Fonds - Rep. 6B District administrations

General history of authorities<br /><br /> Before the Prussian reforms, the districts of the Mark Brandenburg were dominated by the landowning aristocracy in their double function as estates and lower state administrative districts. This dominated in the circles. The king appointed the representative of the state in the district, the District Administrator, from among the owners of the manor who had settled in the district and at the suggestion of the district council. The attempt to nationalise the district administration after 1806 as part of the Stein-Hardenberg state reform failed. The gendarmerie edict of 1812, which was intended to strip the district administrator of its semi-permanent character and turn him into a pure civil servant, failed because of resistance from the old forces.<br />The decree of 30 April 1815 on the basis of an improved establishment of the provincial authorities created uniform administrative districts of the lower level, which were uniform in size and included both town and country - only the larger towns were to form their own urban districts - but restored the district administrator's office to its old form. With a cabinet order in 1816, the district councils secured the right to present three candidates from the class of district landowners to the district office. When the District Offices were established in 1816, the County Councils were placed under the official supervision of the governments. The district administration office was the centre of the internal administration in the district. The district administrator's sphere of business included the general state administrative police, military matters, trade matters in the broadest sense, supervision of the regulatory and tax system, in particular tax assessment and collection, and supervision of the district treasury.<br />The district plans drawn up by the Reform Party between 1815 and 1822 to ensure adequate representation of the bourgeoisie and peasant landowners in the district council also failed. The district order finally issued on 17 August 1825 for the province of Brandenburg secured, as before, the personal district status of every owner of a knight's estate. On the other hand, the cities could send only one representative to the district council, and all the rural communities in the district could send only three. His right of presentation for the occupation of the district office was once again confirmed. The district council was convened by the district administrator. In addition to advising the District Administrator on municipal matters, his duties were limited to tax distribution, the submission of expert opinions on district taxes, the examination of the use of district funds and the election of district municipal officials. The district parliament was not allowed to levy its own taxes. It was not until 1841 that the district self-governments were granted the right to decide on district levies in certain cases.<br />As a result of the revolution of 1848, the district constitution was replaced by the district order of 1850, which was more in keeping with the ideas of self-government of the liberal bourgeoisie, but was already restored during the reaction period in 1853. It was only after 1866, when the upper middle classes, under the impression of national unification from above, agreed to form an alliance with the upper estates, that in 1872 a reform of the district administration system was introduced with the district order for the six eastern provinces. It came into force in 1874. The virile voices of the owners of the manor were no longer heard in the district assemblies. The three electoral associations of the larger rural landowners, the rural communities and the cities, which sent their deputies to the district assemblies, were created for the election to the district assemblies. The criterion for the distribution of seats between town and country was the population, although the number of city deputies was not allowed to exceed half the total number of all deputies. The two rural associations shared the seats remaining after the departure of the city deputies. The dominance of the country and thus, as the future showed, of the large landed property over the city was thus preserved. It was only weakened to the extent that cities with a population of more than 25,000 now had the right to withdraw from the district association and to form their own districts.<br />The district parliament had to represent the district association and to deliberate and decide on district matters as well as the matters assigned to it. He distributed the state levies in the district, decided on district levies and established the district accounts and budgets.<br />As the executive organ of the district self-government, a district committee was established in connection with the district order of 1850, which at the same time acquired the character of a state administrative authority by assigning it matters of the general state administration for independent settlement. It consisted of the district administrator as chairman and 6 members, who were elected by the district assembly. The district committee should prepare and implement the decisions of the district assembly, administer the district affairs and appoint the district officials. Over time, the volume of business transferred to the district committee grew more and more. These included the most diverse branches of the state administration: poor and road police, hydraulic engineering matters, field, industrial, construction and fire police matters, settlement matters, dismembrance matters, the supervision of the municipal affairs of the administrative districts, rural communities and manor districts, matters of public health care and administration of justice. Finally, the district committee was given the jurisdiction of an administrative court of the first instance within the administrative jurisdiction newly established by the district order, which was to grant judicial protection against administrative acts.<br />The district administrator was appointed by the king according to the district order as before. The District Assembly retained the right of proposal, but the Crown was no longer bound by it. As the chairman of the district council, which he convened, and above all of the district committee, whose day-to-day business he managed, he embodied the influence of the state bureaucracy on local self-government. Apart from his new function as Chairman of the District Committee, the District Administrator's business circle remained essentially unchanged. His most important political task was the administration of the entire police force in the district, especially the political police force. New tasks subsequently arose from the implementation of the trade and insurance legislation. In 1911, insurance offices were attached to the District Offices, which were chaired by the District Administrator. During the First World War, county councils and district committees supervised the implementation of the war economy in the district. During the November Revolution, workers' and soldiers' councils temporarily controlled the activities of the county councils in various districts of the province. As a lasting result of the revolution, the right to vote was democratized for the district assembly. In 1920 the electoral associations were dissolved. All members of the district elected the members of the district parliament in general, equal and secret elections, consisting of representatives of the parties. After the fall of the monarchy, the state ministry appointed the district administrator. In 1924 the district committee was assigned all welfare tasks in the district. <br />The "assumption of power" by the National Socialists in 1933 led to the elimination of the democratic parliamentary forms of district self-administration and - in accordance with the Nazi leadership principle - to an increasing strengthening of the position of the district administrator. After the district councils had already been given certain control functions over the other state district authorities in 1932, they were made responsible in March 1933 for enforcing the "Principles of National Socialist State Administration" with the other district authorities. When in December 1933 the self-administration of the municipalities was abolished, it was placed under the supervision of the state in the person of the district administrator. The Kreistage had already been dissolved in February 1933. Its powers were transferred to the district committees in July 1933. These in turn lost their function as decision-making authorities to the Land Councils in December 1933. The district committees continued their activity as administrative courts under the name "District Administrative Court". In August 1939, as a result of preparations for war, food and economic offices were set up at the district administration offices. The course of the war forced a simplification of the administrative organization and a gradual reduction of the administrative activity to only war-needed projects. As early as 1939, the district committees lost their remaining decision-making powers and the right to be heard. The district administrative courts were repealed. From 1940, the district administrator also had to use the name "The District Administrator of the District" in his capacity as head of self-administration. In the distribution of business, however, the difference between state and municipal administration at the district level was maintained. Approaches to a merger in the last years of the war were no longer implemented.<br />With the end of the war in 1945, the district offices ceased to exist in their previous form. They were replaced by new district administrations as "democratic" self-governing bodies (cf. Rep. 250 Landratsämter). The borders of the old circles remained largely intact until 1950. The actual upheaval did not take place until the administrative reform of 1952, which replaced the county councils with county councils and formed fundamentally new territorial counties.<br /><br />>General inventory history<br /><br />The Brandenburg District Offices and the majority of the county committees had transferred parts of their registries to varying degrees to the Secret State Archives in Berlin-Dahlem before the Second World War, where they were set up as repositories Pr. Br. Rep. 6B and 6C. Due to the effects of war, 95 percent of the holdings of the district committees were lost there, the rest remained in the Secret State Archives. The holdings of the District Offices were also destroyed by 5 percent, about 20 percent remained in the Secret State Archives. The main part, however, was outsourced during the war and was transferred to the BLHA in 1950, where, as a result of the immediately taken up order and indexing work for all holdings, first finding indexes and then finding books made the access to all holdings possible.<br />In the years 1952 to 1963, in order to supplement these holdings, all still preserved registry parts of the district offices and district committees reaching up to the year 1945 were taken over by the BLHA from the administrative archives of the county councils, and then ordered and registered. Due to the position of the county councils as managing chairmen of the district committees, the registries of both authorities had not always been clearly distinguished from each other in the last decades of their existence. The mixing of the documents of the district office and district committee reached thereby partly up to the individual file volume. In 1965, therefore, both groups of holdings as well as the individual preserved files of the district municipal funds and insurance offices were combined to form the total holdings of Rep. 6B Kreisverwaltungen and rearranged according to a uniform classification scheme (general classification) already used in other archives for similar holdings. The union of the tradition of the District Office and the District Committee to a total stock was missing only for the stocks, of which already older finding aids were available.

Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv (Archivtektonik) >> Provinz Brandenburg 1806/16-1945 >> Regierungsbezirk Potsdam >> Lokalbehörden

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