History of tradition: The Badisches Staatsministerium as the highest state authority was established in 1817. It replaced the State Council, which was formed only in 1811, and which in turn emerged from the Ministerial Conference established in 1809. The State Ministry, to which the State and other ministers and other senior officials listened, served primarily to advise the sovereign and had no legislative or administrative powers of its own. From 1820 to 1825, the Ministry of State performed additional functions for the Ministry of Justice. In the years 1871 to 1893 the abolition of the Ministry of the Grand Ducal House and Foreign Affairs brought him a clear increase in competence, which at times made him a small specialist ministry himself. 1919 after the foundation of democracy the government elected by the Landtag according to the new Baden constitution of 21 March 1919 bore the name State Ministry. The documents of the Baden State Ministry cover a period from the emergence of the Grand Duchy at the beginning of the 19th century to the immediate post-war period; in individual cases it covers the margraviate of Baden in the Old Reich and the Electorate of Baden as well as the time of the emergence of the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. The tradition of the Baden State Ministry is indispensable for understanding the modern territorial state in the 19th century; it complements the holdings of the Baden Justice, Culture, Interior, Finance and War Ministries (holdings 234 to 138) and the Baden State Parliament (holdings 231 and 231a) in a select manner. Processing: The previous card index was retroconverted from 2013 to 2015 as part of a DFG project. Spelling and reading errors were corrected and terms and formulations modernised to make the title recordings easier to understand. Unclear or obviously incorrect signatures were corrected, duplications resolved and missing and incorrect running times added or improved in order to achieve better clarity of the holdings and simplify future searches. 1997-68 access was resolved and integrated into the holdings or the finding aid. Karlsruhe, December 2015Dr. Peter Exner
History of tradition: The Department of Justice, created in 1807, was upgraded to the Ministry of Justice in 1808/09, but was abolished in 1819. Its tasks were initially performed by the Ministry of the Interior and the Court of Appeal, but then mainly by the Justice Section set up within the Ministry of State. But as early as 1825 the Ministry of Justice was newly established. In the years 1871-1876 it was also responsible for foreign affairs, 1871-1881 for the Grand Ducal House and 1881-1911 for cult and education, science and art. In 1911 - as in 1871 - the departments of the Grand Duke's House, Justice and Foreign Affairs were merged, but in 1919 the new Baden constitution was to reduce the Ministry of Justice to its actual core areas again. In 1933, the two ministries of justice and cult and education were reunited. In 1934, within the framework of the National Socialist Gleichschaltung, his powers were transferred to the Reich Ministry of Justice. Processing: The previous card index was digitised with the support of the DFG in 2012. The title recordings were checked, supplemented if necessary and rearranged. The old tape repertory for the personnel and examination files (1999) was incorporated into the finding aid. Content: In addition to the files of the Ministry of Justice itself, the collection also contains documents of the Justice Examination Office, the two Protestant and Catholic church sections (from 1843 Oberkirchenräte) located at the Ministry of the Interior as well as the Compensation Commission for the distribution of church property in the Rhine-Palatinate.