1st Deputy General Command XIII (K.W.) Army Corps: When Emperor Wilhelm II declared a state of war on the Reich's territory on 31 July 1914, the Prussian Law on the State of Siege of 4 June 1851, which conferred executive power on the military commanders, came into force at the same time (1). The military commanders were the commanding generals of the individual army corps and the governors and commanders of fortresses whose orders had to be obeyed by the civilian authorities. For the first day of mobilization, 2 August 1914, the mobilization plan provided for the establishment of the deputy command authorities, which, after the previous command authorities had moved away, were to take over their command and business area independently on the sixth day of mobilization (2). At the same time, the powers of the military commander were transferred to the deputy commanding general, who led the supreme command of the remaining occupying, replacement and garrison troops. Only responsible to the emperor as the "Most High Warlord", the military commander was not bound to instructions of the Bundesrat, the chancellor or the war ministry. According to Article 68 of the Reich Constitution, the military commander assumed responsibility for handling the state of siege in his area of command. The constitution allowed him to intervene in the legal situation by declaring the intensified state of war, to restrict constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and to establish war courts. In Württemberg, however, the declaration of the intensified state of war was dispensed with, since the existing laws offered a sufficient basis for the ability of the deputy commanding general to act (3). Although the cooperation between military commanders and civilian authorities was not regulated uniformly until October 1918, in Württemberg, similar to Bavaria, there was from the outset a coordination between the military and civilian executive powers. This was particularly encouraged by the union of the offices of Minister of War and Deputy Commanding General in the hands of General von Marchtalers (4). Army corps were from 2.8.1914 to 1.9.1914 general of the infantry retired Otto von Hügel, from 1.9.1914 to 21.1.1916 general of the infantry Otto von Marchtaler and from 21.1.1916 to end of war general of the infantry retired Paul von Schaefer. Chief of Staff was Major General 2. D. Theodor von Stroebel (5) from the beginning to the end of the war. At the beginning of the mobilization, 7 officers and 14 sub-officials transferred to the Deputy General Command, which had its official seat at Kriegsbergstraße 32. It soon became apparent that the business volume was expanding considerably, individual lines of business were growing strongly and new ones were being added, so that an increase in the number of employees and the expansion of the premises became necessary. The new tasks brought a further strong enlargement of the administrative apparatus under the sign of the "Vaterländischen Hilfsdienst" and the Hindenburg Programme (6). The scope of duties of the Deputy General Command included military, economic and political matters. Various authorities were subordinated to him: the Deputy Infantry Brigades, the Landwehr Inspectorate, since 1917 the Military Central Police Station and the Post- and Deport Monitoring Centre (Schubpol) Stuttgart. The distribution of responsibilities changed several times in line with the expansion of tasks. According to the business distribution plan (Appendix), which came into effect on 27 August 1917, the central task was initially to ensure that the field army could meet its needs for crew and war material. The recruitment and training of replacements, the establishment of the "troop units ordered by the War Minister and the transfer of replacement crews to the field troops were priority tasks" (Departments l a and Il b). A subdivision la 3, specially created for horse affairs, which dealt with the recruitment and military and civilian use of horses in the troops and at home, underlines the great importance of the horse as a riding, working and pack animal in the First World War. In addition to military tasks in the narrower sense, including the handling of all officers' affairs (Department Ha), the Deputy General Command was primarily responsible for political and administrative tasks. In August 1917, the Ile defence department was set up, which carried out security measures against feared enemy attacks on the transport network and important war operations by organising railway protection and air defence. The surveillance of railway and border traffic, passport and registration regulations and the inspection of foreigners served to protect military secrets and defend against espionage and sabotage. This area also includes the various efforts made to control correspondence. A central chemical office (department Il e Abwiss.) should uncover and decipher secret documents. Another task of the Deputy General Command was the accommodation and care of prisoners of war in camps and their employment in industry and agriculture (Department Il f). With the duration of the war, the shortage of raw materials and food grew as a result of Germany's exclusion from the world economy. Rationing and coercive management were inevitable. In addition, there was a shortage of labour, which required the mobilisation of all material and human resources. The Hindenburg Programme attempted to adapt the production of war material to the increased demand. The 'Vaterländische Hilfsdienstgesetz' was intended to solve the problem of job creation (7). In November 1916, the Prussian War Ministry established a War Office "for the management of all matters related to the overall conduct of the war concerning the procurement, use and nutrition of workers, as well as the procurement of raw materials, weapons and ammunition," to which the Deputy General Commands were subordinated in all matters of war economics (8) . The Deputy General Command was responsible for the management of the labor market, measures to ensure food security for the population and troops, the allocation of labor and raw materials, and measures to increase industrial production necessary for the needs of war. For example, the control office of the Daimler plants made it possible to monitor arms production, but it also allowed influence to be exerted on the working conditions and wages of the employees and the pricing of the companies. The supervision of political life in the area of command was carried out via § 9b of the Siege Act, which allowed intervention in all areas of public life to maintain security and order (9). The militarization of war-important enterprises served to avoid demonstrations and strikes. The right of association and assembly was restricted. Censorship became a useful instrument to influence the mood of the people in the sense of the rulers. It covered the pre- and post-censorship of the press, letters, telegrams and mail, as well as the import of newspapers and magazines. The communications intended for the public on domestic political issues or military news were also subject to censorship. The attempt to strengthen the will of the population to persevere through official propaganda, called "war enlightenment" (10), was added to this. For this purpose propaganda lectures were established in the deputy general commandos, Captain (ret.) Heinrich Hermelink, Professor of Church History in Marburg, was hired as a reconnaissance officer of the XIII Army Corps. Under Ludendorff the Oberzensurbehörde became the executive organ of the Supreme Army Command, which increasingly restricted the independence of the military commanders. Since April 1917, for all Deputy General Commands, the guidelines of the Press Office, to which the Supreme Censorship Authority was subject, had been decisive for the handling of propaganda and censorship. There was information for workers and women, for the troops war propaganda was carried out as patriotic instruction. Other divisions of the Deputy General Command were the Court Division (Division III), which was responsible for military justice and also dealt with legal and police matters in the civil sector. There was also an Administration and War Food Department (Division IV d) and a Medical Department (Division IV b). Veterinary Department (Division IV d) and Supply Department (Division V), which dealt with war disability care and pension matters (11). After the ceasefire was declared in November 1918, the Deputy General Command remained in place. It organised the demobilisation, collection, repatriation, supply and disbanding of units. Accommodations in Württemberg and the evacuation of occupied territories were among the tasks, as was the deployment of security troops (Department la 1). Subordinate evacuation train distribution commissions based in Heilbronn and Mühlacker were responsible for forwarding the goods and war equipment transported back from the field to the homeland. The demobilisation order for the mobile General Command XIII Army Corps came into force on 11.12.1918. Officers and officials of the General Command transferred to the previous Deputy General Command, which continued business by merging with the former mobile General Command under the new name General Command of the XIIIth Army Corps. In February 1919 the General Command was incorporated into the War Ministry. Individual subdivisions of the la department were dissolved, and existing departments were incorporated into the War Ministry. The Rumpfbehörde was led as department Generalkommando of the war ministry and remained as such also in August 1919, when the war ministry was converted into the Reichswehrbefehlsstelle Württemberg (12). On October 1, 1919, the Württemberg War Ministry ceased to exist. For the authorities and facilities of the former army that were still needed, settlement offices were created under the authority of the Reich Ministry of Defence. On October 1, 1919, the Reichswehr Command Post was transformed into the Winding-up Office of the former Württemberg War Ministry. At the same time, the Department General Command XIII Army Corps and the Higher Resolution Staffs 49 - 51, which had been set up since July 1919, were used to form the Office of the former XIII Army Corps. Under the leadership of the supreme von Hoff, both offices were described as the "Abwicklungsamt Württemberg", at the end of the year as the "Heeresabwicklungsamt" of the former XIIIth Army Corps. At the end of March 1921, the Army Processing Office was dissolved, and when the Deputy General Command was established, Registratur Andrä, who headed the Central Office in 1917, was entrusted with the registry and file management. The files were arranged according to the departments valid at the time of their creation, but were numbered consecutively; each number was subdivided again according to Generalia and Spezialia and, if necessary, with additional letters. Blue or green envelopes were used for the general files and red envelopes for the special files. The files were stapled in accordance with the Prussian model of file management, and the registry remained intact both after the transfer to the General Command and after the merger with the War Ministry; however, the files of the departments and areas that were now transferred to other departments of the War Ministry were given the new department names; some were also spun off. Thus the records of Veterinary Department IV d were handed over to Department A 4 of the War Ministry. During this period of transition, documents have already been segregated and destroyed as a result of political events, but also during relocations or new divisions. Already during the November confusion, the personnel department Il d suffered losses; in February 1919, before the department Ile moved to Olgastraße, 11 files on associations and assemblies, radical social democracy, protective custody and security police as well as lists of suspects were sorted out (13). The files of other departments were transferred to other authorities or spun off because the department became independent. Thus, in May 1919, the prisoner-of-war department Il f became independent as the prisoner-of-war homecoming department (Gehea) (14). The records of the pension department V had been transferred to the main pension office. The remaining files also remained in order in the Heeresabwicklungsamt and from October 1920 formed part of the newly established Korpsarchiv, which from 1921 together with the old Kriegsarchiv became the Reichsarchiv branch office. 2. to the order and distortion of the stock: In the Reichsarchiv branch office, the files were first recorded in 1924 by Maximilian Haldenwang, whereby the order by departments according to the last business distribution plan of 1917 was taken as a basis, the individual units were combined into larger clusters and these were numbered consecutively. However, the files of Gas Protection Division IIc were already missing in this inventory; it is not known when and why they were lost. During subsequent administrative work in the holdings of the War Ministry and the Army Processing Office, various files with the provenance of Deputy General Command were added to the holdings. This includes 50 censored books published during the World War. During the November events, these books were confiscated at the press office of the Deputy General Command and shortly afterwards they were taken over into the war collection of the Court Library. The "military" part of the Court Library was transferred to the Heeresarchiv Stuttgart in 1938. It was assumed that these books had the character of censorship copies, that the remainder of the edition had been stamped, and that when the inventory M 630 was dissolved in 1983, the court files of the Upper War Court of the XIIIth Army Corps were assigned to the inventory; further files from the inventory of the Army Processing Office (M 390) were attached as appendices, which were taken from the General Command XIIIth Army Corps Department of the Ministry of War or from the General Command XIIIth Army Corps Department of the Ministry of War. With the new indexing, which began in 1987, it seemed to make sense to leave the entire tradition with the provenances of the Deputy General Command, General Command (from December 1918) and Department General Command of the War Ministry and the Reichswehr (from February to October 1, 1919) in one inventory, since the registry runs through despite the changes. An exception are the files of those areas that were integrated into other departments of the War Ministry in February 1919; here the files created after this time were, if separable, attached to the corresponding holdings. Thus files of the horse department la 3, which after February 1919 merged into the department A 10 of the War Ministry, as well as files of the officer affairs department Ha, which after February 1919 were processed by the personnel department of the War Ministry, were classified in the stocks M 1/4 and M 1/5 respectively. A bundle of files of the "Leitung der Ausflüge für verwundete Stuttgarter Lazarette 1918/20", an independent association, whose files had apparently come to the Army Processing Office after its dissolution and remained with the inventory of 1924, was also separated. It was set up as a separate portfolio in line with provenance (M 324). Conversely, the archival records previously treated as appendices to the holdings and removed from M 390 were integrated into the corresponding departments. In addition, reference is made to individual pieces of documents of the provenance of the former XIII Army Corps's Winding-up Office which are in the inventory and could not be separated because of the thread-stitching. The files of the Court Division III also remained together, although they extend beyond October 1, 1919, since they were continued as a continuous registry also in the time of the Army Processing Office independently and independently. Two tufts from the Herzog Albrecht (M 30/1) Army Group stock were classified according to provenance. The internal order of the stock was maintained in principle. Again, the business distribution plan of April 1917 was used as a basis. This means that even subjects which cannot actually be expected from the title of the respective department remained in its registry context. The heterogeneity of the subjects within a differently designated department is often due to the fact that numerous subject areas belonged earlier to other departments and were only assigned to another department by the business distribution plan of August 1917 - apparently in the course of the streamlining of the authority (cf. table of contents). Within the departments, titles were arranged according to objective criteria, so that the order of the fascicles often differs from the old index. The old bundle count was replaced by a new consecutive numbering of the tufts. A concordance of the old bundle signatures and new bundle numbers was added to make it easier to find cited passages. The individual file units remained, they were only rearranged in exceptional cases. The books (censorship copies) handed over in 1938 were correctly classified by the press department, and the main titles, as they were given in the Haldenwang repertory on the basis of the inscriptions, were also preserved in the individual title recordings. Because of the high source value of the files, which after the losses of the Second World War were of exemplary importance, also as a replacement for the lost Prussian tradition, detailed notes on contents appeared justified; this all the more so as the main title of the thread-stitched and therefore indivisible files sometimes only most incompletely reflects the contents. The notes should clarify both the content and the structure of the file clusters. However, not all sketches, maps and plans could be ejected individually, as they are available in too large a number and are often to be expected anyway. Only where a tuft of files reaches beyond the narrower provenance of "Stellvertretendes Generalkommando" was the further provenance noted.In order to compensate for the disadvantage of the heterogeneity of the files and the partly unusual order, a detailed subject index was compiled which, apart from the keywords "XIII. army corps" and "Württemberg", brings together as far as possible all narrow terms related to the subject matter of the holdings, partly in two parts. From March 1988 to August 1989, the stock was arranged and listed by the scientific employee Anita Raith under the direction of Dr. Bernhard Theil as part of a job creation scheme, who also greatly revised the introduction. Archive employee Werner Urban played a decisive role in the creation of the final editorial office and the indices. The packaging and installation was carried out in August 1989 by working student Angelika Hofmeister. 1144 tufts (= 29.6 m) were in stock. Comments: (1) Article 68 of the Constitution of the Reich provided for a Reich Law regulating the state of war, which, however, did not exist until the end of the Empire. Militär und Innenpolitk im Weltkrieg 1914 - 1918, edited by Wilhelm Deist, Düsseldorf 1970, vol. l, p. XXXI; see also HStAS E 130a Bü. 1146 Richtlinien des Preußischen Kriegsministeriums zum verschärften Kriegszustand (Letter of 25. July 1914)(2) HStAS M 33/1 Bund 80, Annexes to the mobilization provision, cf. also § 20.7 of the mobilization plan 1914/15 in M 1/2 vol. 32(3) Deist (wie Anm. 1) Bd. l, p. 13 ff. besonders Anm. 2(4) Ebd. S. XLV(5) HStAS M 430/2 Bü. 942, 1354, 1795, 2146(6) In March 1917, the Deputy General Command had 134 budgeted officer positions, actually 317 persons were employed. The accommodation of the departments in M 77/1 Bü. 632(7) Deist (as Note 1) p. 506 ff.:(8) HStAS M 1/4 vol. 1272, reprinted at Deist (as Note 1) p. 508 ff., cf. ibid. XLVII(9) Gesetz über den Siegeerungszustand, Handbuch der during des war issued Verordnungen des Stellvertretenden Generalkommandos XIII. (Kgl. Württ.) Armeekorps mit Einschluster nicht veröffentlichtter Erlasses, Stuttgart 1918, p. l ff.(10) Deist (wie Anm. 1) S. LXV(11) The memorandums, which report on the experiences of individual departments during the mobilization, also contain information on the structure, personnel and delimitation of the working areas of a department (fonds M 77/2)(12) Cf. Appendix III of the Introduction to the Repertory of the Collection M 390(13) M 77/1 Bü. 935(14) The files of this department, which is subordinate to the Army Office for the Settlement of Armed Forces, are now in the collection M 400/3 Literature: Deist, Wilhelm: Zur Institution des Militärbefehlshabers im Ersten Weltkrieg. In: Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 13/17 (1965) S. 222 - 240Mai, Günther: Kriegswirtschaft und Arbeiterbewegung in Württemberg 1914 - 1918. 1983Ders: Das Ende des Kaiserreichs, Politik und Kriegsführung im Ersten Weltkrieg (Deutsche Geschichte der neuesten Zeit) 1987Matuschka, Edgar, Graf von: Organisation History of the Army 1890 - 1918 In: German Military History in 6 Volumes 1648 - 1939 Ed. by the Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamt, 3.1983 S 157 - 282Militär- und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg 1914 - 1918, edited by Wilhelm Deist (Quellen zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien, 2. Reihe Bd. 1,1 und 1,2) 1970Moser, Otto von: The Württembergers in the World War. A History, Memory and Folk Book 2.1928Stuttgart, October 1989Anita RaithBernhard Theil
