General note: Due to their personal character, individual volumes are not allowed to be used regularly in the reading room. It is advisable to send a preliminary inquiry to the Landesarchiv NRW via e-mail to: westfalen@lav.nrw.de Of the holdings ¿Oberpräsidium der Provinz Westfalen¿ in the NW Staatsarchiv Münster, the present find book lists the files of the partial holdings ¿Polizei, Justiz, Militär¿. The Office of the Chief President, established in 1815/16 also in the province of Westphalia, was originally intended to play a more representative role. However, the very task of controlling the subordinate authorities, especially the district governments, lent weight to his work. The Office of the Chief President - and thus, for historical research, the files resulting from this function - acquired its actual significance through the task of representing the supreme state authorities on a special mission and in exceptional circumstances, in particular in the event of danger in arrears and in the event of war, i.e. when administration began to become political - in the narrower sense - in times of crisis. Political action by the chief president was also in demand when it came to exercising the rights of the state vis-à-vis the Protestant Church and, in the 19th century, especially vis-à-vis the Catholic Church. The portfolio of the Chief President also deserves special interest because it is a central fund for Westphalia. However, it is not self-evident that it also contains non-Westphalian subjects. These refer to the expansion of the competence of the Chief President for Westphalia in particular through the office of the "Chief of the Civil Administration" in connection with the preparation or in the first years of the Second World War, which brought with it an expansion of the area of responsibility also to the Rhineland. Beyond Westphalia, i.e. for the area of Wehrkreis VI, the district of the Chief President extended as "Reichsverteidigungskommissar". With a view to these focal points in the administrative work of the Chief President, the present volume ¿Polizei, Justiz, Militär - Chef der Zivilverteidigung, Reichsvereidigungskommissar¿ (Police, Justice, Military - Chief of Civil Defence, Commissioner for the Defence of the Reich) was selected for publication from a total of eleven finding aids now available in the Staatsarchiv Münster. This is essentially based on the modern archive indexing performed in 1972ff., the subject titles and classification of which were largely to be adopted. In the current preparation for printing, however, more intensive file analyses were carried out for titles that did not appear sufficiently meaningful. This is intended, inter alia, to draw attention to the events contained in the files which originated in other Prussian provinces and which, although sent for information only, nevertheless had a fundamental or model character. On the one hand, the file analyses thus aim at a greater use of a file tape. On the other hand, it is precisely through them that a superfluous excavation of archival records should be avoided, which seems increasingly necessary for conservation reasons. Last but not least, they can save the user disappointments if they relativize the content of ¿too promising¿ file titles. Manfred Wolf Münster 1991
