The file delivery of the Central Office for Trade and Commerce in Stuttgart. Von Walter Grube: The Königlich Württembergische Zentralstelle für Gewerbe und Handel (Royal Württemberg Central Office for Trade and Commerce) has assumed a particularly prestigious position among the authorities that the German states created for their economic administration in the 19th century. It originated as a state college under the Ministry of the Interior in the same revolutionary year of 1848, in which Prussia, Austria and Bavaria established special trade ministries; the notoriously thrifty Württemberg did not know its own ministry for economic affairs until the end of the monarchy, as Baden had in its trade ministry in 1860-1881. Nevertheless, the "Central Office", above all under the leadership of the great Ferdinand von Steinbeis (1856-1880), was successful in economic policy, which, in addition to the achievements of the ministries of trade and commerce of other countries, was quite impressive. It was thanks to the work of the Central Office that Württemberg, which was poor in raw materials, technically still lagging behind, and had unfavorable transport connections, soon became the actual state of state trade promotion, from which people for a long time tried eagerly to learn, not only in Germany. The Central Office played a decisive role in the restructuring of the Württemberg economic structure in the age of the Industrial Revolution. The historian of her first heyday in 1875 has divided her versatile field of activity into the following groups: 1. "Consultative services" in legislative and administrative matters: trade, customs, trade, banking and building legislation, coinage, measure and weight, commercial security police, iron and salt extraction, transport, taxation and more.a.; 2. teaching activities: trade schools, travelling teachers, trade training workshops, model and teaching material collection, trade model store, library, journalistic work, associations; 3. "Direct influence on commercial activity": markets, trade fairs, stock exchanges, exports, foreign commercial agencies; 4. direct influence on commercial activity": support with capital and technical suggestions for all branches of industry; 5. regimental activity" mainly as a state patent office, state exhibition commission, central authority for chambers of commerce and industry, state calibration authority and in the administration of commercial foundations. Among these activities, in the country conscious of its school tradition, "instructive work" has always rightly been regarded as a special glorious page of the Central Office; the Protestant Prelate Merz once called it a "jewel of Württemberg". Not least due to the educational work of the central office and the commission for the commercial further training schools founded in 1853, a down-to-earth tribe of recognised skilled workers grew from day labourers, small farmers' and vineyard gardeners' sons, from guilt-bound master craftsmen and a poorly developed trading class of that highly qualified entrepreneurship which, in addition to the broad stratum of vital small and medium-sized enterprises characteristic of Württemberg, has created many a company of world renown. The far-sighted way in which the Central Office, overcoming some resistance, drove trade promotion and economic policy in general at that time was still noticeable in its effects up to the crisis resistance of the Württemberg economy, which was widespread and much envied in the thirties of our century.After the state revolution of 1918 had also given Württemberg its own ministries for the economy (Labour Ministry and Food Ministry, 1926 united to form the Economics Ministry), the Central Office for Trade and Commerce was reorganised by decree of the State Ministry of 30 November 1920 under new distribution of responsibilities to the State Trade Office. For the organization of the state economic administration, this was not as revolutionary as the founding of the Central Office, with which a completely new epoch of Württemberg industrial history had begun. But the reorganization was more far-reaching than the repeated renewal of the "Basic Provisions" of 1848, through which the Central Office had repeatedly adapted itself to the changes in economic life and in the relationship between the state and the economy in the course of its seventy-year history. The Central Office, the creation of the revolution of 1848, thus underwent its strongest transformation to date through the revolution of 1918. As one can easily understand, the precipitation of files from the Central Office represents a unique source in the state sector for the economic history of Württemberg in the years 1848-1920. In addition, the Central Office had taken over not inconsiderable files of older semi-private institutions founded or sponsored by the state, such as the "Gesellschaft für Beförderung der Gewerbe" (Society for the Promotion of Trade) founded in 1830 and the "Handels- und Gewerbsverein" (Trade and Trade Association) founded in 1819, and later partly also the "Zentralstelle des landwirtschaftlichen Vereins" (Central Office of the Agricultural Association) established in 1817. The registry of the Stuttgart Central Office for Trade and Commerce in 1920, when it was transformed into the State Trade Office, contained the relevant records of a full century. The Central Office, like the majority of the 19th century ministries and state resource authorities, has not exercised little care in its registry. The first registry plan of the newly founded authority, which was first provisionally housed in the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was drafted in 1850 by Reinhardt's secretary, a booklet of only 37 pages; it remained in force throughout the Steinbeis era until the early eighties. The files taken over immediately in 1848 by the Gewerbeförderungsgesellschaft and the Handels- und Gewerbeverein were incorporated into the individual departments of the registry in 1850. The same procedure was followed when, in 1882, on the occasion of the reorganization of the registry of the Central Office for Agriculture, the previous files of the Central Office of the Agricultural Association had been handed over to the association, as well as again in 1888, when papers from the estate of the well-known national economist Moriz Mohl were handed over to the association. In 1869 a separate room had to be set up for the registry, which until then had been housed in the only chancellery room, and the three "full-grafted" file shelves had to be increased by two new ones. In 1883, not long after the Director (and later President) Robert von Gupp took office, a fundamental reorganization of the further swollen registry overflowing into the corridors and attic had become indispensable. The work was transferred by the Ministry of the Interior to the civil servant Heberle of the Oberamt Schwäbisch Hall, since it could not be handled by the few civil servants of the central office, and was only completed after three years. The new registry plan drawn up by Heberle, now already a volume of 200 pages, has been preserved, while his repertory, four times as extensive, unfortunately did not come to us. For the first time, Heberle systematically separated the current registry (then 1109 fascicles) from the old registry (then 1242 fascicles). On the occasion of these works also the first file cassations of considerable size took place (about 180 fascicles and volumes). The surviving elimination lists show that this was done conscientiously and that there was probably very little collected, which would be of interest to the economic historian today. The order created in 1883-85 has survived the relocation of the central office to the new magnificent building of the Stuttgart State Trade Museum in 1896; even today, a large part of the files can be found in the fascicles formed and inscribed by Heberle. In the new building, in 1901-1902, the old registry, which had already grown into a proper official archive, could be separated and appropriately furnished in the attic. In 1905-1908, Obersekretär Hauser produced a new file plan of 800 pages for old and current registries, using but also improving the Heberleschen order, which was in use until the reorganization of the Central Office in 1920 and has fortunately been preserved. The fact that substantial parts of it then fell victim to the bombs of the Second World War is one of the most sensitive source losses for research. All files of the Central Office, which had been sent to the Ministry of Economy by the State Trade Office in the wake of the organisational changes of 1920, were burnt with the Ministry of Economy, including valuable files on chambers of commerce, trade contracts and customs 1819-1870 as well as on railways 1857-1913. Apart from the ruinous remains, all files of the Central Office that were still in the possession of the Stuttgart State Trade Office during the Second World War have also been destroyed, including not only extensive material from the first two decades of the 20th century, which was still curious at the time, but also some departments dating back a long way, some of which still had files from the "Gesellschaft für Beförderung der Gewerbe" (1830-1848) and its predecessors. These were once two larger deliveries by the Stuttgart State Trade Office from 1930 and 1939, a total of about 40 m (today inventory E 170), and the files of the Patent Commission of the Central Office, which were handed over by the Reich Patent Office in 1939 and which, according to the German Patent Law of 25 January 1877, were not available for inspection. The first volume was sent to Berlin in May 1877 (Reichsgesetzblatt pp. 501ff.) (11 m, today stock E 170a), and finally 60 volumes of invoices from the Zentralstelle (1848/49-1908/09, 2 m), which the Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg had taken over in 1921 with the invoice section of the former Finanzarchiv (today stock E 224a). The existing registry aids, administrative repertories, handover and elimination directories no longer allow even a rough percentage to be given today of how the volume of this rescued document (a total of 53 linear metres) relates to that of the lost document. But on the basis of Hauser's file plan of the Central Office from 1905-1908 at least the larger and for research most perceptible gaps in the inventory handed down to us can be determined. For example, most of the minutes of the meetings are missing, the files on the well-known Stuttgart State Trade Museum (the second oldest in Europe) and those on the Information Centre for the Construction Industry; in addition to the diaries, the once demonstrably existing files on the large library of the Central Office - the most important of Germany's trade libraries -, on social insurance, industrial legal protection, building legislation, traffic with foodstuffs, luxury foods and utensils have been completely lost. Despite these and other gaps, the preserved files of the Central Office and its predecessors still represent an invaluable source for the economic history of the Württemberg royal period. It is well known that the records of the commercial enterprises, most of which grew out of small businesses, are often extremely incomplete and not easily accessible for general use; the valuable archives of the Stuttgart and Ulm Chambers of Commerce were almost completely destroyed by the Second World War. The central tradition of state industrial promotion thus offers not only the only opportunity to explore the great transformation process of the 19th century as a whole; it is also widely the only source both of the history of hundreds of individual enterprises and of the emergence of economic self-government. This source was already not completely unused. But for a long time, the partially quite inadequate degree of their development prohibited the real exploitation of them. Only the annual accounts of the Central Office (in inventory E 224a) did not require any special expenditure for archival finding aids. In chronological order, you will find detailed evidence of all measures for industrial education and support for trade, of each "sending experts abroad and appointing tradesmen from the same field" (as one of the invoice headings reads), of the purchase of models, drawings, samples, sample tools, machines and inventions, of exhibitions and prize distributions, of the introduction of new branches of industry and the upgrading of existing ones, of the promotion of the sale of goods, of trade associations and craftsmen, and finally of expenditure on fundamental studies of industrial development. Anyone looking for individual companies or persons in the accounts must of course, in order to reach their goal quickly, already be aware of the vintages in question, and must also be content with the fact that 19th century accounts, less informative than some from earlier times, essentially give facts and only rarely motives.In 1949, the State Archives Ludwigsburg was able to complete a hand-written archive repertory for the patent files of the Central Office (fonds E 170a), which had been taken over in 1939 without any index, during the executive board of the then Oberarchivrat Dr. Max Miller. In two volumes (with together more than 1000 pages) it lists the protocols of the patent commission and some general files as well as the chronologically arranged special files on all Württemberg patents examined by the central office in the years 1848-1877 (with name index). In addition, for the years 1841 to 1848, it makes accessible the relevant preparatory files of the Central Office of the Agricultural Association, which was responsible for the patent system at that time, characteristic of the Biedermeier view of commercial economy. The collection, easily accessible since 1949 (a total of 2373 tufts), contains patent files of Swabian inventors (e.g. Daimler, Max Eyth, Magirus, Gebrüder Mauser and Friedrich Voith) as well as numerous patent applications of non-Württembergians (from the rest of Germany, from other European countries and from America), all in all quite considerable documents for the history of technology. It proved to be more difficult for the archive administration to catalog the even more important and far more extensive file deliveries of the Landesgewerbeamt of 1930 and 1939, the first of which is already listed in K.O. Müller's printed "Gesamübersicht" of 1937 (fonds E 170). In the research service of the State Archives, especially since the Second World War, there have been repeated attempts to use these files for surveys of company histories and anniversaries. But the scarcity of the summary handover lists made this an always time-consuming and often unsuccessful effort. Even the question of individual facts and data could embarrass the archivist; there was absolutely no question of a systematic evaluation of the holdings for the economic and social history, which is becoming more and more important from year to year. Paul Gehring's important essays on Württemberg economic history in the 19th century had to be written without the use of these files, especially under the difficult working conditions of the war and post-war years. Under these circumstances, the production of a scientifically useful repertory became an urgent desideratum of both administration and research. Fortunately, in 1958, the efforts of State Archives Director Dr. Max Miller to obtain funds from the State Trade Office of Baden-Württemberg for the temporary employment of a legally and economically trained processor of these trade and commercial files were successful. The typewritten repertory E 170 comprises three state folio volumes of almost 1000 pages and, restored according to the Hauser file plan from 1905-1908, makes the holdings usable right down to their finest ramifications. Some of it certainly is of predominantly regional or even only local historical interest. But much of it shows in surprisingly rich detail how systematically the Central Office used the experiences and models of the then technically and socially advanced German and non-German states (above all Belgium and England) to raise the Württemberg economy. There are numerous files on the secondment of entrepreneurs, technicians and craftsmen abroad for technical and artistic training, on experiments with foreign machines and production processes, on the appointment of foreign specialists, on participation in major international exhibitions from Paris and London to Philadelphia and Melbourne. Thus, the collection of files shows the way in which a 19th-century German middle-class state developed its craft with comparatively modest but skilfully invested financial expenditures and helped its industry to become internationally competitive. At the goal of this way stood, that was the specifically Württemberg of a gemeindeutschen procedure per se, a quality industry of large variety and healthy decentralization. The typewritten finding aid was provided by Rudolf Denk, Walter Grube and Wolfgang Schmierer (completion 1969). Note: This finding aid book is a repertory which has been available only in typewritten form up to now and which has been converted into a database-supported and thus online-capable format according to a procedure developed by the "Working Group on Retroconversion in the State Archives Ludwigsburg". This can lead to a certain discrepancy between the modern external appearance and the today partly outdated design and wording of the title records, in particular:- corrections, deletions and supplements were checked and incorporated.- The title records of archive units found to be missing were taken over and provided with a corresponding note ("Missing since ...." or similar).- If the allocation of new order numbers was unavoidable, the old signature was verified in the respective title record and in a separate overall concordance.
