Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 4. (1951)
BISCHOFF, Norbert: Zentralarchiv für Jüdische Geschichte. – Diaspora-Forschungsinstitut - BEYERS, Coenrad: The Archives of the Union of South Africa
286 Archivberichte the public, is also known as the Archives. For the sake of clarity the records may be referred to as Archive Groups, and the offices administering them as Archives Depots. An Archive Group has been defined as “the whole of the written documents, drawings and printed matter, officially received or produced by an administrative body or one of its officials, in so far as these documents were intended to remain in the custody of that body or of that official”. (“Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives” by S. Muller, J. A. Feith and R. Fruin, p. 13.) This definition applies to government archives but it is apparent that records may be accumulated by any concern, not necessarily a government office, in the course of business. It is, however, with the records accumulated in the course of their work by government departments that the Union Archives are primarily concerned. The Union Archives may, therefore, be defined as the Archives Depots, which are responsible for the obsolete — i. e. no longer current •— records (the Archive Groups) of all the government departments. There are four Archives Depots, one for each province, situated in Cape Town, Pretoria, Bloemfontein and Pietermaritzburg respectively. The two largest Archives Depots are those at Cape Town and Pretoria. As Pretoria is the executive capital of the Union, it was deemed advisable that the Archives Depot there should be the head office of the Archives service. The Chief Archivist for the Union and the Assistant Chief Archivist are both stationed at Pretoria and are assisted by two Archivists and other officials. At the Cape Town Archives Depot the chargeship post is that of Senior Archivist, assisted by two Archivists and further officials. The two smaller Depots at Bloemfontein and Pietermaritzburg respectively, are each in charge of an Archivist and further staff. The first duty of an Archivist is to ensure the safecustody of the records committed to his care and the second is to make them available for consultation by the public — the second involves the sorting, classifying, listing and indexing of the records. History prior to Union. Cape of Good Hope. The records of the Cape of Good Hope are the oldest in the country and, at present, constitute the largest concentration of records in any one Archives Depot. The chief Archives groups are the records of the Dutch East India Company from 1651 (the first meeting of van Riebeeck’s Council was held on board the “Dromedaris” in the English Channel on the 30th December, 1651) to 1795, the First British Occupation records from 1795—1803, those of the Batavian Republic from 1803—1806 and of the Second British Occupation from 1806—1910. The great bulk of these records had the good luck to survive practically intact through the decades although it was not until 1876 that any definite attempt was made to care for them. In 1876 the Government of the Cape of Good Hope appointed a Commission “to collect, examine, classify and index the Archives of the Colony”. The Commission confined its attention to records prior to 1806. These the
