History of the Inventor: After Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor of the German Reich on January 30, 1933, the NSDAP gradually undermined the democratic system of the Weimar Republic over the following months and finally eliminated it. Decisive stages were the abolition of fundamental rights after the fire of the Reichstag on 28 February 1933 and the abolition of parliamentarism by the so-called Enabling Act of 23 March 1933. The latter abolished the separation of powers and conferred all legislative powers on the government under Adolf Hitler for four years. A further step was the smashing of the parties and unions. After the KPD had been banned, the trade unions dissolved and the SPD rendered incapable of action, the other parties dissolved on their own. In the course of these measures, the six existing municipal umbrella organisations also lost their independence. On May 22, 1933, the chairmen and managing presidents of the German/Prussian Association of Cities, the Reichsstädtebund, the Deutscher Landkreistag, the Deutscher Landgemeindetag, the Preußischer Landgemeindetag West, and the Association of Prussian Provinces were forced to give their consent to the transfer of the various associations into a new unified association. From now on, this "German Community Day" was to be the sole corporate representation of all German city and community associations recognised by the NSDAP. In order to standardize the previous associations with their 80 sub-organizations, the provisional Lord Mayor of Munich, Karl Fiehler, was appointed as "Representative for the Standardization of the Municipal Central Associations". The management of the new association was taken over by Dr. Kurt Jeserich, provisional director of the Institute for Municipal Science in Berlin, and Dr. Ralf Zeitler, speaker at the Reich Employers' Association. The merger process, which lasted for months, finally came to an end in the Law on the German Community Day of 15 December 1933, which finally established the formation of the new association. As the only existing communal top organization, the German Community Day, which as a corporation under public law was fundamentally subordinate to the Reich Minister of the Interior, was forced to include all cities, rural communities, administrative districts, provinces and later also the Reichsgaue in its capacity as self-governing government units. After the integration of Austria and the Sudetenland into the German Reich in 1938, the annexation of West Prussia, Gdansk and Poznan in the following year, the sphere of influence of the German Association of Municipalities was extended to the new parts of the Reich and their Gau administrations. In principle, the association took over the municipal representation of interests for all areas placed under German sovereignty. On February 14, 1934, Karl Fiehler, the previous commissioner for unification, was appointed the first chairman of the German Association of Municipalities. Fiehler was head of the NSDAP's local government department. The personal union was intended to coordinate the orientation of the NSDAP's work in local politics with the work of the German Community Congress and thus to comply with the principle of the harmony of party and state proclaimed at the 1933 Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg. The management of the German Association of Municipalities was subject to the instructions of the chairman and Reichsleiter of municipal politics. Through this entanglement of party and state authorities, the German Community Day came under the "organizations supported by the NSDAP", which was also partly advantageous, since the technical work could be made more effective under the supremacy of the party office. The association was now much more representative of the state. However, the idea of a unitary association with clearly defined tasks and closer ties to the state was nothing new; quite a few saw in it the possibility of better asserting municipal interests. The forced standardization and the practice of the totalitarian state, however, only allowed the possible advantages of the new uniform association to recede into the background. The association was supervised by the Reich Minister of the Interior, who appointed the chairman, the members of the board and the specialist committees. The executive committee and specialist committees were only allowed to meet after being convened by the minister, who also determined the agenda. In addition, he approved the budget and he himself or a deputy had to chair the committees. In addition to the 20 specialist committees, which only had the right to advise the chairman, the state and provincial offices were the only subordinate bodies of the Berlin office. Although the association had a highly centralised structure, the necessary expansion to include regional working groups and county departments in order to increase the exchange of experience led to an organisational structure that was comparable in its approach to that of the old associations. The fact that the association no longer had the right to represent municipal interests before the Reich and Land authorities on its own initiative had a particularly drastic effect. Only after a request by the authorities should the association be allowed to express itself from now on. Before 1933, however, it was precisely this right of initiative that had been decisive for the active representation of interests vis-à-vis the state and the self-determination of municipal associations as part of a pluralistic social order. Despite the organisational and political changes, the German Community Day also played an important role between 1933 and 1945, above all as a community advisory centre and as a mediator of practical experience in the field of local administration. Even the exchange between municipalities and state administration was by no means discontinued, which is evidenced by the active expert activities of the German Association of Municipalities (Deutscher Gemeindetags). A certain continuity in the association's work could also be ensured by the fact that a larger number of executives from the dissolved associations transferred to the new association. The organisational structure of the German Association of Municipalities was basically very similar to that of the German/Prussian Association of Cities. Thus the German Community Day took over the coat of arms of the German/Prussian Community Day, the Holstentor, and also its registry. The annual meetings of the German Association of Municipalities also followed on from similar events of the predecessor institutions. As a result of the bombing of Berlin during the Second World War, the German Community Day moved part of its administrative offices in August 1943 from Berlin to Wels/Upper Austria. The main tasks of the departments there were Ia (civil servants, employees and workers), II (finances and taxes), III (welfare, health and social policy), V (schools), Va (culture), VI (real estate, construction and housing) and Rv (defence of the Reich). It should be noted that only Division III with all registries moved to Wels. The other departments - probably only working staffs - took only parts of their registries with them. Also the cash administration and the personnel office moved to Wels. Departments Z (Central Department: General Administration, Management), I (Constitution and Administration), IV (Economy and Transport) and the Department for the Eastern Territories remained in Berlin. After the collapse of the German Reich in 1945, the German Community Day, due to its status as a "supervised organization", was regarded by the Allies as a part of the NSDAP's outlines and, together with the other organizations of the NSDAP, banned and formally dissolved. The administrator appointed by the Berlin magistrate for the concerns of the German Association of Municipalities did not succeed in correcting this misunderstanding. It was not possible to set up a kind of municipal chamber as the successor to the German Association of Municipalities. The "German Association of Cities", which had already re-constituted itself in 1946, was granted the right to ownership of the property of the German Association of Cities, but it could not bear the financial burden of the reconstruction and repair of the building on its own. Together with the Berlin Senate, the "Verein zur Pflege kommunalwissenschaftlicher Aufgaben e.V." was finally founded and established in 1951 as an asset holder of the German Association of Municipalities. The association, which was soon renamed "Verein für Kommunalwissenschaften", took over the office building in Straße des 17. Juni and also the files stored there. The building, today known as the Ernst Reuter House, was planned by Albert Speer for the German Community Day, erected from 1938 and finally occupied by the German Community Day in 1942. The German Association of Cities, the largest municipal umbrella organisation, initially set up its headquarters in Cologne due to its special status in Berlin. It was not until 1999 that the head office was partially relocated to the Ernst-Reuter-Haus in Berlin. In addition to the German Association of Cities and Towns, the central associations at district and municipal level were also newly formed after the Second World War. The Deutscher Landkreistag and the Deutscher Städte- und Gemeindebund, together with the Deutscher Städtetag, represent the most important municipal interest groups. The Federal Association of Municipal Central Associations offers these three associations the opportunity to present their interests in a bundled manner and to jointly express their views on overarching problems. Inventory description: Inventory history The inventory R 36 consists entirely of the files of the administrative offices relocated to Wels during the war. Apart from the cash documents and personnel files, the whereabouts of which could not be clarified, the Wels stockpiles have survived the war and the turmoil of the post-war period without any losses. They were taken by a member of the German Association of Communities via Linz/Donau, Offenburg, Frankfurt/Main to Siegburg, where the files were first kept at the newly founded German Association of Counties. With the approval of the Federal Association of Municipal Central Associations, the latter handed them over to the Federal Archives in 1953. The records in the Federal Archives represent only a small part of the total records. An estimated three-quarters of the total holdings, which consisted of the non-displaced registry parts of the German Association of Municipalities and the old registries of the dissolved umbrella organisations, remained in Berlin. After the Second World War, the files were stored at the Verein für Kommunalwissenschaften, which handed them over to the Landesarchiv Berlin as a deposit in 1968. There the German Community Day is registered today with 8600 file units. The second largest part of the collection is the legacy of the German and Prussian Association of Cities with 4286 files, whereby its war economy files from the years 1914 to 1918 form a separate collection with 1279 file units. Furthermore, the tradition of the Reichsstädtebund, the Association of Prussian Provinces, the German and Prussian Landkreistag, the German and Prussian Landgemeindetag and other associations that were absorbed into the German Gemeindetag in 1933 can be found in the Berlin State Archives. The German Association of Cities also handed over its old registrations to the Landesarchiv Berlin until 1985. Already in 1937/38 a small part of the files of the predecessor institutions of the German Community Day had been transferred to the Prussian Secret State Archives - today the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage. These holdings had been moved to Stassfurt during the war and then to the German Central Archive of the GDR, Merseburg Department. Today the tradition of the German and Prussian Association of Cities and Towns, the Association of Prussian Provinces, the Prussian County Council and the Prussian West Community Council is again in the Secret State Archives in Berlin-Dahlem. Documents of the German and Prussian Association of Cities, the Reichsstädtebund and the German and Prussian Landkreistag amounting to some 2600 file units, which had been transferred to the Reichsarchiv Potsdam in 1938, were lost in the fire at the archive building in April 1945. Archive evaluation and processing The present finding aid book represents a revision of the finding aid book produced in Koblenz in 1957. Volume counts, as far as they had been specified in the file numbers, were taken over for the volume sequences. In addition, further tape sequences were created for archiving purposes. The transactions contained in individual volumes ("booklets") were included in the titles. For the illustration of the volume and issue divisions, the file numbers are displayed in the index. Furthermore, the titles and the classification, which were based entirely on the file plan of the German Association of Municipalities, were slightly changed. For example, file plan items have been grouped together and the names of individual subgroups have been standardized. The changes were made carefully in order to reproduce as faithfully as possible the traditional registry order, as far as it has been preserved. There were no cassations. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that a large part of the files had been created by the predecessor institutions and then continued by the German Association of Municipalities after 1933. Content characterization: Administration of departments, committees, personnel and salary matters 1926-1945 (24), personnel files 1927-1944 (25), budget, cash and accounting 1939-1943 (2), course of business and management 1936-1945 (10), Publishing affairs 1933-1945 (16), constitutional and administrative affairs 1926-1944 (10), civil service affairs 1916-1945 (350), employee affairs 1932-1944 (41), worker affairs 1932-1944 (55), labor law 1934-1944 (32), Hospital staff 1926-1945 (26), four-year plan 1936-1944 (8), general financial matters, financial equalisation 1920-1945 (40), budget, cash and accounting of municipalities 1923-1944 (37), taxation and tax law 1918-1945 (81), Contributions and fees 1932-1944 (6), wealth and debt management 1922-1944 (24), savings banks, banking 1928-1944 (17), welfare 1915-1945 (354), economic welfare 1914-1945 (126), health 1912-1944 (60), health 1909-1945 (108), Youth welfare 1913-1945 (68), unemployment assistance 1925-1945 (93), social insurance 1921-1945 (62), accident insurance 1925-1945 (100), hospitals 1920-1944 (12), institutions 1912-1945 (177), work service 1924-1944 (41), welfare education 1928-1945 (59), Youth education 1921-1945 (35), Sport 1906-1945 (49), Cemetery and Funeral 1917-1944 (31), Economy and Transport 1935-1939 (3), Education 1913-1945 (167), Vocational and Continuing Education 1920-1944 (26), Technical and Higher Education 1920-1945 (25), Popular education 1933-1945 (8), art, monument conservation, nature conservation 1926-1945 (123), religious affairs 1931-1943 (9), tourism 1934-1944 (3), urban development, roads 1931-1945 (29), road construction, road traffic 1925-1945 (39), agriculture, Forestry and Water Management 1927-1945 (23), General Affairs of the Reich Defence 1939-1944 (4), War Welfare 1937-1945 (18), War Food Economy 1919-1944 (79), Air Protection 1926-1945 (53) State of Development: Online-Findbuch (2007) Citation method: BArch, R 36/...
