Preliminary remark: The present collection of material on biographies was received by the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart in December 1975 as a gift from Freiherr Meinrad von Ow, Munich. It formed part of the written estate of General Franz Freiherr von Soden (1856 - 1945) and was collected by him in the years 1919 - 1945. The original reason for this may have been Sodens' plan to "compile a book of honour for the higher leaders". In 1921 or 1924, he succeeded in enriching his collection with material that had grown up in the years 1916/17 to about 20 officers killed in World War II under Lieutenant Colonel Osterberg (cf. No. 379 of the holdings), then Chief of the War Archive, von Soden's collection united documents on the biographies of military personnel, in particular of Württemberg officers, but also of men and women of general importance, as well as of persons who for various reasons found Soden interesting. This writing is of very different nature and quality. It mainly includes obituaries and newspaper articles, often written by Soden, concepts and manuscripts of Sodens on congratulations, eulogies and obituaries, as well as correspondences of Sodens with individual persons represented in the collection and the like. The note "very important" on one of the folders in which the collection was previously kept shows that it was of high value to von Soden. Today it is a welcome addition to the official files, which have not been fully preserved, especially for personnel matters. The collection, which comprised 6 folders when it was transferred to the archive, was created by superimposing the individual documents, newspaper clippings and the like from Soden and giving them a number. The documents received at different times for one and the same person were therefore usually not available. Since the collection lacked an internal order and since von Soden did not create an index either, it was neither usable in practice nor needed consideration of its previous state of order in the current reorganization, in which the material available for each person was combined and the inventory was based on an alphabetical classification. As a rule, the information in the title recordings was taken from the holdings themselves. Only the life data, partly also the first names and with officers the contingent affiliation were often supplemented with other aids (above all the archival holdings M 430/1 - M 430/5 general reference books and biographical encyclopaedias). However, it would only have been possible to achieve completeness in these additions, which are marked as such by square brackets only in justified exceptional cases, with a workload that would be out of proportion to the source value of the holdings. Unless otherwise stated, the officers are always members of the Württemberg army. The note "died" means both "died" and "fallen" or "died as a result of injury". The stock comprises 602 numbers (0, 85 linear metres). It was recorded at the beginning of 1977 by the archivist Herrmann under the supervision of Oberstaatsarchivrat Dr. Fischer, who was also responsible for the revision of the title recordings and the elaboration of the repertory. Stuttgart, August 1977(Fischer)
