Coloured soldiers of the German Schutztruppe, so-called Askari, at a parade in Dar es Salaam on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Schutztruppe in D e u t s c h - O s t a f r i k a / Photographer: Scherl

Inventory history: "Saved for Baden" in 1995, a rare source genre in Germany, 923 so-called homage addresses, previously unknown evidence of the lively participation of the citizens of the country in the fortunes of their princely house, were saved from the New Castle Baden-Baden. They could be acquired as an almost closed collection; only a few were sold at auction in 1995 or were excluded from sale and remained in the possession of the margravial family. Most of the addresses date from the reign of Grand Duke Friedrich I (1852-1907). During this period of constitutional monarchy, the distance between the now mature subjects and their sovereign had decreased. Above all as representatives of cities, associations, professional associations, political, cultural and charitable institutions of the country or countries connected with Baden and even individually, they paid their respects to this and his wife Luise, born Princess of Prussia, especially for weddings, birthdays and other anniversaries of their house. Due to her extensive charitable activities and as the daughter of Emperor Wilhelm I, the Grand Duchess herself also received homages. The addresses of the military associations, which honour the Grand Duke in his capacity as the supreme commander of the country, are particularly numerous and magnificent, and the connection between the two houses of Baden and Prussia is reflected both in the artistic design of the addresses and in their texts. Thus, the Grand Duke's appreciation of his role as the father of the country can sometimes evoke themes from the history of the Reich, such as Baden's relationship with Prussia, the imperial unit whose patrons included the Grand Duke, colonialism or increasing militarism. A large number of the addresses united in this collection and their containers are elaborately designed and give an impression of the craftsmanship of the time, whereby the historicist style predominates. Among them are some works of the Karlsruhe professors for decorative painting at the school of arts and crafts, Hermann Götz and Karl Eyth; the portfolios are headed by the Durlach company of Eduard Scholl and his successor, and numerous old signatures bear witness to the fact that the addresses of homage also attracted attention among their recipients. They were inventoried several times and kept in the library or in the natural history cabinet. These earlier signatures are also noted in our repertory. Among the older ones are the handwritten signatures of the Hofbibliothek Karlsruhe on rhombus-shaped labels (inventory and holdings since 1995 in the Badische Landesbibliothek; our abbreviation: H). The handwritten or stamped signatures on rectangular labels can be traced back to later inventories since the 1880s by the gallery inspector Dr. Karl Kölitz (our abbreviation: K), Richter (our abbreviation: R) and probably Count Schweinitz as well as Albert Hartmann, Baden-Baden (our abbreviation: B). Lydia Filaus took over their input into the computer program Bismas. The remaining title recordings were made by Dr. Hansmartin Schwarzmaier and after preliminary work by Hiltburg Köckert the undersigned. Since the addresses are already cited in the literature with provisional signatures during the indexing, a concordance of these and the now valid signatures is added to the repertory. The current number sequence of the addresses corresponds to their storage according to formats in the magazine. Since the title entries of the addresses in the find book are structured according to their occasions, these numbers jump there. The 11 addresses remaining in the castle Salem were taken up with the designation Salem 1ff. in the repertory and described after slides taken in the new castle Baden-Baden 1995. Older "congratulations" for the margraves of Baden (18th century) can be found in the manuscript collection of the Großherzogliches Haus-Fideicommisses, others in the collection 69 Baden, collection 1995 G. Karlsruhe, March 2002Dr. Jutta Krimm-Beumann Conversion: The online finding aid for the present inventory is a result of the project "Conversion of old finding aid data" of the General State Archive Karlsruhe, which was carried out by Guido Fögler in 2006/2007. The project was supervised by Alexander Hoffmann and Hartmut Obst.Karlsruhe, in June 2007Dr. Martin Stingl

On the fairground of Toma at the foot of the Varzinberg near Herbertshöhe: Ceremony for the 25th anniversary of the foundation of Deutsch-Guinea. The foundation stone of a Bismarck tower was laid on the square / Photographer: Scherl

Tradition and order: The General Adjutant's Office delivered older documents itself at the end of 1918, younger ones to the Margrave's Chancellery in Baden-Baden, from there to the Army Museum and in 1946 to the General State Archives. Since in 1909 no repository had been planned for the files of the General Adjutant's Office - with good reason, because it belonged to the "military state" of the Grand Duke, not actually to the court authorities - they were stored in 1918 in the files of the Haus- und Staatsarchiv following the Haus- und Hofsachen; in 1939 the inventory was given the number 59. Julius Kastner produced the present find book in 1964 on the basis of older card indexes. The basic lists and personnel reports about officers in Baden regiments 1858-1870 (59/618-639) and the list of names of the officers buried in the old cemetery in Karlsruhe 1870-1871 (59/404) were dispersed; both indexes are today in the thematic inventories of the General State Archive. In 2009, Kastner's search book was converted into an online search book with funds from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and then edited by Christoph Florian and Alfred Becher. Within the framework of the conversion, however, it was not possible to revise the unsatisfactory state of order. In the future, for example, confusing large categories such as "Rank and Quarter Lists, Personnel Changes, Basic Lists, Personnel Reports, Personnel Sheets", in which several series were mixed together, are to be diffused more clearly; the separation of series, which was caused by the common distinction between peacetime ("military matter") and wartime ("wartime matter"), also has a negative effect; the treatment of the meritorious, but very detailed indices of Julius Kastner remained problematic in the conversion to an online finding aid. For the collection in SCOPE archive the in-depth entries of Kastner were difficult, the result remained unsatisfactory; the indices must be worked on completely again. Since this was not possible within the scope of the finding aid conversion, only a Word version is available for the time being in the printed find book copies of the General State Archives; it was created by Christoph Florian from the typewritten template. Full text search is recommended for online searches. History and content: No written material seems to have survived from the older General Adjutant's Office in Baden, which was abolished in 1832. Grand Duke Leopold confined himself to hiring personal adjutants, some of whom - like Heinrich Krieg von Hochfelden - also had quite different non-military tasks to perform. In 1852 Frederick I, as Prince Regent in the restoration phase after the Revolution, re-established a General Adjutant's Office as the Prince Regent; it formed the link between the Grand Duke, as supreme warlord, and the Baden Army as well as the War Ministry, and after 1871 the XIV (Baden) Army Corps of the Prussian Army. Accordingly, questions of military personnel and contact with troops are at the heart of the tradition. However, since the General Adjutant's duties also included dealing with the military ceremony, the collection also provides information on the bestowal of orders, visits by emperors and princes, anniversaries, unveilings of monuments and other occasions of representation which had a major influence on the increasingly militarised everyday life of the empire. Karlsruhe, October 2009Konrad Krimm