A few months after breaking off his mammoth project to connect the Rhine and Danube with a canal, Charlemagne signed a certificate on February 22nd, 794 in Franconofurd (Frankfurt). On this paper it is recorded that the emperor donated land to the church of St. Emmeram in Regensburg 266 Joch. The document, personally signed by the emperor, has survived a period of 1227 years. This awe-inspiring relic is the oldest archive item that is kept in the Bavarian Main State Archives in Munich.
The main state archive, a colossus in the German-speaking archive landscape, has countless such treasures. Sometimes it feels like a huge treasure chest. The 100th birthday, which the main state archive is celebrating these days, offers reason enough to question the importance of this central memory institution and, moreover, to shed light on the challenges “this figurehead of our cultural state”, as Art Minister Bernd Sibler called it, will have to face in the future. So that the original signature of Charlemagne can still be shown in a thousand years.
View of the main wing of the archive on Schönfeldstrasse in Munich.
(Photo: Bayer. Main State Archives)
The abundance of documents, files, plans, bequests and photographs kept there is almost overwhelming. At the beginning of 2021, the main state archive was responsible for 813 362 069 information objects in the digital archive of the Free State of Bavaria. “And the trend is rapidly increasing,” says Margit Ksoll-Marcon, General Director of the Bavarian State Archives. In addition, there are four million analog archive units, which, if lined up, would give the distance from Munich to Rosenheim (55 running kilometers). And every year the length of the route from the Feldherrnhalle to the Siegestor is added to the paper tradition.
The main state archive was launched on July 16, 1921, but central state archives had existed in Bavaria since the early 15th century. With the establishment of the main state archive, Bavaria had a central archive in the modern sense for the first time, in which the state archives that had existed in Munich up to that point (General Reichsarchiv, Secret State Archive, Secret House Archive and District Archive Munich) were combined into one institution. The documents of Bavarian authorities and courts, important documents on foreign affairs and even the archives of the Wittelsbach royal family were now organizationally united under one roof. But it would take another half a century before the departments were spatially merged. Only after the Second World War did the Bavarian Main State Archives get its own building complex at the site of the former War Ministry on Ludwigstrasse and Schönfeldstrasse.
The oldest document in the Bavarian Main State Archives from the year 794 with the first mention of Frankfurt am Main.
(Photo: Bayer. Main State Archives)
During the war, the Secret House Archive, which was then housed in the Residenz, suffered major file losses. By relocating in good time, however, much of the archive material could also be saved from destruction. The major challenges of the present relate primarily to the archiving of digital documents that must be kept legible for future generations, despite the rapidly changing hardware and software formats.
“An archivist today has to be broadly based,” says Margit Ksoll-Marcon. He must be able to read medieval manuscripts as well as master digital technology. After the war, the institution grew steadily. First the Bavarian War Archive was incorporated, in 1977 a separate department was created for collections such as leaflets, posters and photos, for bequests as well as association and club records. Since 2007, the Sudeten German Archive has also been part of it as an “archive in the archive”. And with it the preservation of the legacy of the displaced persons from the Sudeten German areas.
The main state archive is also an important parliamentary archive. The Bavarian State Parliament maintains its own archive for its archival-worthy documents after 1945. The documents of the Bavarian parliamentary bodies of the monarchy and the interwar period, however, are in the Bavarian main state archive. In addition, there are the documents of the second chamber of parliament, the Senate, which was dissolved on December 31, 1999.
Nowhere do you get closer to the people of the past than here. It is touching to read the farewell letter in the estate department that the student Willi Graf of the “White Rose” resistance group wrote shortly before his execution in October 1943. It is a document of rare dignity and forcefulness. Files, letters and diaries from people from politics, art, journalism and so on are stored in abundance on the shelves of Department V alone. And criminals like the former Gauleiter of Upper Bavaria, Adolf Wagner (1890-1944), a Nazi from the very beginning. Even part of the Hitler estate is kept here, such as the certificate of appointment as Reich Chancellor. Hitler’s former housekeeper in Munich had gathered a lot at the end of the war, ID cards, sketches, notes, presumably to sell them off. However, the material was confiscated and ended up in the main state archive in the 1960s.
Diary and last letter from the student Willi Graf.
(Photo: Bayer. Main State Archives)
Exhibition “100 Years of the Bavarian Main State Archive”, Schönfeldstr. 5, Munich, until October 29th. Open: Mon-Thu 8.30 a.m.-4 p.m., Fri 8.30 a.m.-1.30 p.m. (www.gda.bayern.de; Tel. 089 / 28638-2596).