1 On the biography of Prince Ernst II of Hohenlohe-Langenburg: Hereditary Prince Ernst Wilhelm Friedrich Karl Maximilian of Hohenlohe-Langenburg - hereinafter called "Ernst II" in distinction to his grandfather Ernst - was born on 13 September 1863 in Langenburg as the son of Princess Leopoldine, born Princess of Baden, and Prince Hermann of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. He spent his school time in Karlsruhe, his mother's home town, at the Grand Ducal Gymnasium, which he left after graduating from high school in 1881. He then studied law as part of a contemporary university tour which took him to Paris, Bonn, Tübingen and Leipzig between 1881 and 1884. In 1885 Ernst II took his first legal exam at the Higher Regional Court in Naumburg a. d. Saale and during his military officer training at the 2nd Garde-Dragonerregiment in Berlin-Lichterfelde in the years 1886-1889 he also used the available time for extensive social activities at the courts of Emperor Wilhelm I and his son Friedrich. After completing his training, Ernst II advanced in the military hierarchy to lieutenant-colonel á la suite of the army (1914). The hereditary prince then aspired to a career in the Foreign Office, for which he first used one of his frequent stays in London in 1889 as a kind of private 'apprenticeship' at the German embassy. Queen Victoria was a great-aunt of Ernst II, so that he could always move at the highest social level. In 1890-1891 he passed his diplomatic exam and then took up a position as 3rd secretary in the embassy in St. Petersburg. Already in 1892 Ernst II achieved his transfer to London with the help of his father, who had enough influence as governor of Alsace-Lorraine, where he served as 3rd embassy secretary until 1894. In this year the hereditary prince Prince Hermann followed to Strasbourg to work as legation secretary of the ministry for the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine. In 1896 Ernst II married his cousin of the 3rd degree Alexandra (1878-1942), a princess from the British royal family, whose father Duke Alfred of Edinburgh had taken over the Thuringian Duchy of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha three years earlier. Together with his wife and the offspring who soon followed - Gottfried, Marie Melita, Alexandra, Irma and Alfred, who died shortly after his birth - Gottfried, Marie Melita, Alexandra and Irma moved his centre of life to Langenburg and finally left the diplomatic corps in 1897. He had begun to establish himself in his role as heir when, after the unexpected death of Alexandra's brother Alfred (1899), the open question of succession in Saxony-Coburg and Gotha required a settlement. Ernst II was assigned as regent and guardian for the new, still youthful Duke Carl Eduard, a task he took over in 1900 after the death of his father-in-law, so that he now stood for 5 years at the head of a German principality. After the end of the regency, during which he had acquired the goodwill of his Thuringian subjects through a liberal attitude, Emperor Wilhelm II, his 3rd cousin, gave him the prospect of a position as State Secretary and appointed him in 1905 provisional head of the Colonial Department in the A u s w ä r t i g e s A m t , which was to be upgraded to his own R e i c h s k o l o n i a l a m t . But because of internal quarrels and the resistance in the Reichstag against the financing of the new authority, the hereditary prince had to take his hat off again in 1906. The following year Ernst II returned to the political stage as a member of the Reichstag for the constituency of Gotha, in which he had run as a representative of the bourgeois parties against the SPD. As a guest student of the parliamentary group of the German Reich Party, he sometimes appeared with speeches in the plenum, but everyday parliamentary work remained largely alien to him. As a result of a special political constellation in the Reichstag, Ernst II nevertheless managed to be elected vice-president of parliament in 1909 as a compromise candidate for the right-wing conservative camp. But he was not able to carry out this task for long either, because he did not want to come to terms with the conventions of parliamentary debates. As early as 1910 he used the anti-Protestant "Borromeo encyclical" of Pope Pius X to resign from his office in protest, albeit at the price of no longer being able to play a political role at the national level in the future. In 1913 Prince Hermann zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg died and his son took over the noble inheritance, which also included the county of Gleichen in Thuringia. Ernst II successfully compensated for the loss of leading political offices through his increased commitment to social forces, which rather worked in the background: first and foremost the Protestant Church, the Order of St John and the Red Cross. Within these institutions he held important and influential positions at local and state level, through which - in conjunction with his memberships in numerous associations and federations - he was able to cultivate a broad network of correspondents from noble, political, scientific, ecclesiastical and cultural circles.As commentator of the Württembergisch-Badenschen Genossenschaft des Johanniterordens and honorary president of the Württembergischer Landesverbandes vom Roten Kreuz it was obvious for Ernst II not to strive for a position with the fighting troops, but in the organization of voluntary nursing at the outbreak of the First World War. After a short period as a delegate for each stage in Berlin and on the western front, he was appointed at the end of 1914 as the general delegate for voluntary nursing care for the eastern theater of war, so that he spent the longest period of the war in the eastern headquarters - among others in the vicinity of Field Marshal von Hindenburg. In 1918 he was finally promoted to the highest representative of his organization, the Imperial Commissioner and Military Inspector, and in this function he led, among other things, the German delegation to prisoner of war exchange negotiations with the USA in Bern. Here he benefited from his diplomatic experience, which the emperor had already drawn on in 1915, when he sent the prince to Constantinople and the Balkans as a special ambassador. After the end of the war, Ernst II resigned his high office in nursing and devoted himself again to his church and association activities. He paid special attention to the Protestant Commission for Württemberg, for which he acted as chairman of the Gerabronn district and the Langenburg local group as well as delegate in the regional committee. While the unification of the Protestant regional churches in the German Reich had already been of great concern to him as a Thuringian regent, in the 1920s and 30s he continued to campaign for the Protestant cause at church congresses and church assemblies in Württemberg and at Reich level. In 1926 the Langenburg prince was also appointed senior citizen of the Hohenlohe House, and in the same year he was elected governor of the Balley Brandenburg, i.e. the second man of the Order of St John in the Empire. During National Socialism, Ernst II, as in republican times, stayed away from political offices, especially as he was of an advanced age. From 1936 he invested a large part of his energy in the endeavour to have the Langenburg ancestral estate recognised as an inheritance court and also took care of the publication of his correspondence with the widow composer Cosima Wagner. 11 December 1950 Prince Ernst II died very old in Langenburg, where he was also buried. 2. inventory history, inventory structure and distortion: Before distortion, the estate was in a relatively heterogeneous state, which was due to an inconsistent way of transmission and multiple processing approaches. During the fire at Langenburg Castle in 1963 and the associated temporary relocation of documents within the building complex, the original order probably suffered its first damage, which was intensified in the subsequent period in the course of the transfer of Langenburg archives to Neuenstein. Probably the estate was torn apart and transferred to the central archive in several parts that could no longer be reconstructed in detail. At the latest during the administrative work carried out there in the 1960s under Karl Schumm, the written remains of Ernst II were mixed with other files from Langenburg. Further parts of the estate may also have arrived in Neuenstein in the following decade. Building on the gradually implemented provenance delimitation of the Langenburg archival records, a rough pre-drawing of the estate could be tackled in the early 1980s, but this was not completed. A last addition from the family archives was made to the now formed holdings in 1992 by the delivery of Ernst-related files, most of which had originated in the Langenburg authorities, in particular the domain chancellery.Ernst II regulated his correspondence with the help of registrar-like notes, which he usually affixed directly to the incoming documents. It contained information on the date, recipients and content of the replies and other written reactions. He also noted instructions to his administration and often complete drafts of letters on the incoming mail. In addition, the testator himself already arranged and sorted his documents further by forming units oriented to factual topics and correspondence partners and providing them with notes in the sense of a file title along with its running time. In general, he attached the notes to envelopes of different sizes, most of them used, which served as packaging or were enclosed with the files. Over the decades, Ernst seems to have repeatedly tackled such disciplinary measures, which had a long tradition in the family, without, however, being able to recognize a stringently maintained pattern. Only the rough distinction between factual and correspondence files formed a perceptible red thread, which was also observed in the current distortion. However, it must be taken into account that even in the fascicles formed according to subject criteria, parts of correspondence are often found, only compiled on a specific topic. Although this leads to overlaps with the correspondence series, the fact files were largely left as such and only slightly thinned out with regard to the correspondence partners, since they are mostly units that are comprehensible in terms of content and partly rich in content. While the 'file titles' created by Ernst II normally largely corresponded with the content of the fascicles, it must be noted for the following indexing approaches, also and especially for the preliminary indexing in the 1980s, that the names, dates and subjects noted on archive covers often deviated from the actual content and could hardly be used for the current indexing. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the mixing with files of foreign provenance - including the estates of Ernst's father Hermann and his wife Alexandra as well as the domain chancellery and court administration - could never be completely eliminated and therefore numerous individual files had to be sorted out in the course of the current processing. However, this separation of provenances was not implemented consistently in every respect, but in particular files from the Langenburg and Coburg-Gotha administration, which refer directly to Ernst II, were left in existence; the official records usually differ from the actual estate in the outward appearance in the form of differently coloured folders with file titles, running times and file numbers. Furthermore 2 fascicles on the death of Ernst II and at the end of his reign in Saxony-Coburg and Gotha come from the estates of Ernst's children Gottfried and Alexandra. A special case is Ernst's correspondence with Cosima Wagner, which is kept entirely in Neuenstein, so that not only the letters received from the deceased, but also the letters to the composer's wife (Ernst, his mother Leopoldine and his cousin Max von Baden), stored in bound folders, were recorded as part of the princely estate (see 4.).Thus, the newly registered estate represents an inventory enriched with personal material. In addition, it is to be expected that there will still be isolated files from the estates of relatives whose origin could no longer be clearly clarified (e.g. loose individual pages or fascicles which refer to festive events without naming an addressee or previous owner), apart from the principle of retaining the original separation of factual and correspondence files, massive interventions had to be made in the formation and titling of the fascicles. In many cases, due to later order work, mixing within the fascicles and unclear new file formations had occurred, otherwise about a quarter of the holdings proved to be largely unordered. Even the rather ad hoc sorting carried out by Ernst II himself did not follow any kind of 'file plan', so that content overlaps and repetitions were the order of the day. Therefore, in the course of the current distortion, fascicles were repeatedly reshaped or newly formed under consideration of either thematic or corresponding criteria. The extraction of individual documents for assignment to other fascicles was generally documented by enclosed notes. Individual photographs and photo series with illustrations of Ernst II. were separated and formed into a separate 'photo collection' (see 5.), and in order to provide a better orientation for the user, the find book of most of Ernst II.'s relatives shows the degree of kinship to the deceased in square brackets in the appropriate places.The collection La 142, Nachlass Fürst Ernst II., was arranged and recorded from June to December 2004 by archivist Thomas Kreutzer within the framework of a project sponsored by the Kulturstiftung Baden-Württemberg. It covers 19.4 running meters. Files and volumes in 927 units with a running time of (1845-) 1868-1951 (1959).Neuenstein, in April 2005Thomas Kreutzer 3. Note for use:: During the distortion, cross-references were made in the files that refer to the former bundle number - not to today's order number. To find the corresponding fascicles, the concordance has to be used.Concordance earlier - today's tuft number: 4. Literature:: Heinz Gollwitzer, The Lords of Stand. Die politische und gesellschaftliche Stellung der Mediatisierten 1815-1918. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Sozialgeschichte, Göttingen 1964, bes. S. 244-253.Maria Keipert/Peter Grupp (Ed.), Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes 1871-1945, Vol. 2, Paderborn et al. 2005, S. 344f.Thomas Kreutzer, Protestantische Adligkeit nach dem Kollbruch - Die kirchliche, karitative und politische Verbandstätigkeit von Ernst II. Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg between 1918 and 1945, in: Nobility and National Socialism in the German Southwest. Edited by Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg in conjunction with the State Capital Stuttgart (Stuttgart Symposium, Series 11), Leinfelden-Echterdingen 2007, pp. 42-82 Thomas Nicklas, Ernst II. Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Standesherr, Regent, Diplomat im Kaiserreich (1863-1950), in: Gerhard Taddey (ed.), Lebensbilder aus Baden-Württemberg, Vol. 21, Stuttgart 2005, pp. 362-383.Frank Raberg (ed.), Biographisches Handbuch der württembergischen Landtagsabgeordneten 1815-1933 (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden-Württemberg), Stuttgart 2001, pp. 381f.Karina Urbach, Diplomat, Höfling, Verbandsfunktionär. Süddeutsche Standesherren 1880-1945, in: Günther Schulz/ Markus A. Denzel (ed.), German nobility in the 19th and 20th centuries, St. Katharinen 2004, pp. 354-375 Karina Urbach, Zwischen Aktion und Reaktion. The Southern German Class Lords and the First World War, in: Eckart Conze/ Monika Wienfort (ed.), Adel und Moderne. Germany in European Comparison in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Cologne 2004, pp. 323-351.Freie Deutsche Presse Coburg, 30.12.1950 (obituary).Hohenloher Zeitung, [after 11.12.]1950 (obituary).further materials:La 95 Domänenkanzlei LangenburgLa 102 Fürstliche HofverwaltungLa 143 Nachlass Fürstin Alexandra zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg

History of the authorities: The establishment and expansion of a military medical service took place in the second half of the 19th century. A Prussian medical corps had been in existence since 1873, headed by the General Staff physician of the army, who was also head of the medical department of the War Ministry, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy for Military Medical Education and chairman of the scientific senate there. He was also responsible for the personal affairs of the military doctors and other medical personnel. Since 1906, the four medical inspectorates in Poznan, Berlin, Kassel and Strasbourg have held the liaison from the General Staff Physician to the medical offices of the army corps established in the second half of the 19th century, which in turn were under the exclusive supreme command of the Reich in accordance with the Military Convention of 25 November 1870. In 1912 another inspection was set up in Gdansk. Among senior general practitioners in the rank of Major General, as the supreme supervisory authorities, they covered the territory of several army corps, each of which was assigned a medical office under a corps general practitioner. Personally subordinate to the commanding general and the general staff physician of the army, he was the medical-technical advisor of the general command in all questions of health and medical care as well as head of the medical office as military-medical provincial authority of their area of competence. In the case of the medical office of the XIV Army Corps, these were the lands of Baden and Hohenzollern as well as parts of the Upper Alsace with the exception of the Baden and Hohenzollern areas, which were part of the fortresses of Germersheim, Strasbourg, Neubreisach and Idstein. His tasks in peace included health and medical service in the army and military institutions as well as all preparations and facilities required for military medical service. Organizationally, a distinction was made between the medical service of the troops, which included all units, military authorities, institutions, etc., and the military hospitals. Their administration was shared between the Sanitätsamt and the Korpsintendantur (at the XIV AK, Divisions IV b and VI were responsible), the former being responsible for medical matters, the latter for economic and administrative matters. In the event of war, a deputy corps general physician assumed the tasks, duties and rights of the corps general physician assigned to the field army and thus the responsibility for the organization of the medical service in the home area. In this capacity, he is responsible for the construction of reserve hospitals in suitable buildings, their staffing with medical and nursing staff and the training of substitute reservists as military nurses. If several reserve hospitals were set up in one place, he could delegate the overall management of these hospitals to an older medical officer as reserve hospital director. The latter had to inspect the military hospitals under his authority and to report grievances, which he was not able to rectify on his own responsibility, to the medical office, which in turn informed the deputy directorate if necessary. The deputy general corps physician was also responsible for all voluntary nursing facilities, in particular the club hospitals, convalescent homes and private nursing homes. Her supervision he shared with the Territorial Delegate of Voluntary Nursing. Inventory history: The archive history of the Sanitätsamt des XIV. Armeekorps is identical with that of the Deputy General Command and can be read in the Repertorium Abt. 456 F 8 Stellvertretendes Generalkommando XIV. Armeekorps (1914-1924). The only thing to note here is that, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, the formations of the imperial army had to be dissolved. For this purpose, a civilian authority was created, the so-called Winding-up Office of the former XIV Army Corps, and the dissolution and descendants of the former XIV Army Corps were renamed Winding-up Offices. Accordingly, the department responsible for the Sanitätsamt was the Sanitätsabteilung 14, where the files of the Sanitätsamt and the individual military hospitals were collected until 1922. Via Heilbronn, where the settlement office had been moved to under pressure from the Allies in 1920, the files first reached its successor authority, the Reichsarchiv branch office Heilbronn, after the dissolution of the settlement office in 1921, and via this branch office in 1924 to the Reichsarchiv branch office Stuttgart. According to the register of deportees drawn up there (EV 113), the stock originally comprised 740 units, of which 73 were already indicated as missing in the register of deportees and 59 units were accounted for by the Deputy General Command. Before the XIV Army Corps was handed over to the General State Archive in Karlsruhe in 1949386, 33 of these units were destroyed as part of the General Command IV b. Processing report: The present holdings were recorded in June and July 1989 by the State Archives referees Norbert Haag and Dieter Speck under the guidance and supervision of the undersigned as part of the training for the higher archival service. Thereby 4 federations, which had arisen at the General Command of the XIV Army Corps, Dept. IVb, were eliminated and classified according to provenance. The collection now includes documents from the Sanitary Office XIV Army Corps (Peace), the Sanitary Office XIV Army Corps (War) and the Sanitary Department XIV with a total of 6 metres. Kassationen were not accomplished Karlsruhe, in October 1989Kurt high chair

Foreword: Due to the military convention with the North German Confederation (21, 25 November 1870) and in the course of the foundation of the Reich, the entire military situation had to be reorganized. For the Württemberg War Ministry this resulted in the following structure from 1871 (29 September): Central Office / Military Department / Economics Department1874 and 1896 respectively were added: Military Medical Department (28 March 1874) Justice Department. (30. March 1874)/Waffen-Abteilung (1. April 1896) 1906 (12. September) the last adaptation before the beginning of the war came into force: The ministry was structured as follows: Central Division (Z) = Holdings M 1 / 3Division for General Army and Personal Affairs (A)= Holdings M 1 / 4 and M 1 / 5Division for Weapons and Field Equipment (W),= Holdings M 1 / 9Supply and Justice Division (C), = Holdings M 1 / 7Administrative Division (B), = Holdings M 1 / 6Medical Division (MA) = Holdings M 1 / 81907 was included in the description of duties for the Medical Division: Administration of budget chapter 29 (military medicine), all military medical and hospital administration matters (including convalescent homes); winter work and literary work of medical officers. Registration of students for the Kaiser Wilhelms Academy. Accounting of the costs for operation courses; patient reports, military medical statistics, clarification of suicide cases and statistics on them; personnel matters of the corps staff pharmacist, the staff pharmacist, the pharmacists on leave and the hospital administration officials; allocation of the pharmacists /year-old volunteers and sub-pharmacists) to the hospitals;Civil servant appointments, retirements, award of orders to civil servants; authorisation to purchase artificial limbs under examination by the supply department; compilation of patient list extracts from the field hospital lists; spa treatments for officers, active and inactive teams and admission to civilian sanatoriums; medical and medical treatment of soldier's wives and children.1917 the following tasks in particular had been added: Reserve and association hospitals, convalescent homes and lung sanatoriums; relief and association hospital trains; confiscation and dismissal of all doctors, dentists and pharmacists on duty; employment and dismissal of the approved medical officers and former sub-medicals, as well as the civilian doctors contractually accepted; Appointment and employment of undersurgeons, field undersurgeons and field assistants to the field and crew armies, granting of marriage permits to them; regulation of the staffing of doctors, dentists and pharmacists, as well as replacement; voluntary nursing;War invalidity care, vocational training matters for war invalids, procurement of artificial limbs, fracture tapes; ambulances and ambulances; prisoners of war (medical service in the camps), exchange of severely wounded persons, deportation of minor severely injured prisoners of war to Switzerland; Schömberg Foundation for officers with lung diseases; Admission of women and children to the recreation home for family members; vaccinations of substitute crews and prisoners of war; transfer of the bodies of fallen persons from the theatre of war to their homeland; estate of fallen persons; delousing measures; investigation for sick, wounded and fallen persons from earlier wars; epidemic control in the home area.The office of head of the department was held during the time of peace by Corps physician XIII. A.K.:1874General staff physician Dr. v. Klein and general staff physician Dr. v. Chalons, royal Prussian medical officer 1875 - 1878 unoccupied 1878 General physician Dr. v. Fichte1896General physician Dr. v. Schmidt1905General Physician Dr. v. Wegelin1912Königlich p reußischer General Physician Prof. Dr. Lasser (from 1914 War Medical Inspector)During the World War, a separate head of the medical department was appointed (Prof. Dr. Lasser), who was also deputy corps physician of the XIII century. In October 1919, the entire military medical service was transferred to the department of the Reich Labour Ministry.The files of this department of the Ministry of War were newly recorded in the years 2002/2003 by the archive employee Gerd Mantel under the guidance of the undersigned, who also took care of the revision of the structure, editing, database support, etc. The inventory comprises 18 linear metres of shelf files mainly from the period between 1874 and 1920 or 312 archive units.Stuttgart, in April 2004Dr. Franz Moegle-Hofacker