The Elbe-Weser area under Swedish rule the country as part of European policy (1645–1712). The scientific indexing of the Swedish government archive in the Lower Saxony State Archives – Department Stade

• Applicant: Dr. Sabine Graf
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: from 2015 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 269664800

The follow-up application’s aim is to continue to make the documents of the Swedish Governmental Archive (Rep. 5a) kept at the Lower Saxony State Archives (NLA) at Stade accessible in greater detail and present them with the help of the web-based archive information system ‘Arcinsys’ and thus to make the documents directly available to scholarly research. The holdings contain by far the most important archival transmission relating to the seven decades of Swedish rule in northwestern Germany. They represent a key primary source for the as yet little researched power structures of an emerging major power in early modern Europe. From 1648 the Duchies of Bremen and Verden were part of a linguistically and culturally diverse conglomerate state whose foundation rested on the union of religion and political loyalty to the prince and his dynasty. As a new European major power, Sweden's politics were based on a pooling of all resources in the heartlands and the newly conquered territories. The duchies were functionally administrated from the new residence and state fortress Stade by a provincial government and were introduced to European standards, especially in military and cultural matters. In conjunction with the Great Northern War and Sweden's crumbling position as a major power, Denmark, its rival for supremacy in the North and Baltic Sea regions, conquered Bremen-Verden in 1712 (in 1720 Electorate of Hannover).However, this important collection was still largely unavailable for research. It is accessible only by means of a finding guide of the 19th century. The first phase of the project made the first half of the repository digitally accessible. The follow-up application aims to create a deep description of the second half of the records, which consists mostly of regional content. These records show the implementation of the swedish rule with its modern administration in the different parts of the Elbe-Weser area very precisely. These focus on the levels of cities, towns, villages, secularized convents, strongholds, courts and rural regions.New research perspectives are opened up by the project, especially in connection with the holdings 'Swedish Tribunal in Wismar' (Upper Court for the German provinces of the Swedish crown), which are already catalogued and are also deposited at the NLA at Stade, and the transmissions in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Hannover. These go well beyond the era of dominion of the Swedish states so central to northwestern Germany (e.g. composite monarchies). The fact that the Duchies of Bremen and Verden were under the rule of Swedish states but remained in the federation of the German Empire provides a vivid example of European cooperation in the 17th and 18th centuries.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)