Archivalien und Archivare Preußens

These selected essays are written by an "insider" of the higher archival service, who himself spent many years as a consultant at the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Prussischer Kulturbesitz (Privy State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage) in Berlin-Dahlem, involved in its development. As a source expert, he provides indispensable building blocks for the (still unwritten) overall history of the former Prussian Central Archives from the 16th to the 20th century, which also served as a training center for provincial archivists. In Part II, Eckart Henning, together with Christel Wegeleben, prosopographically describes his predecessors and former colleagues over a hundred years (18741974), i.e., since the merger of the Geheimes Ministerialarchives with the Geheimes Staatsarchiv (Privy State Archives). These 144 individuals not only served an archive characterized by purely administrative and legal interests, nor did they yet consider themselves modern information brokers, but were historian-archivists. In an institution driven by research interests, they themselves worked as historiographers and authored specialized studies of lasting value. Henning then delves deeper into the biography of Reinhard Ludicke as the first Margraviate of Brandenburg's provincial archivist, Reinhold Koser as the first Director General of the Prussian State Archives and innovator of the provenance principle, and Gottfried Wentz as the editor of the Germania sacra and the last acting director of the Prussian Secret State Archivesthe "most educated and distinguished authority in old Prussia," as Wolfgang A. Mommsen described it. An index by Herzeleide Henning containing approximately 500 personal names concludes this volume with essays that are often cited, but sometimes published in obscure places, and are now finally more accessible again.