Digitization of research-intensive and widely used parts from the archival fonds of the Provincial Government of Potsdam at the Brandenburgische Landeshauptarchiv
Final Report Abstract
Since August 2023, the Brandenburg State Archives have made all of the approx. 12,100 files on the history of Brandenburg from the digitisation project available online. With around 5.5 million scanned pages, this is the largest digitisation project of the State Archives to date. The "Potsdam Government" fonds were selected for digitization as they contain essential source material for a wide range of research topics on the history of Brandenburg and Prussia in the 19th and 20th centuries. With a volume of approx. 2,800 linear metres, the files of the Potsdam Government are particularly well preserved compared to other Prussian district governments. For this reason, the four intensively used sub-collections from the Presidential Department were digitized to improve their scientific use: Building Construction Affairs (Rep. 2A I Hb), Municipal Affairs (Rep. 2A I Kom), Settlement and Housing (Rep. 2A I S) and Police and Political Affairs (Rep. 2A I Pol). The sub-file Rep. 2A I Hb comprises sources on building and monument research. It contains files on the execution of buildings and structural maintenance. They mainly concern state buildings, as well as the preservation of architectural monuments, including palaces in the Berlin-Potsdam palace landscape, churches and monasteries, or other historical buildings. The files in Rep. 2A I Kom provide insights into far-reaching changes to the municipal constitution. Fundamental reform projects of the Prussian state in the 19th century can be traced just as well on the basis of the sources as the later "Gleichschaltung" of municipal institutions by the Nazi state on the basis of the Municipal Constitution Act of 1933 and the German Municipal Code of 1935. Rep. 2A I Pol contains documents on the police administration and the political police. These include files on the organization and staffing of the police apparatus, on police regulations as well as volumes of collective subject files on the social democratic movement from the period before 1918, on the KPD and groups of the left-wing party spectrum as well as on radical rightwing organizations and the NSDAP from the years of the Weimar Republic. There are extensive files on the establishment and consolidation of the Nazi dictatorship from 1933 onwards. They also document many individual fates of people who were persecuted by the National Socialists for racial, political or other reasons, who disliked them or resisted them. The sub-file Rep. 2A I S comprises files from the Settlement and Housing Department, mainly from the period 1900 to 1945. They document the development of building in towns and rural communities through the creation of development plans, suburban building regulations and the construction of small housing estates. Other groups of files contain important sources on state efforts in the Weimar Republic and during the Nazi era to remedy the housing shortage. The documentation for the towns and districts directly bordering Berlin is particularly rich and comprehensive. It illustrates the spatial planning measures in the Berlin periphery against the backdrop of advancing industrialization and the establishment of the armaments industry after 1933.
