Military Archives Potsdam

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Villa Ingenheim

The Military Archive Potsdam was from 1958 to 1990 a central archive of military documents of the GDR in an annex of the Potsdamer Villa Ingenheim .

description

The archive emerged from the " historical archive of the KVP ", which had been created as the " Koenigstein I Office " by order 126/55 of the head of the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (KVP), Heinz Hoffmann . In 1956 it was moved from the Königstein Fortress to Potsdam.

The remains of the former Army Archives in Potsdam (director until 1945: Friedrich von Rabenau ) were combined in the GDR into a department of the " Institute for German Military History " founded in 1958 . In 1964 it was removed from the institute for the purpose of founding a " German Military Library " and subordinated to the head of the main political administration of the MdI (Ministry of the Interior) and was therefore called the " German Military Archive " (until 1972). At the same time, an administrative archive was set up in the Ministry of National Defense (MfNV) as well as other archives in commandos and military districts of the GDR. In 1973 this was standardized again and all holdings, including those of the Minister for National Defense, his deputy and the chief of staff, were combined as the “ Military Archives of the German Democratic Republic ”.

The archive was hardly known to the public. Users came mainly from the NVA's military academy , the GDR's Military History Institute (MGI) (today the seat of the Military History Research Office ) and the GDR officers' colleges . Users from Warsaw Pact countries required approval from the Head of the Military Science Administration (MfNV). From 1978 western visitors were also able to use the holdings from the time before 1945, as the new director Kuhnt established contacts at international archivist congresses in Bonn and London. In 1986 a cultural agreement was concluded with the Federal Republic of Germany, which intensified the cooperation.

Stocks

Most of the Prussian files in the Reichsarchiv Potsdam were destroyed by the air raid by the Royal Air Force on April 14, 1945 - the remnants were later recovered by the Soviet Army, transported away and are or are still being stored in Russian archives. In December 1988, however, the military archive was given a military files freight car from the holdings of the General Staff of the Red Army in Moscow at the Wildpark train station . In addition to 3413 Prussian files, it also contained 24,620 files from the Imperial Navy , the Reichsmarine and the Kriegsmarine as well as 185 running meters of foreign navies and 15 m³ naval construction plans, which originally belonged to the inventory of the naval archive and were stored in the Berlin Shell house at the OKM until 1945 .

Archive manager

The directors and deputies of the GDR military archive were officers.

The directors of the military interim archive from 1990.

  • Albrecht Kästner (1990–1992)
  • Jörg Fröhlich (1992–1994)
  • Volker Ernst (1994–1996)

completion

From the summer of 1990 and until the reunification on October 3, 1990, the archive was called “ Military Archive Potsdam ”. After that it belonged to the Federal Archives as the " Military Intermediate Archive " . Depending on their age, the holdings were transferred to the Federal Archives-Military Archives Freiburg (after 1867) or the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin (before 1867).

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