History in paper
The Brandenburg State Archive: Service provider for historical research – It is a real treasure chest for historians: Certificates, files, maps, plans, photos, posters and documents that have been created in state authorities and institutions since the beginnings of the Mark Brandenburg in the 12th century – all of this is stored on the shelves, cabinets, folders and boxes of the Brandenburg State Main Archive (BLHA). The modern archive building at Mühlenberg 3 is a treasure trove for historians. With these written testimonies, historians can delve deep into Brandenburg’s past. They reflect the political, economic-social, cultural and spiritual living conditions of many generations.
Today, the BLHA looks after around 54,000 linear metres of archive material in its stacks: the boxes of eleven centimetres in height, in which the documents are safely stored, would rise about 5.4 kilometres in height if stacked on top of each other. Every user who visits the BLHA reading room has a specific topic in mind. Some want to find out about their family’s past or clarify the traditional rights of their property in a neighbourhood dispute. Others want to write a dissertation on the colonization measures of King Frederick the Great. Everyone will ask themselves how to find the papers they need in this vast amount of papers.
Sources also available in an online database for the first time
Fortunately, there is someone who makes the extensive sources accessible by arranging them and describing their contents concisely and precisely. In this way, the archivist enables a targeted search for the appropriate archive materials. In the 2010s, the BLHA entered characteristics of almost all existing archival materials, which until then had only been available in a few typewritten “finding aids” in the archive itself, into a database and made them www.landeshauptarchiv-brandenburg.de accessible to everyone on its website. Everyone can now prepare their own archive visit conveniently on their own PC through “online research”. Names of persons and places or factual terms entered in the search mask point the way to the documents that are being searched for.
As obvious and promising as this method is, it still contains its pitfalls. If one does not know the authoritative contemporary terms with which a state of affairs was mentally captured, if one does not know that until the 18th century real estate was awarded by the sovereign to nobles and citizens according to “feudal rights”, one will end up in the wrong direction.
Expert research with advice from archivists
However, this problem can also be solved with the “archive plan search”: the archive materials are arranged according to their places of origin (“provenances”), according to the institutions or persons who once created them. Therefore, the cataloguing information on these provenances provides a comprehensive overview of their activities.
All users should ask themselves which administration has dealt with their issue due to their responsibility. Anyone who has gained such a comprehensive overview will make rich yields. Seekers are never left to their own devices: At the BLHA, expert archivists are on hand to provide advice. For Brandenburg local historians, who belong to the largest user group, “Days of Brandenburg Local and State or Regional History” are regularly held, where they learn about the sources and methodological approach to selected areas.
Anyone who has found what they are looking for in the files can copy selected parts for their own purposes: Either you place a corresponding order with the BLHA’s image department, or you can take the desired pictures yourself with your own apparatus in the reading room. Recently, the first reproductions of complete file units have also been posted on the BLHA homepage and can therefore be viewed even more conveniently at home. This offer will be significantly expanded in the coming years, but the 54,000 linear metres of archival material represent such a huge mass that only a fraction of it can be digitised in the foreseeable future.
A visit to the BLHA’s reading room is therefore still worthwhile. In fact, it remains indispensable. After all, who would want to miss the opportunity to hold the original writings, letters or maps from past centuries in their hands in the silence of the reading room and thus experience history up close?
Text: Klaus Neitmann | Bild: mauser einrichtungssysteme
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