ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 42. (ZAGREB, 1999.)

Strana - 123

M. Kchrig, The position of military archives in the frame of archival service ­Independence or integration?, Arh. vjesn., god. 42 (1999), str. 113-128 bution in the context of a European Defence Union. The 'Blank' official responsible for military sciences demanded, in 1952, the creation of an autonomous, traditional military archive organisation so that the records of all three services could be housed in a military central archive. This demand met with fierce opposition from the Fede­ral Archives, which was commencing its work at that time, and from the Federal Mi­nistry of the Interior, both of whom pointed to a Cabinet decision of 1950 which ga­ve the Federal Archives administration competence over the military records. After much debate, an inter-ministerial agreement was reached in 1954/55 between the 'Blank Office' and the Ministry of the Interior over the consolidation of the military archive holdings, which envisaged the creation within the Military Historical Rese­arch Office (a central military office within the administration of the Federal Minis­try of Defence) of a so-called Document Centre which would receive those records which were slowly returning from Washington and London. After having been eval­uated by the Military Historical Research Office, these records were to be passed to the Military Archive within the Federal Archives. This solution had no positive re­sults, so that in 1968 a new agreement between the Ministry of Defence and the Min­istry of the Interior was reached, whereby the Document Centre and the Military Ar­chive in the Federal Archives were to be dissolved and their records aggregated in a new Federal Archives-Military Archive in Freiburg (Breisgau), in the same place as the Military Historical Research Office. The Director of the BA-MA was to be a Co­lonel in the General Staff or a naval Captain with qualifications, and 50% of the hig­her posts were to be filled with officers who had higher education qualifications. The Federal Minister for Defence was to participate in the finalisation of the budget, the conditions of use and the salary regulations. His requirement for military secu­rity was to be met, and he was to have a permanent right of inspection in the Military Archives. The Minister for Defence thereby surrendered his authority over the mili­tary archives and recognised the responsibility of the Federal Archives also for the military archival system, in exchange for which he got a military archives in the sa­me location as the Military Historical Research Office whilst the Federal Archives had to move the military archive installed in its main office in Koblenz to Freiburg but secured its access to the military heritage. This agreement is still valid today, even after the passage of the Federal Archive Law in 1988. The Ministry of Defence issued a central administrative directive in this connection which regulates the han­dling and securing of paper, photographic and sound records within the Ministry's competence, which has the characteristics of a military order. Accordingly, all re­cords, irrespective of their historical merit, are to be passed to the Federal Archi­ves-Military Archive on the basis of catalogues pertaining to written records. Once in the Military Archive they are stored in a transit repository where they are kept for an agreed period of time during which the archivists evaluate them. In Germany we 123

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