History of the Inventory Designer: Origin and Development of the Ministry, Competences: Prior to 1914, food and agriculture matters were predominantly the administrative responsibility of the States. As far as the Reich was involved, the corresponding tasks were performed by the Reich Office of the Interior. The First World War brought a decisive turning point here; the longer the war lasted, the more urgent it was to take economic measures to secure food supplies. The first step in this direction was the establishment of the War Grain Society on 25 November 1914. On 28 June 1915, this company was united with the authority of the Reich Commissioner for Bread Management, which was founded only a little later, and the Reich Distribution Office, which was responsible for supplying flour, to form the Reichsgetreidestelle. For the management and distribution of other products, a large number of other Reich offices were set up in the course of the following months, for whose joint supervision the War Food Office was established on 29 May 1916. This was the first time that a central authority had been created for the uniform regulation of the war food industry in the Reich. Since the general emergency after the end of the war made a temporary continuation of the forced economic measures in the food sector necessary, the institution was retained and renamed the Reichsernährungsamt on 19.11.1918. This is the immediate predecessor authority of the Reich Ministry of Food, which was founded by decree of 21 March 1919 on the "Establishment and Designation of the Supreme Reich Authorities". In connection with the discussion about the common economy, the Ministry of Food was temporarily united with the Ministry of Economics from 15.9.1919 to 30.3.1920. After it became independent again, it was given the name "Reichsministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft" (Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture). With the National Socialist assumption of power, the food industry was gradually subjected to state-controlled market regulation. The Reichsnährstandsverwaltung, which was created on the basis of the standardization or dissolution of the previous professional associations and self-administration bodies by the law of 13 September 1933, not only belonged to the RMEL's area of supervision, but was at the same time linked to the ministry at the head by personal union. Analogous to other supreme Reich authorities, the RMEL was merged with the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture on January 1, 1935 and until the incorporation of Austria in 1938 was called the "Reichs- und Preußisches Ministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft". A new and thus competing responsibility for the food industry arose with the promulgation of the Four-Year Plan in 1936. An organisational link with RMEL was established in that one of the two State Secretaries took over the management of the Nutrition Business Group in the Four-Year Plan. Due to a lack of personnel, the Reichsnährstandsverwaltung was integrated into RMEL during the Second World War. When RMEL was founded in 1920, its responsibilities extended to agriculture, the food industry, forestry, timber and fishing. The ministry kept these competences more or less unchanged for more than a decade. With effect from 5.7.1932, the Reich Ministry of Labour also assigned the RMEL the task of "Agricultural Settlement". On the other hand, it had to hand over to the newly established Reich Forestry Office on 12.7.1934 and 12.7.1935 the competences of forestry and hunting respectively the timber industry and the game trade. After several attempts by RMEL to take over responsibility for veterinary matters from the Reich Ministry of the Interior had failed, the Prussian Veterinary Department, which had belonged to the competence of the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, was rather assigned to the Ministry of the Interior by decree of 11 March 1935 after its merger with RMEL. Even before the merger, the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture had transferred responsibility for the agricultural vocational and technical education system to the newly created Reich Ministry of Science, Education and People's Education by law of 29 June 1934. The competence of the water management, which RMEL had taken over when it merged with the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, was lost to the newly appointed Inspector General for Water and Energy by decree of 29.7.1941. Inventory description: Inventory history Most of the RMEL files (approx. 2500 volumes) handed over to the Reichsarchiv until 1944 were destroyed during the bombing of Potsdam in April 1945. The same fate affected the vast majority of RMEL's files, which were located in the Berlin office buildings in Wilhelmstrasse and Behrenstrasse. The main exception to this rule were those files which had reached the area around Landsberg/Warthe in connection with the evacuation of various departments of the RMEL and the Reichsnährstandsverwaltung during the final months of the war. A further relocation to the Müncheberg/Seelow forest near Küstrin was planned, but was not possible. When it was merged with RMEL, a large stock of files from the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture had already been transferred to the then Prussian State Secret Archives. Since 1990, these files, which have meanwhile been kept by the Merseburg Department of the Central State Archives of the GDR, have again been kept in the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin. The remains of the RMEL files seized by the American occupying forces after the end of the war were first collected together with other holdings of the Food and Agriculture Group at the Ministerial Collecting Center (MCC) in Hessisch-Lichtenau and listed. Most of these files were brought to Berlin with the relocation of the MCC in early 1946 and taken over by the Document Center there a few years later, while a smaller part seems to have reached the Document Center in Darmstadt. With the exception of the files on the expropriation of Jewish agricultural property handed over by the Secret State Archives in Berlin, most of the volumes of the tradition of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry, formerly kept in Koblenz as holdings R 14, have been successively transferred to the Federal Archives in Koblenz since 1953. On the other hand, the later filing deliveries from America and England contained only very isolated pieces of the former RMEL. It must be noted here that unfortunately no more than half of the files recorded in Hessisch-Lichtenau finally found their way into the Federal Archives. The remaining files will have to be considered missing today. The records in the Central State Archives in Potsdam until 1990 as holdings 36.01 originate from file transfers by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the GDR, the State Archives of Potsdam and Magdeburg and from file returns from the USSR. In 1990 both overdelivery parts were combined as stock R 3601. Archival evaluation and processing The order of the holdings is largely based on the business distribution plan of summer 1942, i.e. the individual departments form the main groups of the classification. Subgroups were formed largely on the basis of the main areas of responsibility of the departments. If necessary, modifications were made. Within the individual classification groups, the order was made as far as reasonable and recognizable according to the existing file numbers. Due to the fragmentary character of the tradition, individual volumes are often missing in the series of volumes already created in the registry of the ministry. For the sake of better clarity, no corresponding references were made to the individual follow-up titles. The system only noted if tape sequences or series were created in the archive. In view of the rudimentary tradition, cassations, with the exception of duplicates, were largely avoided. Content characterization: The tradition of the stock is extremely fragmentary. According to the business distribution plan of RMEL of 1942, which forms the basis of the inventory classification, the documents of Department V Customs and Trade Policy are only minimal and those of Department IX Village Armament, Highlands, Reallocation do not exist. The activities of Dept. I General Administrative, Personnel, Budgetary and Legal Matters, Dept. II Production and Food Policy are documented in particular, especially the food security during and after the First World War. World War, as well as the Abt. III Reichsgestütverwaltung. Larger groups of files include the documents of the general administration and those of the experimental and research institutes, the war damage regulation as well as the domain administration, especially in the integrated eastern territories. Above all, however, in this context it is important to refer to the files on the expropriation of Jewish agricultural land. State of development: Online-Findbuch (2008) Citation method: BArch, R 3601/...
