Heilbronn city archive
| Heilbronn city archive
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|---|---|
 Archive building in the Deutschhof |
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| Archive type | Municipal Archives |
| Coordinates | 49 ° 8 '26.3 " N , 9 ° 13' 5" E |
| place | Heilbronn |
| Visitor address | Eichgasse 1 |
| founding | 1681 |
| ISIL | DE-2071 |
| carrier | City of Heilbronn |
| Website | https://stadtarchiv.heilbronn.de/ |
The Heilbronn City Archive is the archive of the city of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg .
The archive has been documented since 1371 and was originally in the Heilbronn town hall . In the 18th century, the city archive received its own archive building , which was destroyed along with a large part of the archive in the air raid on Heilbronn on December 4, 1944, and the ruins of which have been used as a hall of honor since then as a memorial for the dead of the Second World War and the victims of the Third Reich.
After provisional accommodation at various locations such as the Heilbronner Fleischhaus , the city archive moved into its current domicile in the 1970s with the archive building in Deutschhof . In addition to the actual archive, the city archive has an exhibition area with the Haus der Stadtgeschichte , which is structurally connected to the Heilbronn City Museum .
history
Origins of the city archive
In the document with which Emperor Charles IV elevated Heilbronn to the status of an imperial city , the keys for the seals and letters are mentioned, from which it is concluded that at that time there was already a central safekeeping for city documents. The vault of the Heilbronn town hall is documented as an archive for the year 1485 . Documents were initially kept there together with treasures and the money reserves and were only accessible to the council members. In 1527, on behalf of the council, Gregor von Nallingen created a vaulted book with a list of the existing archive material, which is considered the oldest finding aid in Heilbronn . At the same time, Gregor von Nallingen is the first town clerk (in office from 1531 to 1538) who is mentioned in connection with the Heilbronn town archive. Another old repertory of the holdings comes from the town clerk Jakob Ehinger from 1543.
Up to the end of the 16th century, the files of the town clerk consisted of three separate files: the actual archive with documents and valuable files in the vault as well as the registry, which was divided into current and filed processes. The registry was henceforth out of the city clerks. The town clerk Anton Alberti needed 44 years of service just to order and record the two office holdings. Hans Melchior Weber only became a full-time registrar for a short time in 1638. Georg Friedrich Rollwagen held the position from 1656 to 1662. In 1681 the future mayor Johann Esaias Rühle became the city's first full-time actuary . The series of archivists has been traced back to the present day without any gaps. The future mayor Heinrich Karl Philibert Orth was sub-archivist from 1756 to 1757. He was followed in 1758 by Eberhard Ludwig Becht , initially as sub-archivist until 1772 and then as first archivist until 1777.
During the Thirty Years War in 1622, part of the Heilbronn files were moved from the vault to the armory of the town hall. When a town hall fire in 1659, the archive was moved to the neighboring Kilian's Church. The files were also taken out of the city several times when danger loomed. The hurried unsorted transport regularly caused a mess of the inventory, about which numerous complaints have been received.
Archive building from 1765
The construction of a separate archive building on the northeast corner of the town hall complex, which was expanded in the late 16th century to form a four-winged complex surrounding an inner courtyard, goes back especially to Unterarchivar Becht. The archivists complained more and more about the inadequate storage of the archival material and the need to rearrange the holdings caused by refugees in times of need. Finally, from 1765, a four-storey municipal archive building north of the town hall was built by the master builder Johann Christoph Keller (1732–1801). Becht took care of the functional interior. The furniture consisted of escape boxes in two sizes in which the files were kept. Three of these boxes were placed on top of each other to form a cupboard. With handles on the sides of the boxes, the boxes could be removed quickly in case of danger.
Becht's successor as the first archivist was Philipp Gottlieb Daniel Aff in 1777, followed by Christian Ludwig Schübler in 1781 and Georg Christian Franz Kübel in 1783 . In 1800 Georg Feierabend was employed as an archivist. In contrast to his predecessors, he was no longer supported by a sub-archivist. In 1808 the former archivist of the knightly canton of Kraichgau , Georg Philipp Uhl, who had previously looked after the Kraichgau archive just a few meters away , was taken over into the city service. He headed the city archive until 1835.
After the imperial city of Heilbronn came to Württemberg in 1802/03 , numerous valuable files were excavated for the Stuttgart central archive in June 1825. Valuable documents and also deprived of its function as a depository of important imperial city rights, the archive then transformed into an object of learned research. With a special permission from the King of Württemberg, Karl Friedrich Jaeger created the first published chronicle of the city of Heilbronn from archives until 1828. The archivists Carl Gubitz (in office from 1835 to 1846) and Gustav Weismann (in office from 1846 to 1886) only worked part-time in the archive, so that the archive's order, which was once praised in 1825 and which was criticized as early as 1846, did not persist for decades significantly improved.
From 1886 Friedrich Dürr looked after the archive on a voluntary basis and sorted and cataloged it until 1891, for which he was then officially assigned the archive business on a part-time basis. Dürr was in charge of the archive until 1924, during which time he wrote a new two-volume chronicle of the city. Dürr was followed by Moriz von Rauch (1868–1928), who was in charge of the archive until 1928, carried out countless research as a private scholar in the archive and presented a large number of articles on the city's history. Three volumes of the document book of the city of Heilbronn , published between 1913 and 1922, are considered to be Rauch's main work . From 1929 to 1933 Georg Albrecht also ran the archive part-time before Götz Krusemarck was given a full-time archive position in 1933. When Krusemarck was drafted into the military in 1940, his colleague Alexander Renz took over the management of the archive.
The city archive has always been close to the Heilbronn Historical Association, which was founded in 1876 . Starting with Archivist Weismann, the respective archivists were always part of the association's committee, and archivists were also chairmen of the association several times.
Destruction in World War II
Around 1940 the archive consisted of around 1,000 boxes in three vaults, containing around 4,000 documents as well as 3,000 meters of files and official books. From 1942 onwards, files considered to be particularly valuable were segregated and relocated due to the danger of aerial warfare. After the first heavy air raid on the city in September 1944, the relocation was expanded. About 30 percent of the archive holdings were brought to the Schöntal Monastery , Domeneck Castle near Züttlingen , Neuhaus Castle near Ehrstädt and Waldenburg Castle . The outsourced holdings included around 3,000 documents, 400 volumes of council minutes, 300 volumes of bed and tax books, 200 volumes of purchase and other contracts as well as court, proclamation and death books, lists of residents, regular rolls, a collection of old photos and etchings, the council - and high school library as well as the city music collection. The archives of the former communities of Böckingen and Neckargartach were stored in the Hafenmarkt tower , the hospital and foundation archives in the Friedenskirche .
During the air raid on Heilbronn on December 4, 1944, the archive building and with it the around 70 percent of the archive holdings that had not been removed from the warehouse were destroyed, as was the harbor market tower and the Church of Peace with the archive materials inside. Only the parts of the archive that were moved to other locations escaped destruction and formed the basis for today's archive. The destruction of many original sources has made many of the writings created by archivists and researchers from the holdings up to 1944 sources. The ruins of the archive building were preserved as today's municipal hall of honor .
Since Krusemarck had fallen in 1945, the management of the archive was handed over to Renz, who ran the archive, which was housed in various temporary locations, until 1954. He was succeeded as archive manager by Gerhard Hess, who died in 1957. After this, Axel Hans Nuber managed the business until 1962. This was followed in 1963 by Helmut Schmolz , who managed the archive until his retirement in 1991. Schmolz was one of the first archivists to undertake extensive exhibition activities and is therefore considered one of the pioneers of modern archiving in Baden-Württemberg. Like his predecessors Moriz von Rauch and Georg Albrecht, Schmolz was also chairman of the historical association, whose editorial office was taken over by the city archives in the Schmolz era.
Archive building in the Deutschhof
In 1977 a new archive building was completed in Deutschhof . The multi-storey building has three basement floors and, in addition to archive rooms and offices, also contains exhibition areas on the ground floor, where a permanent exhibition on the history of Heilbronn can be seen. The Heilbronn City Archives are currently headed by Christhard Schrenk . In 2011/12, the exhibition area on the ground floor was redesigned as the House of City History through a donation from Otto Rettenmaier . In the new permanent exhibition, more exhibits can be seen than before, and the range of exhibits will also include multimedia content in the future. During the renovation, the city history exhibition was also structurally linked to the neighboring Heilbronn City Museums , also located in the Deutschhof , which, in addition to an art collection, also show finds and other objects of city history.
Lapidary
The Heilbronn Lapidarium with numerous historical stone works goes back to a stone collection founded by Alfred Schliz , which was affiliated with the Historical Museum founded in 1879. From 1904 the ground floor of the meat shop served as an exhibition area for stone monuments. After the Second World War, the collection was no longer accessible to the public for decades. The lapidarium has been housed in storage rooms in the old milk farm since the mid-1980s and has been looked after by the city archive since 2004. It can be viewed by arrangement and usually on the day of the open monument .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Helmut Schmolz: German city archives in World War II - with special consideration of the Heilbronn city archive . In: Swabia and Franconia. Local history supplement of the Heilbronn voice . 16th year, no. 8 . Heilbronner Voice publishing house, August 8, 1970, ZDB -ID 128017-X .
literature
- Helmut Schmolz: On the history of the Heilbronn city archive . In: Swabia and Franconia. Local history supplement of the Heilbronn voice . 12th year, no. 12 . Heilbronner Voice publishing house, December 10, 1966, ZDB -ID 128017-X .
- Hubert Weckbach : The archivists of the city of Heilbronn . In: Swabia and Franconia. Local history supplement of the Heilbronn voice . 12th year, no. 12 . Heilbronner Voice publishing house, December 10, 1966, ZDB -ID 128017-X .
