior RMK = Reich Ministry of Justice RMK = Reich Chamber of Music RMVP = Reich Ministry of Education and Propaganda ROI = Reichsoberinspektor RPA = Reichspropagandaamt RPÄ = Reichspropagandaämter RPL = Reichspropagandalleitung RR = Regierungsrat RRG = Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft RS = Reichssender RSHA = Reichssicherheitshauptamt RSK = Reichsschrifttumskammer SBZ = Soviet Occupation Zone SD = Security Service SD-LA = SD-Leitabschnitt SDR = Süddeutscher Rundfunk Sipo = Security Police STS = Secretary of State and a. = among others v. a. = above all VGH = Volksgerichtshof VO = Regulation WDR = Westdeutscher Rundfunk ZSTA = Zentrales Staatsarchiv (Potsdam) citation method: BArch R 55/ 23456 Content characterization: Rounded delivery complexes are available only from the budget department and from the personnel department. From the point of view of financing and personnel management, they illuminate almost all areas of the Ministry's activities. From the specialist departments, the volumes from the Propaganda Department should be emphasized, which document above all the design of propaganda and the propagandistic support of foreign workers and resettled persons in the last years of the war. Also worth mentioning are mood and activity reports of individual RPÄ and suggestions from the population for propaganda and for leading the total war. In the Radio Department there is some material about the design of the radio program and the propaganda reconnaissance with reports about the opposing propaganda, which were compiled from the bugging reports of the special service Seehaus. A separate complex of this department are 14 volumes of pre-files from the RMI with handfiles of the Oberregierungsrat Scholz as representative of the Reich in supervisory committees of broadcasting companies in Berlin from 1926 - 1932. Of the film department there are only a few, but interesting volumes about the film production of the last war years with numerous ministerial documents. The majority of the theatre department's traditions are based on documents on professional issues and the Reich's dramaturgy. From the music department the promotion of musical organizations from the years 1933 - 1935 with pre-files from the RMI, the support and job placement of artists as well as material about the musical foreign relations is handed down. The files of the Department for the Occupied Eastern Territories offer rich sources for questions of Eastern propaganda. The losses are greatest in the departments Law and Organization, Magazine Press, Foreign Press, Foreign Countries, Tourism, Literature and Fine Arts. State of development: Publication Findbuch (1976, reprint 1996), Online Findbuch (2007). Citation style: BArch, R 55/...