The history of the Franck company ranges from the foundation of the chicory factory in Vaihingen in 1828 to the transition to Nestlé Deutschland AG, Frankfurt in 1987. A description of the company history was omitted in favour of a chronicle in tabular form. The files recorded in this finding aid book originate from a file delivery from 1978, which took place on the occasion of the firmation with Nestlé Gruppe Deutschland GmbH, Frankfurt (since 1987 Nestlé Gruppe Deutschland AG) and the transfer of the management of Unifranck Lebensmittelwerke GmbH to Munich. The printed company chronicles were taken from the previously unrecorded library records in the Ludwigsburg State Archives, which were also handed over in 1978, to complete the unprinted company chronicles of inventory PL 5. The structure of the records was based on the organisational plan of the Heinrich Franck Sons Central Administration of 1919 (PL 5 Bü. 145) and the existing old signatures. The registry order to be derived from the organizational plan and the old signatures, which was arranged according to the type of products manufactured, the central connection to Ludwigsburg or Berlin and the location of the branch, was reduced to the location and departmental responsibility according to the organizational plan of 1919 due to the incomplete nature of the archive records (some registry signatures were missing completely) and easier access. The products manufactured were not taken into account as distinguishing features. Little can be said about the history of the company archive. The central offices in Ludwigsburg and Berlin had the main significance. In 1935 the trademarks were transferred "for security reasons" from the registries in Ludwigsburg and Linz to Berlin (StAL PL 5 Bü. 145). From 1943 to 1947, a large-scale transfer of files and advertising material to Ludwigsburg took place (StAL PL 5 Bü. 1). To what extent and according to which criteria cassations were carried out until the files were delivered to the Ludwigsburg State Archives in 1978/1981 must remain open. The fact that they took place can be concluded from the incomplete registry signatures. Dr. Ruth Kappel was responsible for organising and indexing the finds as part of her practical training as a business archivist from October to December 1991. Dr. Günter Cordes took over the indexing and completion of the finding aid in 1992. The inventory was packaged by Bruno Wagner. The data acquisition was done by Hildegard Aufderklamm.Ludwigsburg, January 1992Ruth Kappel Company chronicle: 1827First attempts at chicory coffee production by Johann Franck, owner of a confectionery and speciality shop in Vaihingen/Enz1828Establishment of the chicory factory in Vaihingen/Enz by Johann Heinrich FranckEstablishment of chain stores for the production of intermediate products:- 1832 Darre in Steinbach (today Wernau, district of Esslingen)- 1844 Darre in Großgartach (today Leingarten, district of Heilbronn)- 1851 Darre with roasting plant and mill in the Rieter valley near Enzweihingen (today Vaihingen, district of Ludwigsburg)- 1855 Darre in Meimsheim (today Brackenheim, district of Heilbronn)Later foundations with freight railway connection:- 1855 Darre in Bretten (Baden)- 1880 Darre in Eppingen (Baden)- 1880 Darre in Marbach/Neckar1867 Death of company founder Johann Heinrich Franck1868 Relocation from Vaihingen to Ludwigsburg (direct railway connection)1871 Firmation to Heinrich Franck Söhne OHG, LudwigsburgFoundation of branches:- 1879 Linz/Donau- 1883 Komotau (today CR)- 1883 Milan 1883 Basel- 1887 Bucharest H. F. S. OHG, since 1924 AG- 1888 Kaschau (today CR)- 1892 Agram (today Zagreb)- 1895 Flushing (near New York)- 1896 Pardubitz (today CR)- 1909 Nagykanizsa (Hungary)- 1910 Skawina near Krakow (today Poland)- 1911 Mosonszentjanos (Hungary)Acquisition of the factories and market shares of competing German coffee producers until 1928:- 1883 Daniel Voelcker in Lahr/Baden (founded in 1883) 1806)- 1897 Gebrüder Wickert in Durlach- 1899 Ch. Kuntze und Söhne GmbH in Halle a.d. Saale- 1899 Krause und Co. in Nordhausen/Harz- 1900 C. Trampler in Lahr/Baden (founded in 1793)- 1908 Emil Seelig AG in Heilbronn- 1910 Bethge and Jordan in Magdeburg- 1911 F.F. Resag AG in Köpenick- 1911/12 Spartana-Nährsalz GmbH in Dresden- 1914 G.G. Weiss in Stettin (founded in 1793) 1866)- 1916 Pfeiffer and Diller in Horchheim- 1916 August Schmidt in Hamburg- 1917 Hillmann and Kischner in Breslau- 1917 Richard Porath GmbH in Pyritz- 1920 A.F.W. Röpe (descendant) in Hamburg- 1926 J.G. Hauswaldt in Magdeburg- 1928 Georg Josef Scheuer in Fürth (founded in 1928) 1812)1911 Participation of Heinrich Franck Söhne OHG and Kathreiner-Malzkaffee-Fabriken, Munich, in Resag AG Berlin-Köpenick1913 Founding of Kornfranck GmbH in NeussAffiliation of Heinrich Franck Söhne to Internationale Nahrungs- und Genußmittel AG (INGA) in Schaffhausen1914 Establishment of the northern sales management in BerlinTransfer of the registered office of the newly founded Heinrich Franck Söhne GmbH from Halle to BerlinConversion of Heinrich Franck Söhne OHG Ludwigsburg into a GmbH 1918 At the end of the first quarter of 1918, Heinrich Franck Söhne OHG Ludwigsburg was converted into a GmbH 1918. World War IIIn the successor states of the Danube Monarchy, independent Franck companies are formed in the form of national stock corporations. foundation of the Central European Agricultural and Operating Company in Berlin, Großwerther since 1928, for improved raw material supply. 1920 foundation of the FUNDUS Handelsgesellschaft mbH in Linz with significant participation of Heinrich Franck and sons. In 1922, Heinrich Franck Söhne firms in Germany join Allgemeine Nahrungsmittel GmbH (ANGES) in Berlin (after 1930 renamed ZIMA Verwaltungs-GmbH, Berlin). ANGES' task: Coordination of procurement, technology, sales and finances1928 Centenary celebrations in Ludwigsburg and Halle1933 After the seizure of power, the international interdependence of the economy is increasingly restricted.1939 Outbreak of the Second World WarIncreasing shortage of raw materials leads to rapprochement between Heinrich Franck and sons as well as the competing company Kathreiner.1943 Beginning outsourcing of the Berlin administration to Ludwigsburg1944 Merger of Franck and Kathreiner to form Franck und Kathreiner GmbH, Vienna1945 After the end of the war, reconstruction began in the western zones in:- Karlsruhe (founded by Kathreiner)- Ludwigsburg (founded by Franck) - Neuss (founded by Franck)- Regensburg (founded by Kathreiner)- Uerdingen (founded by Kathreiner)Headquarters of the company management becomes Ludwigsburg.1964 The Austrian plants in Linz and Vienna become independent.1964 The Austrian plants in Linz and Vienna become independent. By entering the delicatessen ("Thomy's") business, the company name was changed to Unifranck Lebensmittelwerke GmbH1965 Franck is now the leading supplier of over 70
n of the INGA.1970 Transformation of INGA into Interfranck Holding AG, Zurich1971 Merger of Interfranck-Holding AG with Ursina AG to form Ursina-Franck AG, Bern1973 Takeover of the corporate assets of Ursina-Franck AG by Nestlé Alimentana AG, Vevey (Switzerland)1976 formation of Allgäuer Alpenmilch-Unifranck-Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH (Allfa), Munich1978 Allgäuer Alpenmilch AG takes over the majority of Unifranck's share capital, Munich1978 relocation of Unifranck's head office to Munich and merger with Allgäuer Alpenmilch AG. In Ludwigsburg, the only factory that can still continue the tradition of the company's founding as a producer of coffee products remained to this day. In 1987, Nestlé Maggi GmbH and Allgäuer Alpenmilch AG merged to form Nestlé Deutschland AG. Unifranck Lebensmittelwerke GmbH became a minority shareholder of Nestle Deutschland AG, Frankfurt. The group comprises 23 factories in Germany. Organisation of the Heinrich Franck Söhne headquarters from 1919 onwards: 010 Management - Regional Committees and Advisory Boards014 Executive Person020 Central Department for Organisation024 Organisation, Central Office030 Central Department for General Administration:031 Business Accounting032 Money and Financial Accounting034 Delivery Accounting036 Legal Department037 Tax Department040 Central Department for Commercial Factory Management:041 Good Purchasing045 Permanent Witness Purchasing047 Warehouse Witness Purchasing049 Goods Directorate050 Central Department for Technical Factory Management:051 Processing of goods and production054 Printing office055 Central technical office060 Central sales department:061 Central sales office070 Central social administration department:071 Employees075 Social security and financial services employees076 General workers080 Central control department:081 Farm accounting082 Calculation of costs088 Variety statistics089 Freight and tariff officePost office of the central branches Literature: 100 years Franck 1828-1928, Ludwigsburg/Berlin, 1928.Wolfgang Schneider: The Unifranck Advertising Media Archive in Ludwigsburg, in: Ludwigsburger Geschichtsblätter, 31/1979, pp. 79-83 The capital of Cichoria, Ludwigsburg and the coffee media company Franck, catalogue for the exhibition of the Ludwigsburg Municipal Museum, 1 Dec. 1989 to 1 Dec. 1990, Ludwigsburg 1979.

History of the inventor: Under the chairmanship of the factory owner and war-disabled reserve officer Franz Seldte, the Stahlhelm was founded in Magdeburg on 25 December 1918. In particular, former soldiers and officers of the Infantry Regiment 66 quartered in Magdeburg, to which Franz Seldte also belonged, were among the first members. The primary purpose was to "maintain peace and order," i.e., to protect oneself and the police against revolutionary unrest, to "foster comradeship founded in the field," to represent the interests of former front-line soldiers and their relatives (1), and to promote entry into the Free Corps. Almost a year after its foundation, on 21 September 1919, the Stahlhelm with its already existing local groups and other similar groups constituted itself as the Reichsbund der Frontsoldaten (Reich League of Front Soldiers). Magdeburg (2) initially became the administrative centre. The 1st Reichsfrontsoldatentag took place there on 14 March 1920, in the course of which Franz Seldte was elected the 1st Federal Leader of the steel helmet and replaced the previous chairman Dr. Gustav Bünger (3). Seldte maintained this position until the dissolution of the Confederation in 1935. In the following two years, the Federation succeeded in gradually expanding its organization beyond Central Germany, including in Berlin, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Pomerania, Silesia and Westphalia. If the steel helmet confessed itself to the new republican form of government when it was founded and as standing above the parties, this gradually changed. He approached the political right, including the German National People's Party (DNVP), and oriented himself "German-racial". The local group in Halle under its leader, the DNVP functionary Kurt Werner, played a major role in this (4). This development was temporarily halted by the prohibition of the steel helmet in Prussia on 2 July 1922, which was effective until 26 January 1923, following the assassination attempt on Reich Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. In the turbulent year 1923, which was characterized by domestic political conflicts, occupation of the Ruhr, inflation, famine, separatist and communist uprisings and the climax of which was the Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch, which took place in Munich on November 8-9, the anti-democratic orientation of the steel helmet took on more and more form. Again the radical part of the alliance, the Gau Halle, in particular its new leader Theodor Duesterberg, was leading the way (5). If a national dictatorship was now advocated for the stabilization of conditions, coup d'état - at least in its official announcements - was rejected (6). On 9 March 1924 Theodor Duesterberg was appointed the 2nd Federal Leader alongside Franz Seldte. In the official presentation as a milestone in the history of steel helmets, in reality the mutual relationship was marked by repeated differences. With the increasing establishment of parliamentary democracy in the German Reich, the top management of the Stahlhelm was now thinking about the future. The Front Fighters Association wanted to be more than just a pure veteran association. He wanted to "implant" the propagated "spirit of front comradeship" to the entire German people (7). Under the motto "Über die Organisation zur Macht" (8), since the spring of 1924 its activities were extended to include young people (Jungstahlhelm and Scharnhorst) and the generation of over 24-year-olds (Stahlhelm-Landsturm, later Ringstahlhelm) who had no longer been able to participate in the First World War. Here above all the pre-military training stood in the foreground, the steel helmet understood itself nevertheless also as reservoir of the Reichswehr. In 1929, the steel helmet student association "Langemarck" was founded, which brought together the student youth. The steady growth of the covenant exerted an attraction on other federations, which led to them joining the steel helmet (9). In addition to the organizational expansion, the steel helmet also attempted to influence the politics of the Weimar Republic in other ways, albeit with strict emphasis on its "non-partisanship". To achieve this goal, in addition to mass events, propaganda campaigns and appeals to the patriotic sense of duty, personalities with political influence close to the steel helmet also served. The Reich President of Hindenburg was appointed honorary member. The transformation from an original self-protection organization to a political defense organization took on concrete forms. In the mid-twenties, however, it soon became clear that the Frontkämpferbund was often at odds with its principle of "standing above the parties" and its claim to political leadership. One had to leave the extra-parliamentary level in order to gain weight in politics. "Into the state" was now the slogan (10). Although they avoided founding their own party, they formed alliances with others, such as the DVP and the German nationalists, to whom close personal ties had always existed. In the Reich and Prussian state elections of 1928, for example, Stahlhelm members were placed on DNVP lists (11). However, these remained fruitless attempts, which only led to conflicts, which finally prompted the federal leadership to conduct politics on its own initiative (12). First the Federation specified its antirepublican oriented program in the first and second "Steel Helmet Embassies" as well as the "Fürstenwalder Hassbotschaft" (13). According to its self-image, the Federation saw itself as the spearhead of a freedom movement whose goals were "the external and internal liberation of Germany" (14). At the Front Soldier Days in Berlin and Hamburg in 1927 and 1928, as well as at several other propaganda demonstrations, the steel helmet publicly displayed its aversion to the Republic. However, a series of unfortunate decisions, including the 1928 referendum to amend the constitution and the 1929 referendum against the Young Plan, combined with disagreements in federal leadership and political inexperience, showed that the activities of the Stahlhelm in this area were limited. Subsequently, disputes arose, especially with the growing National Socialists, over who should take the lead in the right-wing camp. During the Reichstag elections in September 1930, it became clear that the NSDAP played the leading role. Increasingly, members of the steel helmet, in part even entire local groups, joined this party and the organizations belonging to it (above all SA and SS). The meeting of the leading right-wing parties and associations held in Bad Harzburg in October 1931 and the merger to form the "Harzburger Front" were unable to bridge the existing gap. In the 1932 Reich presidential elections, the competition between the NSDAP and the steel helmet again came to light, with both of their own candidates entering the race: Adolf Hitler stood for the National Socialists, Theodor Duesterberg for the front soldiers (15). After the disastrous outcome of the Reich presidential elections for the Federation, disillusionment spread. The steel helmet put its political ambitions on ice and now turned its attention again increasingly to military sports activities and voluntary work, which was regarded as a substitute for compulsory military service (16). The assumption of political power by the NSDAP in January 1933 was welcomed despite all differences. Among other things, several steel helmets participated in the auxiliary police founded by Hermann Göring in February of the same year together with SA and SS in equalization measures (17). Franz Seldte received the post of Reich Labour Minister (18) in Adolf Hitler's cabinet. In June 1933 the gradual dissolution of the Frontsoldatenbund began. The Scharnhorst-Bund for youths up to the age of 18 was integrated into the Hitler Youth, while the over-18 to 35-year-olds were subordinated to the SA as "Wehrstahlhelm". As a result of the enormous increase in members, a reorganisation of the SA was ordered at the end of 1933. In the course of this now also the core steel helmet (members over 35 years) came as a SA reserve under their command (19). In March 1934 it came to the reestablishment into the National Socialist German Frontkämpferbund (steel helmet). On 7 November 1935 the Frontsoldatenbund was finally dissolved, after it had led only a shadowy existence since the beginning of the "Third Reich". In 1951 a new organization was founded in Cologne under the name of Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet, Federation of Front Soldiers). In 1952 the former Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was elected as its federal leader. Notes (1) See Graff, Siegmund: Foundation and Development of the Federal Government, in: Der Stahlhelm. Memories and Pictures, Vol. 1, p. 30-32. (2) See ibid., p. 38. (3) Due to the so-called "Kapp Putsch", which had begun one day earlier, it was, however, only a board meeting and not a mass event like the later Front Soldier Days, which took place annually until 1933, see Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 28. (4) See ibid.., (5) Duesterberg, former professional officer, had already been a member of the Halle Stahlhelm since the end of 1919 and at the same time managing director of the Halle-Merseburg constituency of the DNVP, see Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 24-25. On 21 April he became the leader of the Halle Stahlhelm-Gaus. (6) Cf. on this subject Berghahn: Stahlhelm, S. 39-53. (7) S. Graff: Gründung, S. 53 (8) S. Berghahn: Stahlhelm, S. 64. (9) So e.g. the Cherusker-und Westfalenbund in October 1924 and the Bund Reichsflagge in October 1927, s. Mahlke: Stahlhelm, S. 150, Sp. 2. (10) This term initially led to misunderstandings in the sense of a turn towards the Republic. In reality one wanted to penetrate the state from within and transform it according to one's own goals, see Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 103; Mahlke: Stahlhelm, p. 149, Sp. 1; Graff: Gründung, p. 62-63. (11) Cf. Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 109ff. (12) See ibid., p. 112. (13) S. Mahlke: Stahlhelm, p. 151, Sp. 2. (14) S. Graff: Gründung, p. 63. (15) Finally, Hindenburg won again with 53 votes, see Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 219. (16) See Berghahn: Stahlhelm, p. 232. (17) S. ibid., p. 252ff. (18) He held this office, albeit without much political influence, until the end of the Third Reich. (19) Cf. Mahlke: Stahlhelm, S. 155, Sp. 1-2. Inventory Description: History of the Inventory With the dissolution of the steel helmet in 1935, the files of the Federal Government reached the Reichsarchiv in Potsdam. The stock was removed around 1944/45 and thus escaped destruction - the Reichsarchiv was bombed on 14 April 1945. The files remained in Potsdam after the Second World War, now in the area of the Soviet occupation zone, and were taken over by the German Central Archive (DZA; later: Central State Archive of the GDR), which was founded there in 1946. They were archived there under the inventory signature 61 Sta 1. In the course of the reunification of the German states in 1990, the documents finally reached the Federal Archives through the integration of the Central State Archives of the GDR. To date, the Federal Archives themselves had preserved only minor remains of the steel helmet under the signature R 72, which had been acquired from private sources (see Gerhard Granier: Das Bundesarchiv und seine Bestände, 3. Aufl., Boppard 1977, p. 437). Archival evaluation and processing The first verifiable processing of the disordered holdings kept in the German Central Archives took place in the years 1957-1960. The work was made more difficult by the fact that the archives did not have any organisational documents or file directories of the steel helmet. In 1967, through the mediation of V.R. Berghahn (author of the book "Der Stahlhelm Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918-1935, Düsseldorf 1966"), the DZA was able to acquire a copy of a list of contributions from the Stahlhelm-Bundesamt from 1935. This list originally came from the possession of Dr. Heinz Brauweiler, last head of the political department of the Stahlhelm-Bundesamt, and was intended to list all files to be handed over to the Reichsarchiv. With the help of this directory, the indexing according to the principles of order and indexing for the state archives of the GDR was completed in 1970. A revision in 1967 of the files of the classification groups 1 (correspondence of the Federal Government), 2 (printed publications) and 4 (pictures) with the help of the above-mentioned list of duties produced the following picture: Classification groups 1: Available: 193 volumes Missing: 28 volumes = approx. 12 classification groups 2: Available: 117 volumes Missing: 55 volumes = approx. 47Classification groups 4: Available: 70 volumes Missing: 33 volumes = approx. 32The particularly high losses in groups 2 and 4 in particular can be explained by a presumably incomplete transfer to the Reich Archives as well as losses during the war-related relocation of the Reich Archives' holdings. In 2003 the steel helmet was re-signed from its former location in the Koblenz office of the Federal Archives and merged with the old Potsdam part under the stock signature R 72. Subsequently, the data from the finding aids were converted into electronic form and transferred to the Basys database. Since the indexing data from the finding aids did not comply with the modern indexing guidelines of the Federal Archives, a revision of the data was necessary, which was carried out in the years 2007-2011. The main focus was on the creation of volume and series sequences, streamlining of the contained notes by highlighting the essential content, review and adjustment, partial modification of the classification. From the collection "NS-Archive of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR" files of the provenance steel helmet were extracted and integrated into the stock R 72. Classification groups 1-3 were particularly affected by this work. Characterization of the contents: The collection provides a good insight into the organizational development of the steel helmet and its affiliated associations, especially at the level of the federal leadership and the regional associations or Gaue, as well as into its activities of various kinds, especially from the beginning of the twenties until its dissolution in 1935. The files of the classification groups 1 and 3 represent the largest part of the transmission of the steel helmet. While in classification group 1 the correspondence of the federal leadership with the regional steel helmet associations as well as other associations, organisations and private persons on the one hand, and on the other hand the files on the Front Soldier Days form the focus of content, in group 3 primarily domestic and foreign policy questions as well as events during the Weimar Republic or at the beginning of the Third Reich are documented. Personal documents are only available on a larger scale to the extent that they concern higher-ranking members of the steel helmet or persons from contemporary history or public life. Membership lists or local group passes are only part of the stock in extremely small quantities. State of development: Findbuch Nachträge in Datenbank Umfang, Explanation: 2336 AE Citation method: BArch, R 72/...

History of the inventory collector: Founded in January 1920 in Halle to represent the scientific and wirtschaft‧lichen interests of the German universities and university teachers; renamed Reichsverband der deutschen Hochschulen 1933; dissolved in 1935. Inventory description: Founded in January 1920 in Halle (Saale) to represent the scientific and economic interests of the German universities and university teachers; renamed Reichsverband der deutschen Hochschulen 1933; dissolved in 1935. State of development: Online Findbuch 2004 Scope, Explanation: 1234 AE Citation method: BArch, R 8088/...

1.1 Prussian Officer's Witwenkasse The Prussian Officer's Witwenkasse was founded in 1792 as an insurance institution for married officers of the Prussian army with state guarantee and support. Active officers were not required to join until 1810; previously, only voluntary membership was planned. Inactive officers were allowed to join on a voluntary basis from 1813. Civil servants of the military administration were required to join since 1818 (cf.: GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7416). Until 1824, the Offizierswitwenkasse was organizationally linked to the Allgemeine Witwenverpflegungsanstalt, which had already been founded in 1775. The name of the Offizierswitwenkasse was later changed to Militärwitwenkasse and finally to Militärwitwenpensionsanstalt. The basis for the activities of the insurance company was the regulations for the Royal Prussian Officer's Witwenkasse of 3 March 1792 (cf.: GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7413), which was amended over time by the following laws and instructions: - Act of 3 March 1792, of 17 July 1865 (see: Collection of Laws for the Royal Prussian States, 1865, pp. 817-840; GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, no. 7417) - Instruction on the execution of the Act of 17 July 1865, some amendments to the regulations for the Officer's Widow Fund of 3 March 1792, of 26 March 1792. September 1865 (cf.: Ministerial-Blatt für die gesamte innere Verwaltung in den Königlich Preußischen Staaten, 1865, p. 311-315; GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, no. 7417) - Law concerning amendments to the regulations for the Königlich Preußische Offizierswitwenkasse, of 15 June 1897 (cf.: Gesetzsammlung für die Königlich-Preußischen Staaten, 1897, p. 185-186; GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, no. 7417). By instruction of September 26, 1865, the group of military persons who were obliged or entitled to join the Officer's Witwenkasse, among other things, was bindingly defined. There was an obligation to join: - all active officers of the army (including gendarmerie) and the navy; - all officers of the army and navy on salary or pension; - all active military and navy officers with an annual salary of more than 250 talers; - all military and navy officers on salary or pension with an earlier annual salary of more than 250 talers; - civil officers of the Ministry of War who receive an annual salary of at least 250 talers from the army or navy budget. Furthermore, the following were entitled to join on a voluntary basis: - the officers who left active service with the prospect of reemployment; - the military and naval officers who left active service with the prospect of reemployment with an earlier annual salary of more than 250 talers; - the officers of the Landwehr on leave; - the military and naval officers with an annual salary of less than 250 talers; - the officers and officials who enter military service during a mobilization for the duration of the state of war. The law of 20 May 1882 on the welfare of widows and orphans of direct state officials (cf.: Gesetzsammlung für die Königlich-Preußischen Staaten, 1882, pp. 298-304) amended the provision for the survivors of Prussian state officials. Section 23 of this Act granted military officials previously insured with the Military Witwenkasse a right of resignation within a period of three months. Military officials could no longer be accepted as members of the military widow's fund. The law of 17 June 1887 concerning the welfare of widows and orphans of members of the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy (cf.: Reichsgesetzblatt, 1887, p. 237-244; GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, no. 7421) introduced the provision for survivors of officers, military doctors and military officials of the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy. As a result of this law, the military widow's fund was no longer obliged to become a member and its members had the opportunity to withdraw from the fund within a period of 3 months. In addition, § 29 of this Act stipulates that no new members may be admitted. However, the Prussian military widow's fund continued to exist after 1887 to carry out its tasks. Those members and widows who had not made use of their right of withdrawal could continue to receive benefits from the Military Widow's Fund. Due to considerable financial problems, payments could only be maintained before the First World War with the help of grants from the Reich. In the course of inflation, the pensions still paid out up to then were completely devalued and payments stopped completely at the end of 1923. The Prussian Military Witwenkasse and its affiliated institutions were finally dissolved (cf: Bitter, Rudolf von: Handwörterbuch der Preußischen Verwaltung, 3rd ed., Berlin and Leipzig 1928, vol. 2, p. 167). 1.2 Affiliated military widow and orphan funds As a result of the German War of 1866, the military pension funds of the annexed states of Hanover, Kurhessen and Nassau were affiliated to the Prussian military widow funds. However, the funds were not formally dissolved but continued to exist for the members entitled to a pension and continued to be administered by the Prussian Military Witwenkasse until the final liquidation in 1923. These are the following funds: - Hannoversche Unteroffizierswitwenkasse (cf. GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 6834[regulations of 1850]) - Kurhessische Militärwitwen- und waisenanstalt (cf. GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7420[Statutes of 1858]) - Nassau Officer's Widows and Orphans Fund (see GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7444[Statutes of 1828]). In 1902 the Unteroffizierswitwenkasse des Mecklenburg-Schwerinschen Kontingent was added (cf. GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7418[Statutes of 1904]). This had emerged from the noncommissioned officers' committee of the Mecklenburg-Schwerin contingent, which had existed since the middle of the 19th century. 1.2 Pensions Department of the War Ministry The Department of Disability, which was later called the Pensions Department, was responsible for dealing with the pension and pension matters of the Prussian army. After the end of the First World War, the military supply agencies were first run by the Pensionsabteilung (Abw) des Heeresabwicklungsamtes Preußen and later by the Abteilung Preußen des Reichspensionsamtes für die ehemalige Wehrmacht. At the beginning of the 1920s, the pension files were handed over to the responsible pension offices. A part of the pension files was taken over by the main pension office Brandenburg-Pommern and finally reached the secret state archive PK via this office. 1.3 Pensions Department of the Imperial Navy Office In the Imperial Navy Office, Department A II (Department of Justice and Pensions) was responsible for processing the pension and support cases of naval officers and officials. After the First World War, this department was also handled by the following departments: - Reichswehrministerium, Admiralität, Abteilung für die Abwicklung der Hinterbliebenen- und Unterstützungsangelegenheiten - Reichsministerium des Innern, Pensionsabteilung (former Marine) - Reichspensionsamt für die ehemalige Wehrmacht, Abteilung Marine. Eventually, the navy's pension files were distributed to the responsible pension offices and thus also reached the main pension office of Brandenburg-Pomerania and, in this way, the secret state archive of the PK. 1.4 Main Supply Office The Main Supply Office Brandenburg-Pomerania was a Reich authority directly subordinated to the Reich Ministry of Labour for the management of the Reich's supply system in the area of the provinces Brandenburg and Pomerania. The various regional pension offices were subordinate to the main pension office. The Reich's care system concerned the care of military personnel who were entitled to care or medical treatment to restore their health as a result of service damage or disability. The provision of care for the surviving dependents of soldiers who died in the First World War or military personnel who died as a result of service damage also belonged to the area of responsibility of the Reich's pension system (cf: Bitter, Rudolf von: Handwörterbuch der Preußischen Verwaltung, 3rd ed., Berlin and Leipzig 1928, vol. 2, p. 937). The basis for the activities of the main pension office and the pension offices was the law on the provision of benefits for military personnel and their surviving dependents in the event of official disability (Reichsversorgungsgesetz) of 12 May 1920 (cf.: Reichsgesetzblatt, 1920. pp. 989-1019). The establishment of the authorities was initially provisionally regulated by the Law on the Pension Authorities of 15 May 1920 (cf.: Reichsgesetzblatt, 1920, p. 1063f) and finally by the Law on the Procedure in Pension Matters of 10 January 1922 (cf.: Reichsgesetzblatt, 1922, p. 59-85). 2. inventory history 2.1 Militärwitwenkassen At first, only the documents of the Prussian Offizierswitwenkasse of the Reichsarchiv, Berlin Department, which had grown up until the dissolution of the old army in 1806, were handed over to the Geheime Staatsarchiv PK (see: GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 178 C 4, No. 2585[Accessionsjournal 1910-1926]). This was a relatively closed registry, which at the time had been transferred to the Reichsarchiv via the Secret Archive of the War Ministry. The holdings included the so-called acts of reception (acts of accession of the members) ordered by troop units and were given the title He. A. Rep. 7 A Officer's widow's box office - Old filing cabinet. The general files and loan files (files on borrowed capital of the Fund) created before 1806 were already collected in 1865. Also affected by the cassation were the widow's files, insofar as they were not transferred to the new registry (Meisner, Heinrich Otto; Winter, Georg: Übersicht über diebestand des Geheimen Staatsarchivs zu Berlin-Dahlem, 2. Teil, Leipzig 1935, pp. 110-112) with the processes from the reception files. These files were transferred to the Army Archive in Potsdam in the 1930s as part of the demarcation of the holdings and were probably destroyed there during the war-related destruction of this archive in 1945. There is only a list of members arranged according to units, which gives an idea of the scope of the destroyed reception files of the "Old Registry" (see GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7598). In 1935, the Reichsarchiv, Berlin Department, also took over the archival records of the Officer's Witwenkassen, which had been created after 1806, and used them as a collection He. A. 7 B Offizierswitwenkasse - Neue Registratur reponiert (Meisner, Heinrich Otto; Winter, Georg: Übersicht über diebestände des Geheimen Staatsarchivs zu Berlin-Dahlem, 2. part, Leipzig 1935, pp. 110-112). The files taken over included the general files, accounting documents, name registers, membership files and widow files of the Prussian Officer's Witwenkasse as well as the documents of the affiliated military widwenkassen administered by the Prussian Military Witwenkasse (the former Hanoverian, Kurhessian and Nassauian armed forces, and the Mecklenburg-Swabian contingent). In the course of the above-mentioned demarcation of the holdings, large parts of this holdings (including the member and widow files) were also transferred to the Army Archive in Potsdam, where they were also destroyed when this archive was destroyed. The extent of the lost member and widow files can only be guessed from the observation that in 1935 about "1000 large packages of officers' widow's fund" files were transferred to the Secret State Archives PK (cf.: GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 178 C 4, Nr. 2586[Zugangsbuch für Archivalien 1927-1935]). Only a small number of general files and some accounting documents remained in the Secret State Archives of the PK. In addition to the member cadastre (list of members), a number of name registers and lists of files have been preserved. However, these only provide very little information about the members of the military widow's fund or their relatives. 2.2 Supply files The supply files created in the supply departments of the War Ministry and the Imperial Navy Office were submitted to the Brandenburg-Pomerania Main Supply Office after the relevant military authorities had been wound up. In October 1946 the pension files were taken over by the Secret State Archives PK (cf.: GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 178 C 4, No. 2586). Due to the effects of the war only a reduced part of the originally considerably more extensive file material was available at this time. The acquired files were evaluated in 1946 (cf.: Preface to the Old Find Book of the former GStA PK, X. HA, Rep. 101). At that time, the supply files of the following groups of military personnel were classified as worthy of archiving: - Officers (from the rank of colonel or captain at sea) - military physicians - veterinarians - building officials - administrative officials - judges and auditors - geographers, topographers and cartographers - professors and teachers at military schools - army pastors - members of colonial protection troops - participants in colonial campaigns. Selected individual cases have also been passed down. The remaining files have been collected. The position GStA PF, X. HA, Rep. 101 Versorgungsakten was formed from the transferred pension files. These files contain a variety of biographical materials such as farewell requests, service career certificates, pension statements, salary questionnaires and support requests. Together with the supply files, probably also the file lists and pension recipient lists as well as individual files of the supply departments of the War Ministry or the Reich Marine Office, which were also kept in the main supply office Brandenburg-Pomerania, were transferred to the secret state archive PK. This partial stock was not distorted. The collection also contains a number of files from foundations and troop funds supporting former military personnel, including the National Appreciation for Veterans Foundation. These foundations were administered by the pension department of the War Ministry. The files were also transferred to the Secret State Archive PK via the Brandenburg-Pomerania main public utility office. The documents handed down are primarily a manageable number of documents on the accounting and capital management of the foundations. However, with one exception (see GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 6931), there are no directories with the names of beneficiaries. As part of the reorganisation of the holdings in 2009 and 2010, the existing reference book from 1949 was retroconverted by archive employee Guido Behnke. In addition, the previously unlisted archival records (registers and registers of the military widow's funds and the utilities departments) were listed. The stock was sorted according to a newly created classification. 3. instructions for use 3.1 Military Witwenkassen An important source for the determination of biographical information on officers of the Prussian army is the so-called. Officer's nomenclature (see: GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 1, No. 71-95). This is an alphabetical list of military data of officers for a period from the 18th century to about 1873/74; unfortunately, some volumes of the officers' nomenclature have not been preserved in the holdings of the PK Secret State Archives. In this context, the list of members of the Prussian officer's widow's fund can be a useful addition. However, it must be emphasized that only the names of those officers or military officials who belonged to the circle of eligible members of the Military Widow Fund are included in this list. This means above all that they were married at the time of their military career. It is also important that only a relatively small amount of biographical data (e.g. date of birth and death, name of wife, unit) is available in the member lists. However, it should be noted that the original member and widow files have not been handed down. To use the membership lists, it is first necessary to determine the membership number of the military person you are looking for. The alphabetical name registers (classification group 01.07.01) can be used for this. As soon as the membership number is known, the relevant chronologically ordered membership lists can be reviewed. This is first of all the so-called. Member cadastre, which contains all members who have joined the Offizierswitwenkasse since its foundation in chronological order. In addition to the member cadastre, the so-called. Special manual available, which is also sorted by member numbers. Several membership numbers were also assigned to individual persons (e.g. when changing the pension amount, remarrying). In the special manual, the relevant entry is in this case always below the lowest member number. The other member numbers only contain references to the first entry. Since the special manual sometimes contains more detailed information than the member cadastre, it should also be used for research purposes. However, the special manual is only available from 1835 (starting with member number 13001). A widow's number is also listed in the member cadastre and in the special manual, provided that the insured event has occurred and a widow's pension has been paid. On the basis of this widow number, the chronologically ordered widow lists (classification group 01.08.02) can also be looked through, which may contain some further information on the widow of the sought military person. The individual steps of the drilldown reporting are now explained using an example: We are looking for information about Lieutenant General August von Witzleben. 1.) In the classification group 01.07.01, the membership number (No. 20369) and the widow's number (No. 10577) can be determined in the relevant volume of the alphabetical list of names (GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7394). 2.) Based on the membership number, the relevant volume of the member cadastre (GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 6935) or special manuals (GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7197) can be determined and reviewed in classification group 01.07.02. 3.) On the basis of the widow's number, you can then search in classification group 01.08.02 in the relevant volume of the widow's register (GStA PK, IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. 7178). For the military widows' and orphans' funds affiliated to the Prussian Military Widow Fund, there are also individual member directories and widows' and orphans' directories in the holdings. 3.2 Medical care files The medical care files are listed in the search book alphabetically according to the name of the corresponding military member under the classification 08. For this reason, this reference book does not have a register of names. In addition to the rank of the person concerned, the names of some widows and other surviving dependents are also listed. This, albeit reduced, file holdings are of considerable importance for biographical research on individual officers and military officials, since the war-related destruction of the army archive in 1945 destroyed a very large number of files containing biographical material, such as, for example, in the specific case the member and widow files of the Offizierswitwenkasse (Devantier, Sven Uwe: Das Heeresarchiv Potsdam - Die Bestandsaufnahme in der Abteilung Militärarchiv des Bundesarchivs, in: Archivar, 61st ed, Issue 4, 2008, pp. 361-369). The pension recipient lists of the War Ministry and the Navy Office listed in the classification groups 05.04 and 06.02 contain only little information. However, as already mentioned, due to the consequences of the war and the cassation, a large part of the supply files has not been handed down, so that in individual cases at least the basic information on the military personnel concerned can be researched. 4. references to other holdings of the Secret State Archives PK A small number of files on supply matters of individual officers can be found in classification group 13.5 Military Cases/Personnel Matters of the holdings of GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 89 Secret Civil Cabinet (cf.: Findbuch des Bestandes GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 89, Vol. 17, p. 2805-2812). In addition, individual files on the officers' widow's fund and military supply matters can also be found in the following holdings: - GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 Ministry of the Interior - GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a Ministry of Justice - GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 89 Secret Civil Cabinet - GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 91 C Military and Civil Government for the country between Weser and Elbe in Halle and Halberstadt - GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 Ministry of Finance - GStA PK, II. HA General Directorate - GStA PK, III. HA Ministry of Foreign Affairs - GStA PK, IV HA, Rep. 16 Staff Regulations. 5. notes, order signature and method of citation Scope of inventory: 7571 CA (40 running metres) Duration: 1792 - 1945 Non-issued signatures: 581, 867-876, 1034-1043, 1154-1158, 1443, 1864 Last signature issued: The files must be ordered: IV. HA, Rep. 7, No. () The files are to be quoted: GStA PK, IV HA Prussian Army, Rep. 7 Offizierswitwenkasse und andere militärische Versorgungsstellen, Nr. () Berlin, March 2011 (Guido Behnke) finding aids: database; find book, 5 vol.

1st Biographical Information on Wolfgang Kapp Wolfgang Kapp was born in New York on July 24, 1858, the son of the lawyer Friedrich Kapp, who had played an important role in the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848 and had to emigrate to the United States because of his participation in the Baden uprising. Wolfgang Kapp's mother was Louise Engels and was the daughter of the Major General and Commander of Cologne Engels. The family was originally called d'Ange and immigrated from France to Germany in 1687 after the Edict of Nantes. In 1870 Friedrich Kapp returned to Germany with his family; he lived in Berlin and was a national liberal, later a liberal member of the Reichstag from 1872-1877 and 1881-1884; he also worked as a renowned historian. Friedrich Kapp died in 1884, his son Wolfgang studied in Tübingen and Göttingen. He completed his studies in 1880 with a doctorate. Probably in 1881 Wolfgang Kapp married Margarete Rosenow, the daughter of a landowner in Dülzen (district Preußisch Eylau). After his marriage Kapp seems to have familiarized himself with the administration of a large agricultural business on his father-in-law's estate, because it was not until 1885 that he began his actual professional career as a trainee with the government in Minden. In 1886 he joined the Ministry of Finance, Department II, Administration of Direct Taxes, as a government assistant. From 1890 to 1899 he was district administrator in Guben. In 1890, at the beginning of his time as district administrator, Kapp bought the Rittergut Pilzen estate near the Rosenov estate and thus entered the circle of the East Prussian Great Agrarians. Out of his interest for the interests of agriculture a work of agricultural policy content arose in Guben, which attracted a great deal of attention in the Ministry of Agriculture, so that an appointment as a government council followed in 1900. Kapp was appointed to the I. Dept. Administration of Agricultural and Stud Affairs, Department of Agricultural Workers' Affairs, but during the era of Reich Chancellor von Bülow as Commissioner of the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture he was primarily active in the preparation of the customs tariff of 1902 and in the initiation of the new trade agreements of 1904-1906. Kapp gained his first foreign policy experience in negotiations with representatives of foreign countries. Kapp soon gained a closer relationship with the then Reich Chancellor von Bülow, with whom he shared similar political views. During his time at the Ministry of Agriculture, Kapp seems to have had ambitious plans for his future professional and political career and at least aspired to the position of district president. That his plans went even further can be seen from the recording of a conversation between Kaiser Wilhelm II and the General Field Marshal von der Goltz, in which the possibility of Kapp's successor in the Reich Chancellery was considered. However, this conversation, whose date lies between 1909 and 1911, took place at a time when Kapp had already left the Prussian civil service. The reason for his resignation from the Ministry of Agriculture seems to have been his annoyance at not taking his person into account when appointing district presidents. On 5 April 1906, the East Prussian countryside elected the owner of the Pilzen manor as general landscape director. It is very characteristic of Kapp's personality under what circumstances he became known in East Prussia through a trial he conducted against the landscape. The landscapes of the Prussian provinces were self-governing bodies and as such primarily representations of landowners. But the landscape also served as a representative body for state fiscal policy. Its real task, of course, lay outside the political sphere in granting credit to cooperatives. However, the credit policy has had a decisive influence on the distribution of property and the social structure of the provinces and has thus had political repercussions. Through the incorporation of agricultural banks and fire societies in the 19th century, the landscapes had become efficient organisations at provincial level. Kapp took on the new tasks with his own vehemence. He continued the landscape in the specified direction, primarily by developing the branch network of the Landschaftsbank, by merging the landscape with the East Prussian Feuersozietät, by granting more loans, particularly for small property, and by increasing the landscape funds. His policy was aimed at freeing agriculture, which was in a serious crisis at the beginning of the 20th century, from its dependence on state aid and enabling it to help itself by means of credit policy measures. In the course of these efforts, Kapp tackled three major tasks. First and foremost the question of agricultural debt relief, which the Prussian state initiated in 1906 with the law on the debt limit. Kapp was the first to try to make this framework law effective from the initiative of the parties themselves without further state aid by showing different ways of debt relief. The inclusion of life insurance as a means of reducing debt proved particularly effective. Instead of debt repayment, the premium payment was made to an agricultural life insurance company. This ensured that a certain amount of capital was available for debt reduction in the event of death. The second task resulted from the former. The desire to combine public-law life insurance with debt relief necessitated the creation of a number of public-law life insurance institutions, which were merged into an association chaired by Kapp. These facilities were especially designed to prevent the outflow of premium money from the countryside to the large cities, where it had been used especially for the construction of tenements. However, the outflow of capital was only one danger, the other was the rural exodus that began in the 19th century. He tried to strengthen small agricultural holdings with a colonization and agricultural workers' bill, which was accepted by the General Landtag in 1908. This measure was based on the recognition of the untenability of the institution of instants and deputants, who were in the closest dependence on the lord of the manor and who emigrated from this situation in masses to the large cities, where they strengthened the ranks of the industrial proletariat. The organ for settlement policy should be a landscaped settlement bank. The third task that Kapp set himself was the creation of a public-law national insurance scheme following the public-law life insurance scheme. This measure was primarily directed against the Volksversicherungsanstalt "Volksfürsorge", created by the Social Democrats, and was intended to secure capital for agricultural workers to buy their own farms by means of abbreviated insurance. These plans did not lead to the hoped-for success, but ended in a bitter feud with the private insurance companies, especially the Deutsche Volksversicherungs-Aktiengesellschaft. In addition to his functions within the East Prussian landscape, Kapp was also active in various other bodies. In December 1906 he was appointed to the Stock Exchange Committee of the Reichsamt des Innern and in 1912 to the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank. The First World War gave Kapp's life and work a whole new direction. Kapp's biography is too little researched to judge how far he had buried his ambitious plans, which apparently pushed him to the top of the Reich government, or postponed them only for a better opportunity. Although Kapp had been a member of the German Conservative Party since at least 1906, he did not take the path of an existing party to make a political career. This path probably did not correspond to his personality, described as authoritarian, ambitious and independent. He made the great leap into high politics through his sensational conflict with Reich Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg. In his memo of 26 May 1916 "Die nationalen Kreise und der Reichs-Kanzler", which he sent to 300 public figures, including Bethmann Hollweg himself, he sharply criticised what he considered to be the weak policy of the Reich Chancellor, to whom he v. a. accused him of his alleged pacting with social democracy, his reluctance to America and his rejection of the unrestricted submarine war demanded by extremely militaristic circles, but also of a false war economic policy. The sharp reaction of Bethmann Hollweg, who spoke in a Reichstag session of "pirates of public opinion", among others, who abused "with the flag of the national parties", Kapp perceived as a personal affront to which he reacted with a demand for a duel. On the contrary, Kapp had to take an official reprimand and his re-election as General Landscape Director, which had taken place in March 1916 on a rotational basis, was refused confirmation by the Prussian State Ministry. Since his friends held on to Kapp in the East Prussian landscape, he was re-elected in 1917. This time - since Bethmann Hollweg had been overthrown in the meantime - he was able to take up his post as general landscape director again. At first, the events of 1916 led him even more into politics. Here he expressed solidarity with a circle of extremely reactionary and aggressive military forces around General Ludendorff and Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, who pursued a ruthless internal perseverance policy that tightened up all the forces of the people and a policy of unrestrained annexation and total warfare towards the outside world. Emperor Wilhelm II, who in principle sympathized with this extreme direction, had to refrain from supporting this group out of various considerations of public opinion and the negative attitude of the party majorities in the Reichstag. Kapp and his comrades-in-arms assumed in their political ambitions the complete certainty of the German final victory. They closed their eyes to the already looming possibility of defeat for Germany, especially after America entered the war. The war and peace goals they represented, especially the annexation plans at the expense of Russia and Poland, which were later only surpassed by Hitler, were marked by uncontrolled wishful thinking that in no way corresponded to objective reality. His extreme attitude drove Kapp into a blind hatred against any social and democratic movement; his fierce opposition against social democracy was mainly based on the legend of the dagger thrust against the imperialist Germany struggling to win. This military and National Socialist sharpening, for which Kapp found moral and financial support in certain circles of military leadership, but also among a number of university professors, writers, local politicians, agriculturalists, industrialists and bankers, culminated in the founding of the German National Party, which took place on 2 September 1917 (the "Sedan Day") in the Yorksaal of the East Prussian landscape. Although Kapp was clearly the spiritus rector of this "collection party", two other persons were pushed into the foreground, intended for the eyes of the public: These were the Grand Admiral von Tirpitz as 1st chairman and Duke Johann Albrecht von Mecklenburg as honorary chairman of this party. The German Fatherland Party did not seek seats in the Reichstag, but saw itself as a pool of national forces to bring about Germany's final victory. The statute provided for the immediate dissolution of the party once its purpose had been achieved. In addition to mobilising all forces to achieve military victory, Kapp's founding of the party also had another purpose that was not made so public. Tirpitz, then 68 years old, was to be launched as a "strong man" to replace the "weak" chancellors Bethmann Hollweg and Michaelis. It was obvious that in this case Kapp would join the leadership of the imperial government as advisor to the politically ultimately inexperienced Grand Admiral. The November Revolution of 1918 and the immediate surrender of Germany put an abrupt end to these lofty plans. But Kapp and his friends did not admit defeat. Although the German Fatherland Party was dissolved in December 1918, it was immediately replaced by a new party, the German National People's Party, which developed into a bourgeois mass party during the Weimar Republic, but no longer under Kapp's leadership. After the fall of the Hohenzollern monarchy, Kapp immediately opposed the revolution and the Weimar Republic. He could not or did not want to accept the social and political conditions that had arisen in the meantime; his goal was clearly the restoration of pre-war conditions. The sources, which were only incomplete at that time, do not show when the idea of a coup d'état was born and how the conspiracy developed in all its branches. A close associate of Kapp's, Reichswehrhauptmann Pabst, had already attempted a failed coup in July 1919. Together with Kapp, Pabst created the "National Unification" as a pool of all counter-revolutionary forces and associations. This Reich organisation was to coordinate the preparations for the coup in Prussia and Bavaria, while Kapp was to develop East Prussia into the decisive base of counterrevolution. From here, with the help of the Freikorps operating in the Baltic States, the Reichswehr and the East Prussian Heimatbund, whose chairman was Kapp, the survey was to be carried to Berlin with the immediate aim of preventing the signing of the Versailles Treaty. The approval of the Versailles Treaty by the parliamentary majority has created a new situation. Now Ludendorff, one of the co-conspirators, proposed to carry out the coup directly in Berlin, whereby the Baltic people, who were disguised as work detachments on the large Eastern Elbe goods, were to take over the military support. Meanwhile, the conspirators, headed by Kapp and Reichswehr General Lüttwitz, tried to gain the mass base absolutely necessary for the execution of the coup d'état through a broad-based nationalist smear campaign. The company was already at risk before it could even begin. Kapp had demanded that his military allies inform him at least 14 days before the strike so that he could make the necessary political preparations. That the coup d'état had just begun on 13 March 1920 depended not so much on carefully considered planning, but on coincidences that were not predictable. One of the reasons for the premature strike was the dissolution of the Freikorps, especially the Ehrhardt Brigade, decided by the Reich government. This revealed the fact that, in the absence of a party of their own, the conspirators were unable to avoid relying on the loose organization of the resident defence forces, which to a certain extent were also influenced by social democracy. The whole weakness of the company was evident in the question on which forces the new government should actually be based. While the military saw an arrangement with the strongest party, social democracy, as unavoidable, Kapp categorically rejected pacting with social democracy. He wanted to put the Social Democrat-led government as a whole into protective custody. But now the government was warned; for its part, it issued protective arrest warrants against the heads of the conspirators and left Berlin on March 12. In the early morning of March 13, the Navy Brigade Ehrhardt marched into Berlin without encountering armed resistance, as would have been the duty of the Reichswehr. Kapp proclaimed himself Chancellor of the Reich and began with the reorganisation of the government. The order of the new rulers to arrest the escaped imperial government and to remove the state government if they did not stand on the side of the putschists was only partially executed by the local commanders. The proclamation of the general strike on 13 March and the reports arriving from the most important cities and industrial centres about joint actions of the working class prompted the indirect supporters of Kapp, the large industrialists and the Reichswehr generals, to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Kapp had to see the hopelessness of his company. Eyewitnesses reported that Kapp had spent almost 3 days of his time as Chancellor of the Reich "with gossip". On March 15, the "adventure" was over. Kapp apparently stayed hidden with friends near Berlin for some time after the failed coup and then flew to Sweden in a provided plane. Here he initially lived under different false names in different places, at last in a pension in Robäck, but was soon recognized and temporarily taken into custody. The Swedish government granted asylum to the refugee, but he had to commit himself to refrain from all political activities. When the high treason trial against the heads of the March company in Leipzig began, Kapp was moved by the question of his position in court. At first, he justified his non-appearance with the incompetence of the Ebert government and with the constitution, which in his opinion did not exist. Kapp said that there was no high treason in the legal sense against the "high treason" of social democracy. When in December 1921 one of the co-conspirators, the former district president of Jagow, was sentenced to a fortress sentence by the Imperial Court, Kapp changed his mind. Still in Sweden he worked out a justification for the process ahead of him, in which he denied any guilt in both an objective and a subjective sense. On the contrary, he intended to appear before the court with a charge against the then government. It didn't come to that anymore. Kapp had already fallen ill in Sweden. At the beginning of 1922 he returned to Germany and was remanded in custody. On 24 April 1922, he underwent surgery in Leipzig to remove a malignant tumour from the left eye. Kapp died on 12 June 1922; he was buried on 22 June at the village churchyard in Klein Dexen near his estate Pilzen. 2. inventory history The inventory, which had been formed in its essential parts by Kapp himself, was transferred by the family to the Prussian Secret State Archives as a deposit in 1935. Here the archivist Dr. Weise started already in the year of submission with the archival processing, which could not be completed, however. In the course of the repatriation of the holdings of the Secret State Archives, which had been removed during the Second World War, the Kapp estate was transferred to the Central State Archives, Merseburg Office. In 1951, Irmela Weiland, a trainee, classified and listed the stock here. As a result of the processing a find-book was created, which was until the new processing in the year 1984 the kurrente find-auxiliary. 1984 the stock was to be prepared for the backup filming. It turned out that the processing carried out in 1951 did not meet today's archival requirements, so that a general revision was considered necessary. The graduate archivists Renate Endler and Dr. Elisabeth Schwarze rearranged and simply listed the holdings according to the principles of order and indexing for the state archives of the German Democratic Republic, Potsdam 1964. The found file units were essentially retained, in individual cases they were dissolved and new indexing units were formed. In addition, 0.50 m of unprocessed documents were incorporated into the estate. The old regulatory scheme, which was essentially broken down chronologically, was replaced by a new regulatory scheme based on Kapp's areas of activity. In the course of the revision, the portfolio was re-signed. The relationship between the old and the new signatures was established through a concordance. The new find book replaces the previously valid find book from 1951. The stock is to be quoted: GStA PK, VI. HA Family Archives and Bequests, Nl Wolfgang Kapp, No... 3) Some remarks on the content of the holdings The Kapp estate contains 7.50 running metres of archival material from the period from 1885 to 1922, including some earlier and later individual pieces. The holdings mainly contain documents from Kapp's official and political activities, to a lesser extent also correspondence within the family and documents from the administration of the Knights' Manor Pilzen. The density of transmission to the individual sections of Kapp's professional and political development is quite different. While his activities with the Minden government, in the Prussian Ministry of Finance and as district administrator in Guben are relatively poorly documented, there is a rather dense tradition about his activities as director of the general landscape and as chairman of the German Fatherland Party. The documentation on the preparation and implementation of the coup shows gaps which can be explained, among other things, by the fact that important agreements were only reached orally at the stage of preparing the coup. Moreover, Kapp, who had to flee hastily to Sweden after the coup d'état failed, was no longer able to give this part of his estate the same care as the former one. Overall, however, it is a legacy of great political importance and significance. Merseburg, 2. 10.1984 signed Dr. Elisabeth Schwarze Diplomarchivar Compiled and slightly shortened: Berlin, April 1997 (Ute Dietsch) The clean copy of the find book was made by Britta Baumgarten. Note After the reunification of the two German states, the Merseburg office was closed, the archival records and thus also the Kapp estate were returned to the Secret State Archives in Berlin (1993). From the inventory maps, this reference book was created after maps that no longer existed were replaced (post-distortion of files). XIII Bibliography (selection) Bauer, Max : March 13, 1920 Berlin 1920 Bernstein, Richard : Der Kapp-Putsch und seine Lehren. Berlin 1920 Brammer, Karl : Five days of military dictatorship. Berlin 1920 Documents on the Counterrevolution using official material: The same: Constitutional Foundations and High Treason. According to stenographic reports and official documents of the Jagow trial. Berlin 1922 Erger, Johannes : The Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch. Düsseldorf 1967 Falkenhausen, Fri. from : Wolfgang Kapp. In: Conservative Monthly July/August 1922 Kern, Fritz : Das Kappsche Abenteuer. Impressions and findings. Leipzig/Berlin 1920 Könnemann, Erwin : Residents' Weirs and Time Volunteer Associations. Berlin 1971 Noske, Gustav : From Kiel to Kapp. Berlin 1920 Rothfels, Hans : Article "Wolfgang Kapp" in: Deutsches biogra- phisches Jahrbuch Bd 4 (1922) Berlin/Leipzig 1929, correspondence. 132-143 (Here also a drawing of the works Kapps) Schemann, Ludwig : Wolfgang Kapp and the March company. A word of atonement. Munich/Berlin 1937 Taube, Max : Causes and course of the coup of 13 March 1920 and his teachings for the working class and the middle classes. Munich 1920 Wauer, W. : Behind the scenes of the Kapp government. Berlin 1920 Wortmann, K. Geschichte der Deutschen Vaterlandspartei In: Hallische Forschungen zur neueren Geschichte. Volume 3, Hall 1926 Contents I. Introduction Page II 1 Biographical Information on Wolfgang Kapp Page II 2 History of the Collection Page X 3 Some Remarks on the Content of the Collection Page XI 4 Literature in Selection Page XIII II Structure of the Collection Page XIV III Collection Page XVII (Order Numbers, Title, Duration Page 1-106)) XVII III. holdings (order numbers, file title, duration) Description of holdings: Lebenssdaten: 1858 - 1921 Finds: database; find book, 1 vol.

History of the Inventory Designer: Introduction Prehistory up to 1933 The rapid increase in car traffic after the First World War meant that road construction in Germany had to face up to these new requirements. The aim was to rapidly improve the existing road conditions and adapt them to the new requirements of increasing motorisation by extending the existing country roads and building motorways. Contemporary statistics show that in 1924 every 321st inhabitant in Germany owned a "car", while at the same time in France every 90th, in Great Britain every 71st and in the USA already every 7th inhabitant owned a car. The private German vehicle fleet in the country doubled in the years from 1923 to 1926 from 100,340 cars to 206,456. In 1933, only seven years later, almost 800,000 motor vehicles were registered in Germany. The construction of the Berlin AVUS (Automobil-Verkehrs- und Übungs-Straße) in 1921 as well as the activities of the Studiengesellschaft für Automobilstraßenbau (STUFA) played a special role, the latter in particular with regard to the extension of the existing country roads. However, the war and its consequences prevented a resumption of this discussion until the mid-twenties. With the founding of the association HAFRABA and its transition to GEZUVOR, plans for the new motorways in particular took shape, which, after the National Socialists took power, were quickly declared to be the "Führer's Roads". In the course of its work, HAFRABA drew up about 70 plans for a motorway network in Germany. The later central and territorial road construction administrations were able to profit from many results of their complex research, test series, but also from studies for the job creation of larger quantities of labour. The existing conditions with regard to the road administration in the respective sovereign jurisdiction on the one hand and the (Reich) legislator on the other, as well as the increasing blockage of road construction plans from Reich railway and financial circles, but also from the Länder and provinces, forced the necessity of a reorganisation of the road system in Germany to a certain extent, which did not take long after the seizure of power by the Hitler dictatorship. Adolf Hitler was not yet Chancellor of the Reich for two weeks when he put the construction of intersection-free motorways up for discussion in the cabinet. As early as 11 February 1933 he announced the "initiation and implementation of a generous road construction plan", with which both a modern transport system was to be created and unemployment effectively combated, but also reaped the opposition of Reichsbahn General Director Dorpmüller and Reich Finance Minister Count Schwerin von Krosigk. Nevertheless, he was determined to discuss the necessity of motorways with transport experts and leading representatives of the economy. In a conversation with HAFRABA managing director Willy Hof on 6 April 1933, he was informed in detail about the association's plans. As early as 27 June 1933, the Reich government announced, against the will of the Reichsbahn representatives, the formation of the company "Reichsautobahnen", which initially acted as a branch of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft. One day later, Hitler appointed Dr. Fritz Todt, a highly intelligent civil engineer who was loyal to the line, as "Inspector General for German Roads". With the later "Decree on the General Inspector for the German Road System" of 30.11.1933, Todt was also transferred the business area of the company "Reichsautobahnen". The decree states: "For the execution of the construction of the Reichsautobahnen ... a supreme Reich authority shall be established with its seat in Berlin, the head of which shall be given the official title of 'General Inspector for the German Road System'. He is appointed by the Reich President at the suggestion of the Reich Chancellor and reports to the Reich Chancellor. Hitler was convinced of Todt's suitability after he had read his so-called "Brauner Bericht" (Brown Report), a memorandum on "Road Construction and Road Administration", in which Todt deals with the previous conditions of road construction in Germany and formulates objectives for the time of National Socialism. The new authority had the task to organize the construction of the "Reichsautobahnen" and the maintenance of the country roads, as far as they had belonged so far to the responsibility of the Reich Minister of Transport. Legal foundations The "Gesetz über die Errichtung eines Unternehmens Reichsautobahnen" of 27 June 1933, the first ordinance of 7 August 1933 and the "Gesetz zur Änderung Gesetz über die Errichtung eines Unternehmens Reichsautobahnen" of 18 December 1933 provided the Inspector General with a foundation of powers and authority which enabled him to implement the goals set by the Reich leadership as quickly as possible. This included the right to route and design the Reich's motorways as well as the right to levy charges, the right of expropriation and the assumption of state sovereign rights over the motorways. With the "Act on the Temporary New Regulation of the Road System and the Road Administration" of 26 March 1934, the division of roads into 1st motorways, later "Reichsautobahnen", 2nd Reich roads, 3rd country roads of the 1st order, 4th country roads of the 2nd order, was also introduced. The law of the land was amended in accordance with the provisions of the first order, and further regulations were made regarding the distribution of the road construction load, the administration of the Reich roads and the country roads of the first order, the road supervisory authority, etc. A general power of attorney to the greatest extent possible was granted to the Inspector General with the formulation written down in § 1 "The Inspector General for the German Road System determines which roads are subject to the provisions of this Act and which roads have the characteristics of Imperial roads and of Land Roads I. and II. I'll give you the order." The prerequisites created by the aforementioned legal bases were very soon reflected in the structure and organisation of the office of the Inspector General for German Roads. Organization and Structure In 1934, the Inspector General's Division comprised the two major areas of responsibility, Land Roads and Reich Motorways, as well as the resulting connections to the 30 Supreme Road Authorities with 176 State Construction, Road and River Offices of the Länder and Provinces on the one hand and the 15 Supreme Construction Supervisors with 65 Construction Departments for the motorways on the other. As a result, the internal service structure was as follows: Four departments were assigned to the Inspector General for German Roads. 1. department Landstraßen (L), 2. department Administration/Administration (V), 3. department Research/Exhibition/Congress (F) 4. department Reichsautobahnen (A) Furthermore, a landscape consultant was assigned to the Inspector General. In addition to a joint press and socio-political speaker, departments L and A were each assigned 5 speakers (L1 to L5 and A1 to A5), whose fields of work extended to cooperation with the road construction authorities in the Länder and provinces and with the supreme construction managers of the motorways. After that the following (territorial) competences arose: L1: Hanover, Oldenburg, Brunswick, Westphalia, Rhine Province, Hesse-Kassel, Schaumburg-Lippe, Lippe-Detmold L2: Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hohenzollern, State of Hesse, Hesse-Wiesbaden L3: Thuringia, State of Saxony, Upper Silesia, Lower Silesia, East Prussia L4: Brandenburg, Grenzmark, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Province of Saxony, Anhalt L5: General affairs of the rural road sector, special tasks Job creation Department A - Reichsautobahnen A1: Site management Stettin, Hannover, Altona, Königsberg A2: Site management Breslau, Dresden, Halle, Kassel A3: Site management Essen, Cologne, Frankfurt/Main A4: Site management Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg A5: Special tasks: In the summer of 1934 Todt presented his first report on the activities of his authority. An overview of the road construction authorities from 1935 under the authority of the Inspector General illustrates the striving for a strongly centralised connection of road construction tasks in Germany. After Hitler's declaration on January 30, 1937, that the German Reich had regained unrestricted sovereignty over the Deutsche Reichsbahn and that the Deutsche Reichsbahn had been converted into a pure Reich administration by the law of February 10, 1937, the Reichsautobahnen were to be given a position similar to that of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. This was done in the "Gesetz zur Neuregelung der Verhältnisse der Autobahn" of 1 July 1938 and by the "3. Verordnung zur Durchführung des Gesetz über die Errichtung eines Unternehmen 'Reichsautobahnen'" of 1 June 1938. Fritz Todt was appointed chairman of the board of the Reichsautobahnen. The offices of the company became direct Reich authorities. Thus the company Reichsautobahnen lost its character as a society. The "Führerprinzip" (leader principle) practiced in all authorities of the "Third Reich" dominated the organization of the Reich's motorways at the latest since the enactment of this law. With the rapid progress of the political and economic processes in Germany, with rearmament, with the creation of ever new political and organizational structures in the Reich territory, with the invasion of Austria and the Sudetenland, with the erection of the Westwall after the occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland and finally with the beginning and course of the war, ever new and different organizational units and focal points of work developed within the office. The supreme construction management of the Reichsautobahnen was extended by similar authorities in the occupied areas. In the construction of the Westwall from the middle of 1938 onwards, the 22 superstructure superstructure lines at the German western border were firmly integrated, after Hitler, under heavy accusations against the General Staff of the Army, had given this task to Todt without further ado - it was the hour of birth of the "Organisation Todt". It had its first seat as Abteilung West in Wiesbaden. In the files of the Inspector General for the German Road System, an interweaving of tasks with other ministries (e.g. Reich Ministry of Transport, Reich Ministry of Finance), the NSDAP as well as the cooperation with many other organisations is reflected in many ways, e.g. the National Socialist Association of German Technology (NSBDT), the German Labor Front (DAF), the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) and the German Automobile Club (DDAC), and many others. The business distribution plan of the Inspector General of October 28, 1938 clearly expresses that the company was already at the level of political development. Directly subordinate to the Inspector General were now not only the 4 departments but also three other business areas: Research, NSDAP compounds, imperial defence and defence (cf. Fig. page XII). Fritz Todt held a number of political offices. From 1933 he was not only Inspector General for German Roads, but also Head of the Main Office for Technology of the NSDAP, 1938 he became General Plenipotentiary for the Regulation of the Construction Industry, 1940 Reich Minister for Armament and Ammunition as well as Inspector General for the Special Tasks in the Four-Year Plan, 1941 Inspector General for Water and Energy. At the height of his political career Todt died in a plane crash on 8 February 1942 near the "Führerhauptquartier" near Rastenburg/ East Prussia. Albert Speer took office on 9 February 1942. Inventory description: Inventory history The inventory summarised in inventory R 4601, General Inspector for the German Road System, consists of several parts from the former GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany. This includes around 2,300 files and almost 1,800 card index sheets from the former Central State Archives of the GDR, which were formerly kept there as holdings 46.01 and were recorded in a finding aid file, some of them with very general and inaccurate title records. The files of the holdings R 65 I to R 65 IV described below were added from the Federal Archives. Here, finding aids with precise title entries and notes on contents were available. In addition to Todt's "Brounen Denkschrift" (Brown Memorandum), the R 65 I holdings included 34 other files from US returns from 1934 to 1945, as well as files from the Building Department Wittlich 1941 (1), the Wiesbaden Department 1938-1943 (2), the Böttger 1938-1945 (11), Bonacker 1937, 1942-1944 (2), Dittrich 1926-1952 (67), Schönleben 1939-1944 (6), and supplements 1939 (1). The collection R 65 II contained 141 files of the Reichsautobahndirektion Berlin and was handed over to the Federal Archives by the Federal Minister of Transport in 1962 (official files of the Federal Archives, file no.: 3115/4, note dated 31 Jan. 1962). The inventory R 65 III was a collection of decrees of the Inspector General. The inventory R 65 IV contained personal files, of which 112 files have been catalogued and a further 12 running metres have not been catalogued. Archival evaluation and processing The inventory was indexed using the above-mentioned finding aids by entering it into the BASYS-S database of the Federal Archives for the purpose of making the finding aid data available online. A physical reception of the files did not take place due to time reasons with some exceptions. The archive signatures of the Potsdam holdings were largely retained during the indexing process, but each volume was given its own archive signature for found files with volume numbers. The signatures begin: at no. 1 for the former stock 46.01, at no. 3001 for the former stock R 65 I, at no. 4001 for the former stock R 65 II, at no. 5001 for the former stock R 65 III, at no. 10001 for the former stock R 65 IV. The 112 personal files already opened up have been newly recorded, but are not part of this finding aid book. The existing classification was largely renewed and is based both on the organizational structure of the inventory generator and on its functional responsibilities. The internal order of the files has been maintained. The inventory has already been moved from standing folders to folders. Characterisation of content: management and organisation of the road sector: legislation, decrees (57). Organization, administration and human resources: General (74), personnel matters (78), land and planning matters (15), public procurement (59), construction machinery, equipment and vehicles (29), motor vehicles (47), construction materials and fuels (47), traffic regulation and safety (27), winter services (90), tourism (25), statistics( 19), Mobilisation, war deployment, occupied territories (27), map system (37), hand-files of leadership (40), hand-files of the department L-Landstraßen (19), hand-files of the department A-Autobahnen (27), hand-files of the department V-Verwaltung (11), hand-files of administrators for special questions of the departments L and A (3). Department West, Wiesbaden (5). Potsdam Alte Zauche alternative (5). Country roads: Imperial roads: General administrative affairs of the Reichsstraßen (32), financing of the Reichsstraßen (90), technical execution of the road construction and execution of construction measures (136), construction project (48), index sheets Reichsstraßen (14), road books Reichsstraßen (133). Roads I. and II. Order: General administrative matters of the country roads I. and II. Order (28), Financing of rural roads - Öffa (20), Building projects (60), Roads map sheets (2). Bypasses, town crossings, feeder roads (105) Individual projects (45). Imperial highways: Legislation and general administrative matters of the Reichsautobahnen (83), financing of the Reichsautobahnen, budget and treasury matters (36), property and spatial planning matters (8), project planning and routing (46), landscape and urban architecture, animal protection, nature conservation, monuments (38), cooperation with other Reich services (27). Material-technical infrastructure and operational services: planning approval and reallocations (13), fuel and petrol stations (15), motorway and road connections with foreign countries (10), operational services (24), building materials, road surfacing (40), technical execution of road construction and execution of construction measures (9). Personnel infrastructure: deployment and accommodation of labour (61), wages, tariffs, special arrangements (29), personnel matters (27). Files of the Reichsautobahndirektion Berlin: Direktionsakten (18), Gebiete der Obersten Bauleitungen (124). Top construction management: Berlin (25), Wroclaw (15), Dresden (12), Essen (18), Frankfurt/Main (25), Halle (6), Hamburg (12), Hanover (3), Kassel (7), Cologne (12), Königsberg (3), Linz (7), Munich (13), Nuremberg (9), Stettin (4), Stuttgart (6), Vienna (5), Wittlich Construction Department of the Reichsautobahnen (1), Dresden (12), Essen (18), Frankfurt am Main (25). Public relations, press matters, lectures (21), accidents (20). Level crossings (45), bridges and structures (63), cycle paths and hiking trails (32), research, development, standardisation (182), congresses, conferences, exhibitions, work of professional associations (50). Personnel files A-Z 1938-1973 (112), 12 running meters untapped. Citation style: BArch, R 4601/...

Contains among other things: Foundation of a colonial academy in Halle/Saale on 6.11.1908

Find aids: Find book; Find card index (partly online searchable); partly unexploited registry formers: The first railway in the Prussian province of Saxony started its journey in 1839 between Magdeburg and Schönebeck. It was the first section of the Magdeburg-Leipzig railway line, opened in 1839/40, which, with a route from Prussia via Anhalt-Köthen to Saxony, represented the first cross-border railway connection in Germany and in 1841 also the first German railway junction with the station Köthen. The Magdeburg-Leipziger Eisenbahngesellschaft was responsible for the construction and operation of this railway line. It was primarily private railway companies that drove the revolution in rail transport technology forward at the time. Many other rail connections were built in the following years, such as the Magdeburg-Halberstadt line in 1843 and the Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburg line in 1845. After the failure of a nationalization initiative of the Reich in the 70s of the 19th century, the Prussian state made efforts to buy up the railway companies. The purchase of the Magdeburg-Halberstädter Eisenbahngesellschaft by the state in 1879 was contractually linked to the establishment of a royal administrative authority. As a result, the "Royal Railway Directorate in Magdeburg" was founded on 29 December 1879. The responsibility of the management, which also included the administration of the Hannover-Altenbekener Eisenbahnunternehmen and the Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburger Eisenbahngesellschaft, extended as far as the Berlin area. With the reorganization of the Prussian Railway Administration in 1895, which also resulted in the establishment of the Halle Railway Directorate, the Magdeburg Railway Directorate lost more than 200 railway kilometres. After the First World War, the State Treaty establishing the Deutsche Reichseisenbahnen came into force on April 1, 1920, implementing the provisions of the Weimar Constitution. For the Reichseisenbahnen, which were initially subordinated to the Reich Ministry of Transport, a separate company "Deutsche Reichsbahn" was founded in 1924. The Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG), formed in the same year, took over the operation of the Reichseisenbahnen on 11 October 1924. The administration of the route network was the responsibility of the Reichsbahndirektionen, which had already been established in 1922. For the management in Magdeburg, this initially only had a name-changing effect. On October 1, 1931, however, the Reichsbahndirektion Magdeburg was closed and its Reichsbahnbetriebsämter divided into the Reichsbahndirektionen Hannover, Halle and Berlin. After the Second World War, on 18 August 1945, the Reichsbahndirektion Magdeburg was re-established. In the following years, its responsibilities were extended to include the small and private railways expropriated between 1945 and 1949. With the end of the GDR on 1 October 1990, the Reichsbahndirektion Magdeburg was dissolved for the second time. Inventory information: In the course of the privatization of the railway in 1994, the administrative archives of the Reichsbahn directorates were also dissolved. According to the contractual agreements with the Deutsche Bahn AG, the documents of the former Reichsbahndirektion Magdeburg were handed over to the former Landesarchiv Magdeburg. In 2008, the holdings were transferred to the Dessau Department of the Landeshauptarchiv. With the nationalisation of the private railway companies as well as the small and private railways after 1945, their documents also reached the archives of the then Railway Directorate and the later Reichsbahn Directorate in Magdeburg. As a result of its dissolution in 1931, the latter in turn had to hand over large parts of its written material to the Reichsbahn Directorate in Hanover, which is why the corresponding archival records are now also to be found in the Lower Saxony Main State Archives in Hanover. The frequently changed demarcation of responsibilities to the directorates in Halle and Berlin also led to the fact that the most diverse provenances can be found in the respective archives. A caesura was made for the year 1945/1949 in the inventory of the Reichsbahn Directorate in Magdeburg. In 1949, the nationalisation measures for small and private railways were completed. In the railway archive of the Reichsbahndirektion Magdeburg it was decided to integrate the documents of these railways into the stock "G 5" as a separate stock group and to add the addition "Klb" for small railways to the stock signature "G 5". The structure of the collection is based on an order scheme practiced in the railway archives. For the period 1945-1990 the stock "M 60" was formed, whereby temporal overlaps exist. Additional information: Due to the large size of the stock and in order to grant the public online access to the data records on file or document level as quickly as possible, the activation of individual data records takes place continuously as soon as possible after their input and verification. It must therefore be taken into account that the activated data records by no means reflect the complete holdings and in some cases not the entire archives of a classification group. Cards included: 500

Find aids: Findbuch 1978, Revision 1988 (online searchable) Registraturbilder: The DCGG was founded on 12.03.1855 in Dessau on the initiative of the entrepreneur Viktor von Unruh and the Dessau banker Louis Nulandt. At first a gasworks was built in Dessau, which supplied the city with town gas for street lighting from 1856 onwards. This was followed by gas works in cities at home and abroad, such as Mönchengladbach, Magdeburg, Frankfurt/Oder, Mülheim/Ruhr, Potsdam, Warsaw and Lemberg. In 1857, Unruh brought the engineer Wilhelm Oechelhaeuser sen. into the company. In 1859 Nulandt retired after accusations of irregularities and Oechelhaeuser became the sole director general. Both the production of appliances for the sale of gas and the production of gas-consuming appliances themselves grew rapidly. The Centralwerkstatt Dessau was founded in 1871 to convert existing gas meters and to produce new ones. In 1921, the Centralwerkstatt merged with Carl Bamberg Werkstätten für Präzisionsmechanik in Berlin-Friedenau to form Askania-Werke AG. In 1872, Berlin-Anhaltische Maschinenfabrik AG (BAMAG), which manufactured the vertical furnaces used in the gas works, and Dessauer Waggonbau AG, which manufactured gas-powered trams, operated in Dessau. From 1886 Dessau received the second power station in Germany after Berlin. The required generators were developed by Wilhelm von Oechelhaeuser jun. Together with Hugo Junkers, brought into the factory in 1888, they succeeded in using powerful two-stroke counter-piston engines from 1892 onwards. Wilhelm von Oechelhaeuser jun. followed his father in 1889 as general director. Under the management of Bruno Heck, the company achieved a dominant position in Central Germany in 1917 with the founding of Elektrizitätswerke Sachsen-Anhalt AG in Halle. When the property located in the Soviet occupation zone was expropriated after the end of the war, the company moved its headquarters to Hagen/Westphalia in 1947. The alleged transfer of assets was the reason for the GDR's first Stalinist show trial, which was negotiated in 1950 under Hilde Benjamin in Dessau and ended with high prison sentences. The inventory is supplemented by the deliveries of the E-Werke in Bernburg, Dessau and Coswig. Inventory information: The collection was handed over in 1967 by the archive of the VEB Energieversorgung Halle to the then Historische Staatsarchiv Oranienbaum, now Abteilung Dessau. Small supplements were added in 1978. Included photos: 110

• Signature of the inventory: XM - Description of the stock: Coins, medals, tokens - Size of the holdings: more than 1,900 numbers - Find aids: Findbuch - Description of the holdings (essential contents with indication of the term): 1. coins 1.1. Germany (c. 1180 - 1950) 1. coins 1. coins 1.1. Germany (c. 1180 - 1950) 1.2. other issuers (around 20 BC - 1948) 2. medals 2.1. court (1817 - 1998) 2.2. other (1530 - 1983) 3. stamps 3.1. court (around 1870 - around 1995) 3.2. other (around 1800 - 2003) title recording: 1. coins: Nominal (value declaration) and issuer - medals: Type of medal - Marks: Issuer 2nd obverse: illustration, inscription 3rd reverse: illustration, inscription 4th edge: inscription 5th origin (gift, loan, artist, mint, place of discovery, part of a coin treasure) 6th comments: Material, shape (if not round), diameter, condition Definition of terms: In the sense of this finding aid are: - Coins: valuable expressions of money, i.e. small objects which are typically redeemable in an area at various locations and for any purpose and which can be stored for an unforeseeable period without losing their value without being lost; in distinction to banknotes and other forms of money, coins are small, often round and made of metals (exceptions: angular coins; coins made of porcelain or paper); in spite of its limited monetary functions (temporal and local limitation of validity), emergency money from the years 1917-1923 is counted here as coins. - Medals: formally coin-like pieces that are primarily honorary or propagandistic in character and have no monetary functions (accumulation, measurement of value, interchangeability). Medals of remembrance: issued for later commemoration of an event taking place at the time of issue (special forms: medals for baptism, Christmas, congratulations, participation), commemorative medals: issued for commemoration of an earlier event or a deceased person, medals of honour (also: Medals of merit): issued to document the honouring of a living person by a public body (similar to an order), mocking medals, joke medals: issued to ridicule an event, a person or an idea, advertising medals: issued by companies or businesses to attract customers. - Brands: fee stamps (also: discount stamps), i.e. valuable, coin-like pieces that can only be redeemed at a single institution or body for a specific purpose; here also: play money etc. The following numbers have not yet been assigned: 2151-2194, from 2199 - Information on the history of the holdings (with references to literature): Collections of the Stadtarchiv and the Museum Bayerisches Vogtland, some received as gifts or loans from private collectors, some taken over by the municipal administration. The city of Hof or its museum (in contrast to some other municipalities, such as in the time of the emergency money 1914-1923) did not carry out a systematic collecting activity. Purchases of coins or medals are not provable with the exception of a coin find from the bird stove in 1966. Some pieces came into the collection in connection with the foundation of the museum, others in return for Hofer emergency money, which the city of Hof sent to other municipalities. The Hof medals of the 1980s and 1990s are evidence because the City Archives provided the artwork and texts for their design, or takeovers from the administration (e.g. in the case of the 1994 State Garden Show, when the City of Hof liquidated the remaining assets). In many cases, the provenance context can no longer be reconstructed. Information on coin finds: The stock contains coins from several coin finds: A coin was found in 1952 in the hospital church in Hof (XM 1803). A coin was found in 1966 on the Drosselsteig 10 property in the Vogelherd district of Hof. The 115 coins were purchased for the municipal museum. However, only parts of it are available in the inventory. The whereabouts of the remaining coins are unknown. Cf. the list attached to the introduction (only in the printed search book). The third find of coins are the coins that were found during the excavations of the former monastery of the Poor Clares in Hof in 1987. The Landesamt für Denkmalpflege in Schloss Seehof (Memmelsdorf near Bamberg) lent them to the museum. It concerns the order numbers 554 and 1807-1809. Further coins are in the act of the city archives yard A 113/181: 3 strongly weathered coins with the writing of the mint C. Balmberger, Nuremberg, of 14.11.1919, 1 strongly weathered coin with the writing of the mint C. Balmberger, Nuremberg, from 6.9.1920, 7 coins on a cardboard strip while writing to the mint L. Chr. Lauer, Nuremberg, from 6.9.1920: 5 Pfennig, district Dieburg, 1918, 10 Pfennig, city Rudolstadt, 1918, 5 Pfennig, district Heppenheim, o. Dat, 10 Pfennig, town Überlingen, 1917, 10 Pfennig, district Heppenheim, 1918, 25 Pfennig, Rupertiwinkel, 1918, 50 Pfennig, district Lauterbach, n. d. Lit.: Allgemeine Geld- und Münzgeschichte/Lexika A. Luschin von Ebengreuth, Allgemeine Münzkunde und Geldgeschichte des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit, 2nd ed, Munich/Berlin 1926 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 50) Ferdinand Friedensburg, Mint Studies and Money History of the Individual States of the Middle Ages and Modern Times, Munich/Berlin 1926 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 320) Friedrich Freiherr von Schrötter, Dictionary of Mint Studies, Berlin/Leipzig 1930 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 51) Arthur Suhle, German Mint and Money History from the Beginnings to the 15th Century, Berlin/Berlin 1926 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 51) Helmut Seling, Keysers Kunst- und Antiquitätenbuch, Heidelberg/Munich 1959 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 322/2) Tyll Kroha, Münzen sammeln, Braunschweig 1964 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 330) Helmut Kahnt/Bernd Knorr, Alte Maße, Münzen und Gewichte, Mannheim u.a. 1987 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 949) Dieter Fassbender, Lexikon für Münzsammler, Augsburg 1991 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 1133) Arnd Kluge, Geld und Banken in Hof, in: Hof im Spiegel der Zeit, 2. edition, in German only, Bad Soden-Salmünster 1996, pp. 17-25 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 1311) Gerhard Schön coins, German coin catalogue 18th century, 3rd edition, Munich 2002 (available at the Stadtbücherei Hof) Paul Arnold and others, Large German coin catalogue from 1800 to today, repeated editions (available at the Stadtbücherei Hof) Christian Charlet, Monnaies des Rois de France de Louis XIII a Louis XVI 1640-1793, Paris 1996 Jean-Marc Leconte, Le bréviaire de la numismatique francaise moderne 1791-1995, Paris 1995 Günter Schön and others, world coin catalogue. 19th century, repeated editions (available at the Stadtbücherei Hof) Günter Schön and others, World coin catalogue. 20th century, repeated editions (available at the Stadtbücherei Hof) Friedrich Freiherr von Schrötter, Brandenburg-Fränkisches Münzwesen, Part II: the coinage of the Hohenzollern Burgraves of Nuremberg and the Margraves of Brandenburg in Franconia 1515-1603, Halle 1929 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 4° A without signature) Kurt Jaeger, Die neueren Münzprägungen der deutschen Staaten vor Einführung der Reichswährung, 5th century, the newer mintings of the German states before the introduction of the imperial currency. Issue: Kingdom of Bavaria 1806-1871 with Grand Duchy of Berg and Würzburg, Basel 1957 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 8° A 139) Hans Meyer, Das deutsche Notgeld. Private emergency coins 1915-1923, issue 8, Berlin 1971 (to XM 216) Peter Menzel, Deutsche Notmünzen und sonstige Geldersatzmarken 1840-1990, 2 volumes, Gütersloh 1993 Gerhard Greim, Wipper und Kipper in Hof, in: Kulturwarte, 1969, p. 158f (Münzstätte Hof 1620-22) Hans Seiffert, Münzelend - Inflation - Notgeld, in: Kulturwarte, 1968, p. 178-184 (Tipper and luffing period 1620-23, emergency money 1914-24 in the Hof region) Heinz Henschel, When Münchberg spent city emergency money, in: Kulturwarte, 1968, S. 187-192 (Münchberger Notgeld 1917-1924) Maximilian Ritz, series on emergency money 1917-1924 in Hof and surroundings, in: Kulturwarte: Offizielle Notmünzen der Stadt Hof, 1971, p. 251-253 Das Hofer Papiernotgeld, 1972, p. 32-34 Das Hofer Notgeld - Die Großgelddscheine, 1972, p. 141-143 Papiernotgeld 1922: Hof ist besser als seiner Ruf, 1972, p. 204-205 Hofer Inflationsscheine (1. Teil): "Jeder ist nun Millionär", 1974, p. 145-146 Hofer Inflationsscheine mit Überdruck (2. Teil): Ein Dollar für ein Billion Papiermark, 1975, p. 16-17 Hans Hofner, Die Münzenfunde im Stadt- und Landkreis Hof, in: Kulturwarte, 1959/60, p. 83-87 Stadtarchiv Hof, A 113/134, 113/181, 113/221 (Hofer Notgeld 1916-1923) Stadtarchiv Hof, A 4390 (Coin finds in Hof 1952-1978) Medals Dieter Fischer/Hermann Maué, The Medals of the Hohenzollern in Franconia (Scientific supplements to the Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 15), Nuremberg 2000 (Stadtarchiv Hof, 4° A, without no.) Stadtarchiv Hof, A 202 (Award of the Medal of Merit of the Bavarian Federation of Industrialists 1906-1935 to 25 year and 40 year service anniversaries in Bavarian industrial enterprises; the medal itself is not included in XM) Stadtarchiv Hof, A 25, 189, 191 (Award of the Wilhelm I.-Commemorative medal to holder of the war commemorative coin of 1870/71, 1898-1919; the medal itself is not included in XM) Stadtarchiv Hof, A 147 (Celebrating the 100th birthday of the German Emperor Wilhelm I.., 1896-1897; to XM 1923-1925) Stadtarchiv Hof, A 200 (Award of the Red Cross Medal, 1898-1920; the medal itself is not included in XM) Stadtarchiv Hof, A 134 (Celebrating the 80th Anniversary of the birth of the Red Cross) Birthday of the prince regent Luitpold, 1900-1901; to XM 787)Stadtarchiv Hof, A 202/26 (precious metal traffic, 1914-1922; to XM 782, 790, 814) Stadtarchiv Hof, A 176 (offers of medals, guide busts etc.), 1927-1944; to XM 792) Stadtarchiv Hof, A 4391 (Hof commemorative medals 1981-1992) - legal circumstances (loan contract, blocking periods): property of the Stadtarchiv Hof. - Author of the collection (with details of the period of processing): Dr. Arnd Kluge, December 1998 - February 2001, January - September 2003 (first entry)

Find aids: Findbuch von 1992 (online searchable) Registraturbildner: The Verein für den Halleschen Handel, which was originally founded in 1833 to build a packing yard, is to be regarded as the forerunner of the later Halle Chamber of Commerce. On the basis of proposals made by this association and its president Ludwig Wucherer, a chamber of commerce "for the city of Halle and the Saale-Örter" was established by edict of 18 October 1844. Its district initially comprised the cities of Halle, Wettin and Alsleben as well as the rural communities of Kröllwitz, Rothenburg (Saale) and Salzmünde. In 1856 Eilenburg was added, in 1873 the districts of Bitterfeld, Delitzsch (without the city of Delitzsch), Querfurt, Merseburg, Naumburg, Weißenfels, Zeitz, the Saalkreis, the Mansfelder See- und Gebirgskreis (without the former court commission Ermsleben) joined. In 1881 the city of Delitzsch followed, in 1894 the district Eckartsberga, in 1895 the districts Liebenwerda and Torgau, finally in 1920 the district Schweinitz. The Halle Chamber of Industry and Commerce thus comprised the entire administrative district of Merseburg without the district of Sangerhausen, which belonged to the Nordhausen chamber district, and the former Ermsleben court commission (Mansfelder Gebirgskreis) with the town of Ermsleben and the rural communities of Endorf, Meisdorf, Neuplatendorf, Pansfelde, Sinsleben and Wieserode, which were assigned to the Halberstadt chamber district. When it was founded, the Chamber of Commerce consisted of 9 members, and since 1897 it had 54 members elected in 7 constituencies in the Industry, Mining, Wholesale and Retailing sections. In 1936, the Mittelelbe Chamber of Commerce was created for the area of the Chambers of Industry and Commerce in Halle, Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Dessau, i.e. for the Free State of Anhalt, the administrative districts of Magdeburg and Merseburg, and the Braunschweig district of Calvörde. The Mittelelbe Chamber of Commerce was created, which combined the chambers mentioned for its district and corresponded to the middle level of the Reich Economic Chamber. After the order of 16 December 1942 had determined the establishment of the Gauwirtschaftskammer Halle-Merseburg, the Industrie- und Handelskammer Halle and the Wirtschaftskammer Mittelelbe were dissolved with effect from 31 December 1942. Also the rights and duties of the Wirtschaftskammer Mittelelbe were transferred to the Gauwirtschaftskammer Halle-Merseburg on January 1, 1943 - as far as they concerned the district of the former Industrie- und Handelskammer Halle. After the end of the war, the competence of the Halle Chamber of Industry and Commerce was extended to the newly founded province of Saxony, until the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of the province of Saxony (from 3 December 1946: Saxony-Anhalt) was formed by decree of the Presidium of the Province of Saxony of 20 April 1946. Inventory information: The files grown up at the Halle Chamber of Industry and Commerce were probably subjected to an extensive cassation at the end of the 19th century, from which only those volumes of files were spared that were still needed for the current management at that time. Between 1953 and 1958, this older part of the collection, together with the later files, was delivered in three deliveries to the Merseburg branch of the State Archives. In 1968, this part of the collection was transferred to Magdeburg and supplemented with regard to the index data; in 1969, the remainder of the collection was finally taken over by the Magdeburg State Archives, listed and integrated into the existing collection. During the processing of documents of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of the Halle district in the 1990s, further documents from the period before 1945 could be identified and assigned to the holdings. Additional information: A typewritten index is available for the examination documents of the individual trades (8.6.). Literature: The Chamber of Commerce building in Halle a. d. Saale. Memorandum on the inauguration on 12 May 1902 - W. Hoffmann, the Halle Chamber of Commerce. Memorandum on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Chamber of Commerce, Halle 1902 - The Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Halle, edited by the management, Leipzig 1937 - Dalchow, Irmtraud, Die Industrie- und Handelskammer Halle-Dessau: 150 Jahre Kammergeschichte in Mitteldeutschland 1844 - 1994 Festschrift der IHK Halle-Dessau zum 150jährigen Jubiläum, Halle 1995.