Tradition and order: On 25 October 1848, the Grand Ducal Secret Cabinet commissioned the Ludwig Law Office of the General State Archives to organize the files in the cabinet's registry, whereby "those papers which are suitable for storage in the General State Archives or in the registries of the various ministries were to be handed over there". He found the files, which dated back to the first reign of Margrave Karl Friedrich, "in seven overcrowded boxes". Law Firm Councillor Ludwig divided the files into four main parts: a) files for the older and b) files for the current registry of the cabinet c) files for the Großh. Haus- und Familienarchiv d) files for the Großh. StaatsarchivIn the year 1860, these administrative tasks were completed and the files mentioned under c) and d) had already been submitted to the General State Archives in 1850. In the years 1879, 1881, 1882 and 1885 further deliveries took place. Insofar as these files were not incorporated into the family archives or assigned to the various holdings of the General State Archives, they were kept in a special cabinet. When the holdings of the General State Archives were divided into repositories in 1888, the files submitted by the Privy Cabinet received Repositur II, 2. Nevertheless, the previously practised division procedure was retained for the consignments of 1891, 1907 and 1908. With the abolition of the Privy Cabinet in 1919, almost all of the remaining registry was transferred to the General State Archives. The Badisches Ministerium des Auswärtigen retained only those files which it needed to continue the business of the Order Chancellery; these files are now held by the Staatsministerium 233. Individual inventories can be found partly in GLA 68/778 and partly in GLA 450/403 and 1200. This finding aid was created in 1964 on the basis of older card indexes. In 2009, it was converted into an online find book with funds from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and then edited by Christoph Florian and Alfred Becher. According to the requirements of Scope-Archiv, numerous collective title recordings in particular had to be resolved. However, the individual titles and the differentiation according to individual runtimes and deviations in content led in some cases to the creation of very extensive headings in which the chronological order is no longer clearly discernible. The further subdivision would have been consistent; as a fundamental intervention in order and category sequence, this could not be achieved within the framework of the search instrument conversion. The conversion to online finding aids remained problematic in the treatment of Julius Kastner's meritorious but very detailed indices. 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: A cabinet government in the proper sense, as it existed in Prussia, for example, hardly ever existed in Baden. The system of government of Margrave Karl Wilhelm, which could at best be described as a cabinet government, did not continue under his grandson. Margrave Karl Friedrich founded the Privy Cabinet in 1783, which formed only a committee from the Privy Council and was not comparable with the Prussian institution of the same name. Simultaneously with the abolition of the Privy Council College in 1808 and the division of the central administration into five ministerial departments, the Grand Duke determined: "Around Our Highest Person We Form a Cabinet Council" (Regierungsblatt 1808 p. 187). This Cabinet was one of the Supreme State Authorities and was assigned the following business area: 1. Processing of all letters addressed to the Grand Duke 2. All Systematica, establishing and prescribing the general constitutional and administrative and principles 3. All Family and House Affairs 4. All Court, Order and Civil Uniform Affairs 5. All Court and State Ceremonial 6. The Directorate of the General State Archives 7. Supervision and Management of the State Handbook to be published annually 8. The Affairs of the Art Institutions belonging to the Court (= Reg. Bl. 1808 S.193But already in the following year, as a result of the organizational edict of 26 November 1809, this "Cabinet Ministry" was abolished again as a special department. The "Cabinets Minister" remained "the organ through which the requests of the Ministries to Us and Our Resolution go to them" (= Reg. Bl. 1809 p. 397). On 21 September 1811 the Grand Duke appointed the State Councillors Brauer, Hofer and Wielandt as Secret Cabinet Councils, the Legation Council Ring as Secret Expedition Council and the Expeditor Weiß as Secret Cabinet Secretary (= Reg. Bl. 1811 p. 108). The "Geheimen Cabinets-Referate" (Secret Cabinets) thus created were abolished on 15 June 1817. For the objects to be processed in the Secret Cabinet a State Secretary was appointed, who at the same time became a member of the State Ministry and the State Council (= Reg. Bl. 1817 p.65). Thus the Secret Cabinet lost its central importance, which had been intended in 1808, early on; what remained was the role of a secretariat for the personal government actions of the sovereign. Towards the middle of the 19th century the Secret Cabinet consisted of a board of directors, a registrar and a chancellor's list. After a separate Court Secretariat had been set up on 24 May 1854 to deal with the Court's administrative affairs (= Reg. Bl. 1854 p. 256), the Privy Cabinet processed: 1. all ideas, complaints, petitions and other submissions directly addressed to the Grand Duke, insofar as they did not belong to the business circles of the Court's offices and were not purely matters of support; 2. the Court's administrative office was set up on 24 May 1854 (= Reg. Bl. 1854 p. 256); 3. the Court's administrative office was set up on 24 May 1854; 3. the Court's administrative office was set up on 24 May 1854 (= Reg. Bl. 1854 p. 256); 3. the Court's administrative office was set up on 24 May 1854. Execution of highest orders in matters of state administration; 3. appointment to upper court and court batches; 4. drafting of highest hand letters; 5. affairs of the order secretariat. On 14 April 1919 the ministry of state ordered the abolition of the secret cabinet. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (= Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt 1919 p. 245) was responsible for handling the business of the Order's Chancellery. Content: Although the holdings cover almost all areas of politics, economics, culture, confessions, court and military, they often contain a richer and more complete tradition that can be found in the respective specialist authorities. Because of the many pencil-written concepts of Grand Duke Friedrich I he nevertheless occupies a central place among the court documents. Since the applications for immediate assistance are mostly requests for support, gifts, addresses, etc., numerous artists, writers and associations are represented here.Julius Kastner 1964 / Hansmartin Schwarzmaier 1991Konrad Krimm 2009
