History of the Inventor: During the 1st World War, occupied Belgium was subordinated to a governor general. His chief of the general staff had to secure the area militarily; next to him stood a chief of the civil administration. Inventory description: By cabinet order of 23.8.1914 the occupied Belgium was subordinated to a general government. His chief of the general staff had to secure the area militarily; next to him stood a chief of the civil administration. From 1915 an independent "Political Department of the General Governor in Belgium" was subordinated to the civil administration, to which the following tasks were assigned: 1. diplomacy, 2. domestic politics, 3. Belgian-American food factory, 4. Belgian archives, 5. press. Characterization of content: The records of the Political Department include records and files of Schwertfeger and his collaborators Professor Dr. Karl Spannagel and Professor Dr. Alfred Doren. Schwertfeger's handfiles consist mainly of copies of the Belgian diplomatic reports, from which Schwertfeger published the file "Zur europäischen Politik 1897-1914" in 1919. Among other things, these contain material on Belgian economic interests in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The civil administration has handed down minutes of meetings, studies, memorandums and other documents on economics, transport and banking. Pre-archival order: The files of the Political Department of the Governor General in Belgium have been completely lost. Some files from the archive department of the Political Affairs Department have been transferred to the Federal Archives as part of the estate of their head, the then Colonel Bernhard Schwertfeger. Some remains of the civil administration have been preserved. In 1965, the Rehse Collection, which had been transferred from the Library of Congress in Washington to the Federal Archives, brought further remains of written documents into the military archives. In 1994, a few fragments of files from the former military archives of the GDR were added to the collection. Scope, explanation: 239 AE Citation method: BArch, PH 30-I/...