| SELECTED RECORD GROUPS OF THE EZA | Back |
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| Evangelical Church in Germany and its Predecessors After 1852 the German evangelical national churches worked together in a joint advisory board, the German Evangelical Church Conference (RG 1/A1), whose permanent governing body was the German Evangelical Church Committee (RG 1/A 2) after 1930. The German national churches were merged in the Federation of German Evangelical Churches (RG 1/A 3) with the Federal Church Office as its administrative body (RG 1/B) from 1922 to 1933, and in the German Evangelical Church (DEK) (RG 1/A 4) with the Church Office of the DEK as its administrative body from 1933 to 1945. In 1945 the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) was founded. The evangelical national churches in the GDR remained members till 1969. EKD's governing bodies are the Synod, the Church Conference and the Council, and its administrative body is the Head Office (RG 2) in Hanover with branch offices in Berlin and Bonn (RG 4). The Office on Foreign Relations has been responsible for international church affairs since 1934, constituting a part of the Head Office of the EKD (RG 5 and 6) since 1983. The EKD Council has been represented by a Plenipotentiary at the Federal Government since 1949 (RG 87). There was a plenipotentiary of the EKD Council at the GDR Government from 1949 to 1958 (RG 103). Since the separate foundation of the FRG and the GDR the evangelical national churches in the two German States took different courses of development. From 1952 to 1969 there was an administrative office of the EKD in East Berlin which covered the territory of the GDR (RG 104). In 1962 the Conference of Evangelical Church Boards founded its own administrative office in the GDR (RG 102). In 1969 the national churches in the GDR split from the EKD and were merged in the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR, which subsisted till 1991; its governing bodies were the Synod and the Conference of the Evangelical Church Boards, its admini- strative body being the Federal Secretariat (RG 101) Table of contents |
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| Evangelical Church of the Union and its Predecessors The Evangelical High Consistory (EOK) was founded in 1850 as the ruling body of the Prussian Evangelical Church which was called the Evangelical Church of the Older Prussian Provinces after 1866 and Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union (ApU) after 1924 (RG 7). As its governing body, the General Synod operated from 1875 to 1933 (RG 9), the Legislative Church Reunion from 1921 to 1922 (RG 10), the Church Senate from 1924 to 1935 (RG 11), and the National Church Committee from 1935 to 1937 (RG 12). Legal successor of the ApU is the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) with its two govern- ing bodies, the Synod and the Council, and its administrative body the Church Office. From 1972 till 1991 the EKU maintained a separate existence in the GDR and in the FRG and West Berlin with separate governing bodies; As early as 1952, there were two administra- tive offices, for the territory of the FRG (RG 7 and 8) and for the territory of the GDR (RG 107 and 108). Table of contents |
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| Historic East Territory The historic German East Territories, now belonging to Poland and Russia, also belonged to the Church Provinces of the ApU. The EZA maintains the ecclesiastical-historical tradition of these territories as archives of the EKU. It keeps all church archives including liturgical instruments which once belonged to the former eastern church provinces of the ApU and came into possession of the FRG. Among them, ecclesiastical books, parish registers (RG 507) and vasa sacra (RG 503) from East German congregations are of special value. Further- more, the EZA collects parish seals (RG 501). Table of contents |
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| Church Struggle in the Third Reich The fonds of the EZA include the 'Archive for the History of Church Struggle', compiled by Prof. Harder (RG 50). The collection is constantly expanding through private archives, for example those of E. Boué (RG 602), W. Dress (RG 604), K. Hunsche (RG 611), W. Niesel (RG 619), E.-F. v. Rabenau (RG 664), J. Siegmund Schultze (RG 627) and many others up to now. Table of contents |
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| Lay Movement The most significant organisation of the Protestant lay movement today is the German Pro- testant Church Convention, founded in 1949. Its old registers are kept at the EZA as deposit (RG 70, 82, 95). The archives of the Association of the Protestant Academies in Germany are also placed in the custody of he EZA (RG 37, 38). Table of contents |
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| Oikoumene and Christian Peace Movement One of the current archive groups of the EZA is the 'Ecumenical Archives', established by Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze in 1959 as the documentation office of the ecumenical move- ment, and the Christian peace movement (RG 51). The EZA carries on the tradition and tries to round out the relevant archive groups. At present it keeps a record group of the Inter- national Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFoR) in its custody (RG 31) and various national groups of the IFoR (RG 32, 33, 69) as well as RG from organisations to assist conscientious objectors (RG 72, 73). The EZA collects the private archives of personalities who were active in the ecumenical movement and the peace movement, such as F. Siegmund-Schultze (RG 626), F. Eitel (RG 662), H. Kloppenburg (RG 613), W. Mensching (RG 618), W.A. Schreiber (RG 623). Further archive groups in this area are: Action Reconciliation / Peace Service (RG 97), Christian Peace Conference (RG 89, 90), Hendrik-Kraemer-Haus (RG 84), Ecumenical Assembly for Peace, Justice and Conservation of Creation (RG 117). Table of contents |
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Further record groups
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| Personal papers and office files Bassarak, Gerhard (RG 675) Benn, Ernst Viktor (RG 601) Diestel, Max (RG 667) Fischer, Martin (RG 606) Goldschmidt, Dietrich (RG 681) Gollwitzer, Helmut (RG 686) Hammer, Walter (RG 644) Hildebrandt, Franz-Reinhold (RG 609) Karnatz, Bernhard (RG 613) Kreyssig, Lothar (RG 614) Lingner, Olav (RG 672) Müller, Eberhard (RG 656) Ranke, Hans-Jürg (RG 657) Ronneberger, Friedrich (RG 621) Söhngen, Oskar (RG 628) Vogel, Heinrich (RG 665) Wilkens, Erwin (RG 650) Wischmann, Adolf (RG 634) Zoellner, Wilhelm (RG 635) a. o. Table of contents |
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| Collections Pictures (RG 500), posters (RG 513), films (RG 514), phonotapes (RG 519) Details of the archive groups are given in the publication by Christa Stache: Das Evangelische Zentralarchiv in Berlin und seine Bestände, Berlin, Alektor-Verlag 1992. Table of contents Stand: 05.02.2002 |
