Reich Office for Soil Research
In the Reich Office of Agricultural Research (rstb) of were carried Regulation Commissioner of the Four Year Plan , Hermann Goering on 10 March (I, p 490 RGBl.) In 1939 with effect from 1 April 1939, the four-year plan office exploration of German soil (office Keppler , she was Göring) as well as the geological research institutes of the German states including Austria. On December 12, 1941, the Reich Office was raised to the rank of a higher Reich authority and renamed the Reich Office for Soil Research (RAB) . The Reichsstelle or the Reichsamt thus succeeded the Prussian Geological State Institute (PGLA) in Berlin, which had also carried out research and advisory tasks for the Reich government, and the Geological Federal Institute (GBA) in Vienna, which was established after the annexation of Austria in 1938 had been converted to a state institute. It was subordinate to the Reich Ministry of Economics.
Headquarters
The headquarters of the headquarters of the Reichsstelle and later of the Reichsamt was at the headquarters of the dissolved PGLA in Berlin at Invalidenstrasse 44. Today the building is the seat of the Federal Ministry for Transport, Building and Urban Development .
Branch offices and workplaces
The dissolved geological state institutes were continued as branches of the Reichsstelle or the Reichsamt:
- Stuttgart (formerly Geological Department of the Württemberg Statistical State Office) - Head of M. Frank
- Freiburg im Breisgau (formerly Badische Geologische Landesanstalt) - Head W. Hasemann
- Vienna (formerly the Austrian State Geological Institute) - Head Heinrich Beck
- Rostock (formerly Mecklenburg Geological State Institute)
- Jena (formerly Thuringian geological survey)
- Hamburg (formerly the Geological State Institute in Hamburg)
- Darmstadt (formerly Hessian Geological State Institute)
- Munich (formerly state geological survey at the Bavarian Mining Authority)
- Freiberg (formerly Saxon Geological State Office)
In addition, jobs were set up in four other locations:
- Kiel - Kitzeberg (Marine Geological Research Institute, Head Erich Wasmund )
- Prague - Head of Hans Joachim Martini
- bad Bentheim
- Hanover
Bad Bentheim and Hanover acted as work centers for petroleum geology
task
The task of the new central authority was to research the Reich territory using geological, geophysical, mining and other methods and to make the results useful for the German economy and warfare. It was also responsible for the further and new development of soil research methods and methods of utilizing mineral resources. Mining development for the extraction of mineral resources was not one of their tasks. After the beginning of the war, the area of responsibility was extended to parts of German-occupied Europe. The authority maintained scientific relationships with universities and geological institutes abroad. Like some of its predecessor organizations, it also published a geological yearbook.
meaning
With the establishment of the central authority, the state geological service in Germany was geared towards the war economy with the aim of achieving the highest level of self-sufficiency in raw materials. In the search for raw materials, next to ore, coal and salt as well as stones and earth, the search for oil had the highest priority. The importance of the new institution was demonstrated by the fact that Wilhelm Keppler, a well-known partisan and economic policy advisor to Adolf Hitler, was appointed to its president, who was also responsible for the coordination of foreign policy and raw materials management as State Secretary in the Foreign Office. Bernhard Brockamp acted as vice president . Another influential employee was the head of the petroleum department, Alfred Bentz , who, as the leading petroleum geologist of his time, also held the position of authorized representative for the promotion of petroleum production with the commissioner for the four-year plan and initiated systematic drilling programs in Germany and the occupied territories.
Development after the end of the war
After the end of the Second World War, the Reich Office disintegrated. The headquarters in the Soviet-occupied sector of Berlin could no longer carry out its tasks. It existed from November 1, 1945 as the German State Geological Institute with branches in Freiberg and Jena until the end of 1950 and was part of the central administration for the fuel industry in the Soviet zone of occupation. In the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany, geological state offices were again established and in 1958 the Federal Institute for Soil Research (from 1975 Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials ) to fulfill federal tasks . In the east, the state geological commission, which later became the Central Geological Institute of the GDR, was formed at the seat of the former Reich Office. In Austria, the Federal Geological Institute was re-established in Vienna.
The archive material of the Reich Office is located at the individual geological state offices (for example the Hessian Geological State Office) and at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials , which in particular stores material from the Laboratory for Petroleum Geology that was previously temporarily in US custody.
Individual evidence
- ^ History of PGLA
- ↑ History of the Geological State Office Baden-Württemberg ( Memento of the original from July 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ History of the BGR - a short outline
- ^ Friedrich Facius, Hans Booms , Heinz Boberach : The Federal Archives and its holdings. Overview (= publications of the Federal Archives. Vol. 10). 3rd, supplemented and revised edition, by Gerhard Granier, Josef Henke, Klaus Oldenhage. Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1977, ISBN 3-7646-1688-1 .
