United Westphalian Aristocratic Archives

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United Westphalian Aristocratic Archives

Entrance area of ​​the LWL archive office
Entrance area of ​​the LWL archive office
Archive type Aristocratic archives
Coordinates 51 ° 58 '35.3 "  N , 7 ° 36' 59.3"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 58 '35.3 "  N , 7 ° 36' 59.3"  E
place Muenster
Visitor address Jahnstrasse 27
founding 1923
ISIL DE-2142
Organizational form registered association
Website United Westphalian Aristocratic Archives

The United Westphalian Adelsarchive e. V. are a non-profit association founded on December 14, 1923 , which aims to preserve the historical sources in the archives of the Westphalian nobility and to make them accessible for historical research. In addition, according to the statutes, the "sense of responsibility of archive owners for the value of their archives as part of the cultural heritage and family tradition" should be promoted. The association is based in Münster . The prerequisite for membership is ownership of a nobility archive .

The association has a small series of publications in which treatises and source editions from the aristocratic archives are published. Based on the Westphalian model, the United Aristocratic Archives in the Rhineland were created in 1982 as an amalgamation of numerous Rhenish noble families. V.

organization

The board of the association consists of a chairman and his deputy. Rudolph Herzog von Croÿ and F.-Carl Freiherr von Ketteler are currently doing this . The board of directors is supported in its work by an advisory board. A general meeting takes place once a year. The director of the United Westphalian Aristocratic Archives, who is also responsible for the business and cash management of the association, coordinates the execution of the association's scientific and archiving tasks. The head of the LWL archive office for Westphalia (since 2008 Marcus Stumpf) takes on this function ex officio .

Stocks

Taken together, the Westphalian aristocratic archives contain more than 100,000 parchment and paper documents from the Middle Ages and modern times . As a rule, legal transactions were recorded in the documents . They contain wills , marriage contracts , mortgages , purchases or sales. Other documents relate to official appointments or military promotions, and still others contain privileges for monasteries or institutions. In addition, around half a million files are made accessible, some of which originate from the official activities of the nobility in the time of the old empire , which ended in 1806. Documents from Westphalian sovereigns such as the Münster prince-bishops Christoph Bernhard von Galen and Ferdinand von Fürstenberg can still be found in the private archives . In addition to these official documents, many archive materials come from the economic management of the goods. They are mainly used to research agricultural conditions in ancient times, but also contain documents on early industrial history, such as mining in the Sauerland and the Ruhr area. Another large group are the private estates, which mainly consist of correspondence. There are tens of thousands of letters from the 16th to 20th centuries. Century preserved.

Some old territorial archives of formerly independent counties in the old empire are still in private hands. These include u. a. the archives of the counts and princes of Sayn-Wittgenstein in Berleburg and Laasphe, the archives of the princes of Bentheim-Tecklenburg in Rheda and Bentheim-Steinfurt in Burgsteinfurt or the archives of the dukes of Croy in Dülmen.

use

The finding aids of the more than 100 Westphalian aristocratic archives organized in the association can be viewed via the LWL archives office and the archives of interest can be ordered.

The Westphalian aristocratic archives can be used free of charge - except for commercial purposes. As a rule, the archives remain in the castles and houses of the owner families and are only transferred to the association's depot in the LWL archives office in exceptional cases. Around 70 of these archives are currently stored in the houses of their owners, and a good 30 archives are in the association's archive depot. So it happens that the inspection of the finding aids and the inspection of the desired archival material can only take place on the same day in exceptional cases, since the documents usually first have to be borrowed from the archives concerned and brought to Münster.

The online position of the finding aids is therefore of particular importance, so that the users can inform themselves and order in advance: Over 130 finding aids can be searched in the portal “Archives in NRW” (status: summer 2017).

literature

  • Aristocratic archives in Westphalia: the holdings of the member archives of the United Westphalian Aristocratic Archives / edit. by Wolfgang Bockhorst. 3rd updated edition. Münster 2012. - XX, 524 p. ISSN  1618-7377

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