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/...

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/...

History of the Inventor: Tasks and Organisation The departments and authorities responsible for accident insurance can be divided into two main groups: the employers' liability insurance associations (including maritime funds) and the implementing authorities. The Berufsgenossenschaften, (in 1933 102 BGs in the Reich territory), were responsible for the commercial enterprises and branches of the profession, responsible for the enterprises and offices of the Reich, the Länder or also the municipalities, including overlaps of competence, were according to § 892 of the Reichsversicherungsverordnung the implementing authorities (193 in the number in 1933). The tasks included accident prevention, compensation in the event of disability or loss of the breadwinner, and compensation for the consequences of accidents. However, the latter two tasks could be transferred to the competent health insurance fund if the person concerned was covered by health insurance. Under certain circumstances, the employment offices could also be involved in cases of retraining or job placement. In addition, it was the responsibility of the RafU to investigate any accidents that occurred and, if necessary, to take decisions on the payment of compensation on the basis of medical reports and expert opinions. The Reich Executive Authority for Accident Insurance (RafU) was constituted on 8 April 1921 by a decree of the Reich Minister of Labour. (1) After the First World War it was to replace the military administrative authorities and the shipyard administrations of the Navy in the field of accident insurance. This merger of the former accident departments avoided the establishment of new implementing authorities required by § 892 Reichsversicherungsordnung (RVO) in each department. This resulted in considerable savings in personnel and costs. previous authorities were: - Accident Departments of the Former Settlement Directorates of the Military Institutes in Berlin and Munich - Settlement Directorates of the Former XII. Army Corps in Dresden and the former XIIIth Army Corps in Stuttgart - Executing Authority of the Navy Shipyard in Wilhelmshaven. The authority was designated as the implementing authority for the enterprises belonging to the portfolio of the Reich Minister of the Interior, the Reich Minister of the Treasury and the Reich Minister of Labour for which the Reich is the carrier of accident insurance. The RafU, based in Berlin, belonged under the supervision of the Reich Insurance Office to the portfolio of the Reich Minister of Labour. Dr. Walter Rehdans (2), who had previously worked for the Imperial Treasury, took over the management of the government. After the authority was initially able to assert itself in competence disputes against the executing authority of the Wilhelmshaven naval shipyard, among others, its existence failed already in the second year due to a lack of financial resources. With effect from 19 September 1922, its tasks were transferred to the Hauptversicherungsamt Berlin as the executing authority for Reich operations in accordance with § 892 of the RVO. From 20 September 1923, the Versorgungsamt I in Berlin acted as the implementing authority for accident insurance. The responsibility remained here until the end of 1939. With effect from 1 January 1940, a separate "Reich Executing Authority for Accident Insurance" was again created, which was subordinated to the Reich Insurance Office. The management took over Dr. Günther Werk (*13.7.1902) (3). In April 1941, due to the territorial expansion of the German Reich, several branch offices were established. These were located in Vienna, responsible for Vienna, Upper and Lower Danube, in Graz, responsible for Styria and Carinthia, in Innsbruck, responsible for Salzburg and Tyrol, and in Reichenberg, responsible for the Sudetenland. (1) Amtsblatt für die Reichsschatzverwaltung Nr. 39 vom 11.05.1921 Abschnitt 648 (2) Dr. Walter Rehdans, born 10.08.1878, BArch R 9361-I/ 2803 (3) see Bestände Bundesarchiv Inventory description: Inventory history 1944 large parts of the files of the RafU were relocated from Berlin to the evasion camps Punitz and Schmückert in Warthegau, where above all individual accident and pension files were probably destroyed by the effects of war. The files of the central department remaining in Berlin are also considered a loss during the war. After 1945, only a small remnant of the official files and personnel documents, together with some accident files of the RafU and the Versorgungsamt I Berlin, were sent to the executive authority for the British zone in Wilhelmshaven. In June 1977, the remaining files of the RafU and its predecessor and successor organisations (until 1945) were finally handed over to the Federal Archives by the Federal Executive Authority for Accident Insurance in Wilhelmshaven. Content characterization: The title was recorded according to numerus currens. The classification was then made into service, accident and personnel files. The service files were subdivided as follows: - Organisation, official decrees - Provisions on accident insurance and accident prevention - Accident insurance in individual services and companies - Accident insurance in occupied and integrated areas - Accident insurance in special cases The accident and personnel files were arranged alphabetically. In deviation from the RafU's list of duties, a number of objectively related units of registration have been combined into a new volume for each duty record. Both the accident and personnel files were kept beyond the 1945 caesura (personnel files 1902-1969, accident files 1905-1948). The tradition of the service records concentrates on the 1920s to 1940s. During the first processing, printed matter, such as a series of naval decree sheets, was handed over to the official printed matter collection of the Federal Archives. State of development: Findbuch (2014) Citation method: BArch, R 152/...

History of the Inventor: The Act of 29 March 1935 on the Regulation of Public Land Requirements (Gesetz über die Regeung des Landbedarfs der öffentlichen Hand) (1) issued by the Reich Ministry of Food and Drink (Reichsernährungsministerium) established an Imperial Authority which, with the Führer Decree of 26 June 1935, was to assume the role of "Reich Office for Spatial Planning (RfR)" (Reichsstelle für Raumordnung) "for the entire territory of the Reich"(2). The expansion of planning to the Reich and state level led to the separation of spatial planning from local political sovereignty. "In agreement with the Reich and Prussian Ministers of Labor, the head of the Reich Office for Spatial Planning shall in particular regulate the organization of the planning associations and supervise them. (3) The RfR with its seat in Berlin, as the supreme Reich authority, was directly subordinate to the Führer and Reich Chancellor and, in fulfilling its tasks, made use of the Society for the Preparation of Reich Planning and Regional Planning (Gezuvor) (4), later known as the Reichsplanungsgemeinschaft e.V. (Reich Planning Association). (RPG). Head of the RfR and President of the RPG was the Reich Minister and Prussian State Minister Hanns Kerrl, who also headed the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs (RKM) in personal union. After his death in 1941, Hermann Muhs, until then State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs, took over the management of the official business. Due to close personal and organizational ties, the Reichsplanungsgemeinschaft appeared in the business distribution plan of the RfR from June 1937. Both as members of an organization in which the Reich Office for Spatial Planning was assigned the task of "administration", the Reich Planning Community the task of "design". The business distribution plan named two registries which served both offices according to the subject area. (5) The joint budget for the financial year 1937 stated: "Since the fields of activity of the RfR and the RPG overlap in many respects, there has been no complete administrative and budgetary separation between the RfR and the RPG, either in terms of the specific nature of the tasks to be performed or in terms of the appropriate use of all manpower. (6) Kerrls Erste Verordnung zur Durchführung der Reichs- und Landesplanung vom 15. Februar 1936(7) contains the regulations on the organization of subordinate agencies. The organic structure of the regional planning administration should correspond to the dual task of Nazi regional planning - political leadership on the one hand and coordination of all spatially relevant issues on the other. The Reich Office for Spatial Planning was established as an "organ of state and party, and it must be emphasized in particular that its competence is not limited to regulatory work in relation to agriculture, housing and industry, but that it is also co-determinative in the requirements of terrain for the public sector". (8) In organisational terms, a distinction was made between planning authorities and state planning associations. The former were the governors of the Reich and the presidents of Prussia. They supervised the state planning communities and had the task of enforcing the guidelines issued by the central office. They were able to arrange for an annual audit of the accounts and approve the relevant budget. The actual planning work was carried out by the regional planning associations, of which 22 were established throughout the country and whose number increased to 33 by 1941 as a result of the annexations that began in 1938. (9) Its members consisted of rural and urban districts, Reich and Land authorities, self-governing bodies, the administrations of professional organisations and the scientific institutions appointed to promote Reich and Land planning. The managing directors were the state planners. The statutes of the Landesplanungsgemeinschaften were based on the model statutes issued by the head of the Reich Office. Hanns Kerrl had set this up in order to maintain uniformity within the organisation. The statutes provided for the head of the planning authority as chairman and also ensured a close link between the planning communities and planning authorities in the further administrative substructure. According to the model scale of contributions, costs were borne in the following proportions: 51% was borne by the Reich, the remainder was borne equally by the member groups "self-government" (e.g. provincial associations, urban and rural districts) and "economy" (e.g. German Labour Front, Reichsnährstand, Chambers of Industry and Commerce). (10) The Landesplanungsgemeinschaften were treated as public corporations. (11) The services of the State, local authorities and professional organisations were required to provide administrative and administrative assistance to planning authorities and associations. Created as a management and coordination body for territorial planning in the entire territory of the Reich, the RfR was first to "ensure that the German area was shaped in a manner appropriate to the needs of the people and the state". (12) In addition to civilian settlement planning and management, the armament programme also dealt with the location distribution of military installations and traffic routes. Nevertheless, the decisive plans were ultimately drawn up by the Wehrmacht, the Reich Ministry of Economics and the four-year plan officers. (13) The Reich Office had practically no decision-making powers and could only veto them in individual cases. Its activities were thus limited to administrative supervision of regional planning authorities, state planning associations and the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung, which directed and coordinated research results on questions of territorial planning. In cooperation with the Reich Minister for Science, Education and People's Education, "the faculties of all German universities were called upon in the largest form to cooperate". (14) With the help of the scientific universities, expert opinions were developed on issues of emergency and conurbation rehabilitation in the pre-war period, with the focus after the outbreak of war also on the integrated eastern regions. As the central control authority, however, the Reich Office for Spatial Planning gradually lost its authority, at the latest at the time of the intensive work of the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German People, created under Heinrich Himmler, in shaping the "living space in the East". (15) The ban of all post-war planning imposed by Hitler during the war led to the cessation of the actual professional activity. The personnel of the RfR (16) was increasingly reduced. The exemptions from military service required by the planning institutions were no longer granted after the defeat of Stalingrad. On 6 February 1943, the head of the Reich Chancellery, Dr. Lammers, informed the Supreme Reich Authorities that the Reich Office would now only administer its documents and provide information on request. (17) For reasons of air-raid protection, the documents were transferred to Wittenberg in 1943/44 together with those of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung and parts of the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs. Notes (1) RGBl. 1935, I, p. 468 (2) RGBl. 1935, I, p. 793 (3) RGBl. 1935, I, p. 1515 (4) Previously Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung der Reichsautobahnen e.V. (until 1935) (5) BArch, R 113/2030 (6) BArch, library 96.11.22, p.3 (7) RGBl. 1936, I, p.104 (8) BArch, R 113/2439 (9) Michael Venhoff, "Die Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung (RAG) und die reichs- deutsche Raumplanung seit ihrer Entstehung bis die Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges 1945", Hanover 2000, p.15 (10)Pfundtner/Neubert, Das neue Deutsche Reichsrecht I b 25 p.12 (11)See, inter alia, Werner Weber, "Die Körperschaften, Anstalten und Stiftungen des öffentlichen Rechts", Munich and Berlin, 1943, p.52 (12)See §3 of the Gesetz über die Regelung des Landbedarfs der öffentlichen Hand vom 29.3.1935 (13) "Special planning in the individual fields of activity continues to be the responsibility of the responsible departments. They have the obligation to announce their planning plans to the Reich Office for Spatial Planning." (2nd decree on the Reich Office for Regional Planning of 18 Dec. 1935), R 113/128 (14)BArch, R 113/2439 (15)Cf. Michael Venhoff, see above, p.73 (16)Exact number of employees not available (17)BArch, R 43 II/708, p.51 Inventory description: In March 1946, Martin Mäckler, then Director of Construction in the sector of the British military government, was commissioned by the Berlin magistrate to initiate the return of files from the Reich Office for Regional Planning in Wittenberg. After they had been reviewed, part of these documents were sent in 1947 to the Department of Housing, Urban Planning and Regional Planning of the Central Office of the Labour Department of the British Occupation Zone in Lemgo. After the dissolution of the head office, the maps, files and books were first forwarded to the local tax office and finally requested by the Federal Ministry of Housing. Another much larger part went to the Berlin Main Office for Overall Planning of the West Berlin Magistrate, including personnel files, and was finally handed over to the Berlin branch of the Institute for Spatial Research (Bad Godesberg). The transfer to the Berlin main archive, which had been responsible for official files since 1946 (since 1963 again Secret State Archive), took place in 1959, where the indexing began under the signature Rep.325. In 1962 2295 maps and plans as well as 1717 files in the form of a card index were listed. A mixed collection returned from the USA in April 1962 contained 15 volumes of RfR files, which were combined with the archival records in the main archive. In the course of the exchange of archival records in 1969, the Secret State Archives transferred to the Federal Archives not only the files but also the entire map section of the RfR, which was stored in Koblenz in 1971. On the basis of the first file indexing carried out in the Secret State Archives, the new indexing of the files began in 1987 in the Federal Archives under the inventory signature R 113. A first finding aid book for the approx. 2400 files has been available since 1990. The merger of Koblenz and Potsdam files in the Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde was completed in 1993. The latter, mainly newspaper clippings, printed publications, and annual and working reports, had been handed over to the German Central Archive in Potsdam by the Magdeburg State Archives in 1957 and by the Wittenberg District Council in 1963. During the database-supported recording of the stock a revision of file titles and classification took place, whereby based on the finding aid book from the year 1990 however it was renounced to sift each of the altogether more than 3000 file volumes again. The majority of series and tape sequences were archived. The map holdings held in Koblenz were not taken into account here. For data protection reasons, the personnel files available in portfolio R113 are not shown in the online find book. Requests in this respect should be addressed directly to the relevant Unit R 3. Characterisation of content: The general organisation and working methods of the Reich Office for Spatial Planning and its branches are documented in the files of the office administration and planning authorities. The traditions of the individual regional planning communities provide an insight into concrete tasks, procedures and areas of activity. The focus here is on documents relating to various economic sectors. The intention to incorporate scientific aspects of spatial research into regional economic and social structures is illustrated, among other things, by the files of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung and the Deutsche Akademie für Städtebau. Ultimately, the collection contains material collections from the archive and the press office, most of which consist of newspaper clippings and printed matter. Supplementary records are the R 164 Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumordnung and the RfR map collection (R 113 Kart) in the Federal Archives in Koblenz. State of development: Findbuch (2013) Citation method: BArch, R 113/...