The present collection comprises 223 units of indexation with a term of 1933-1945 and was transferred to the former Lippische Landesarchiv in Detmold soon after the Second World War, in November 1945. With the Second Law on the Gleichschaltung of the Länder with the Reich of 7 April 1933, the office of Reich Governor was created in the Länder. In the brief phase of the seizure of power, the Reich governors were subject to the control of the National Socialist-dominated state governments appointed by them, which had quasi-dictatorial powers, and only Hitler. They were his underlords in the countries. Already with the law on the reconstruction of the Reich of 30 January 1934, the Reichsstatthalteramt lost its importance. The power and legal relationships were shifted in favour of the central authorities in Berlin and against the state governments and the imperial governors. With the Reichsstatthaltergesetz of 30 January 1935, the Reichsstatthalter only became instances of the Reichsregierung in the sense of a Reichsmittelbehörde; in addition, their position became increasingly representative. On 16 May 1933, the President of the Reich, Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Dr. Alfred Meyer, head of the Gaue Westfalen-Nord, based in Münster, as governor of the two smallest Reich states, Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe, at Hitler's suggestion. One week later, on 23 May, in his capacity as Reich Governor, he placed a man of his special trust, Hans-Joachim Riecke, a qualified farmer and Gauinspekteur (Gauinspector), with the antiquated title of Minister of State at the head of the Lippe state government. This one was reporting directly to Meyer. Riecke's honorary deputy as head of the state government was the Detmold NSDAP district leader, the Lagens painter Adolf Wedderwille. Since the power positions and powers of the Reich Governors in the administration increasingly eroded in the years after 1933, without the office being abolished despite its apparent loss of significance, Meyer - like others of his colleagues - strove to unite administrative and government positions in his hands. After Riecke's departure to the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture on February 1, 1936, he was appointed head of the Lippe State Government by executive decree. On 17 November 1938, he became Chief President of the Province of Westphalia in Münster. In addition, in November 1941 he was appointed Deputy Minister in the newly created Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories under Alfred Rosenberg, and from 29 May 1940 he was entrusted by Hitler with the management of the affairs of a Reich Defence Commissioner. Meyer only occasionally visited Detmold in his capacity as Reich Governor for both Lippe. Münster remained his official seat. Meyer's local husband and inspector of the Detmold government work, based in the small Reich governor's office with only 3-4 employees, which was moved to Berlebeck on the Friedrichshöhe in 1937, was Karl Wolf, a member of the government from 1933 to 1943. Even in his role as head of the Lippische Landesregierung, Meyer rarely came to his new office. With Wedderwille, who after Riecke's transfer became full-time deputy head of the Lippe government and resided in Riecke's former office, he had a reliable governor in the Lipperland in party and state administration. Meyer's main fields of activity and positions of power were in Münster and Berlin and not in the small residential town on the Teutoburg Forest. Thus his faithful paladin Adolf Wedderwille gradually became the most powerful man in all of Lippe, especially during the war with his double role. Since February 1936 the Lippe laws and ordinances were passed under the name: The Reichsstatthalter in Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe (state government of Lippe) and were signed either by the Reichstatthalter Dr. Meyer himself or in representation Wedderwille. Until April 1945 Lippe was ruled in this form. From the above it becomes clear that there could be, and indeed had to be, certain intermixtures and overlaps in the registry of the Reich Governor's Office. Some written or file documents would have been better kept in the registry of the Minister of State or the NSDAP district leader in terms of content and form. Also some petitioners were certainly not clear whether they should write to Meyer in his capacity as Gauleiter, Reichsstatthalter or head of the state government. Thus the pre-archival order was largely maintained and, above all, the signatory did not clean up the holdings (e.g. in the case of Section 5, Minister of State). For research on the Lippe NS period, the holdings L 80.03 (Minister of State) and L 113 (NSDAP and NS organisations in Lippe) as well as the L 80 holdings in general should therefore also and above all be consulted. It is to be quoted after order no.: L 76 No.. Literature: Andreas Ruppert and Hansjörg Riechert, Rule and Acceptance. National Socialism in Lippe during the war years. Analysis and Documentation, Opladen 1998. Hans-Jürgen Sengotta, The Reich Governor in Lippe 1933 to 1939. Reich Law and Political Practice, Detmold 1976. Andreas Ruppert. The circle leader in Lippe. On the function of a middle instance of the NSDAP between local groups and Gau. in. Lipp. Mitt. 60 (1991), pp. 199-229 Heinz-Jürgen Priamus, Alfred Meyer - Biographical Sketch of an NS Perpetrator, in: National Socialism in Detmold, edited by Hermann Niebuhr and Andreas Ruppert, Detmold 1998, pp. 42-79 Detmold, July 2003 (Bender)
